Artisinal Goods. Uncommon Spaces.

Since our beginning, we've partnered with artisans from the South and beyond to create beautiful, unexpected pieces for the house and garden. We've sourced pottery from Arkansas, linens from France and the UK, earthenware from Mexico City, Puglia and everywhere in between. We've collaborated with a New Orleans sculptor to create a suite of dog-inspired barware and with a glassblower from Vermont to reproduce heirloom vases from our personal collections. What you'll find here is an eclectic assortment of curated goods marked by the human hand.

Shop the Categories

HOW WE BEGAN

Reed Smythe & Co. began as a natural extension of my friendship with the late Julia Reed, writer, humorist, design maven and hostess extraordinaire. Just as we both relished the laughter and mayhem in the hours of preparation for a party more than we enjoyed the dinner itself, we loved the doing of Reed Smythe & Company together most of all. Finding the perfect shade of green glass. Searching for a native Choctaw basket weaver. Designing nature-inspired pieces to add character to the table. We loved it all. Even in her absence, Julia is with me in all that I do. I hope that Reed Smythe will be a place where you return again and again to find beautiful things for your house and garden that give your spaces the layers and textures that imbue a home with story, meaning and a shot of soul.

WHAT WE LOVE

At Reed Smythe we love rooms that are lived in. Slipcovered sofas and worn oriental rugs over sisal, the perfect place for a dog to lounge in front of the fire. A generous bar set up on an antique butler's tray stacked with handblown glass, a hand turned muddler or two, and a galvanized steel ice bucket to mix it up a little. Nothing too precious. We look for craftspeople who bring skill and care to their work, and we love to share their talents with our friends and customers, who then become a part of supporting an ecosystem of makers. We're never above using an IKEA bookshelf and filling it with found objects and treasures collected over years of traveling and living. Most of all, we love houses and rooms that reflect the personality of the people who inhabit them.

SEE KEITH'S FAVORITES

In Julia's Words

Both Keith and I spent our childhoods in the Mississippi Delta, that rich alluvial floodplain shaped by the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers. Life centered on land and river, and among our families there was a clear design ethos: dark pine floors with faded Oriental rugs, English furniture, books everywhere, and always a proper bar. Our town was full of craftsmen, and my mother used them all — we had carpenters, painters, potters, not to mention musicians and cooks. We were known for our parties.

Keith and I were separated by an age gap that mattered then but doesn’t now. At one Christmas Eve party, I was downstairs sipping champagne while she was upstairs with punch and cookies. We barely saw each other until she and her husband, Jon, moved to New York. She became the sister I never had. I like to think I taught her my mother’s entertaining ways—but at some point, the student becomes the teacher, and now there isn’t a decision either of us makes without bouncing it off the other — menus, fabric choices, and the more serious questions about how to live a big and meaningful life.

The Gilded catfish

When people walk into our shop or browse our website, their first question if always "What's the story of the catfish?" After all, that bottom-feeding, whiskered denizen of the Mississippi River and its muddy tributaries doesn't scream "chic." But as Julia and I were playing around with ideas for the Reed Smythe mascot, we kept returning to the gilded papier-mâché catfish that Julia found at an antique shop years ago and which took pride of place on the grand piano in her New Orleans parlor. Once used on a Mardi Gras float, it seemed to perfectly capture the mixture of high and low style we were looking to celebrate at Reed Smythe. The most humble design can sit beside some of the finest art and antiques in a family's collection to create something unexpected and eclectic.