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w N Radio. Hello, and welcome to Fearless Fabulous You. I am your hosts, Melan A Young and it is midsummer in the South of the United States and everybody's sweltering around the world. But I'm doing just fine because I've learned that no matter what the season, and tell me a year and make it work for me, because this show is about living life on your terms and figuring it out when things go bad, making it right when things
go right. Share in the good. I love interviewing women entrepreneurs and you know that as you follow the show. I also love to travel, and you know that. And if you follow me and my husband David on the Connected Table our other show. You know that we spend a lot of time in Italy visiting wine regions in the wine part of my life. Well, today's guest has had an ongoing love affair with Italy for forty years, actually
more than forty years. But her company that she founded is celebrating its fortieth anniversary and it started with a trip as a young girl with her sister and her mom to Italy. Yes, and a dream from that which I found fascinating. We're going to be talking with Susan Gravelly, who's the founder and CEO of Vietri. It's a lifestyle brand offering in a beautiful handcrafted tableware and
homeware and garden accessories. If you've ever traveled Italy, particularly to Campania, you will see some of this beautiful artisan pottery and craftware and want to buy it. In fact, when I posted that Susan was going to be on Fearless Fabulous You today, one of my fellow wine writer friends said, oh my god, I love that stuff. My only fight I got in with my husband was when we went there and I went to linger In shop and he wanted to go to the beach and near Positano. We're talking beautiful,
beautiful dinnerware. But we're here for more than just to talk about housing, because if you also know, I'm not a home person. I'm dealing with a home right now that I just inherited and trying to figure out how to
declutter it. But we're going to talk about what I consider an amazing entrepreneur story and a love affair with a country that I adore as well, and a new book that Susan has written called Italy on a Late It is really a heavy, beautiful book, gift book if you have friends who love Italy. It's park memoir, park travel and menus and gorgeous pictures. Susan is
a fellow Southerner. She is joining me from the beach in North Carolina, where I hope the weather is more beautiful than where it is here in Shadanooga, Tennessee, where it has been pouring. Susan Graveley, Welcome to Fearless, Fabulous You and Melanie. Thank you for having me. I'm really really happy to be talking to you today. But a lot of my friends, you know, adore you and follow you and around the country, and I reference my friend Lisa, you have a great success story, and we'll get
to that. But first, you know, you're in North Carolina, where before the show I was saying, a lot of my friends are moving because it is such a beautiful state. You grew up in North Carolina, well, and you had quite the family life. Your dad worked in the tobacco business. Your mother entertained quite beautifully. Tell us about your childhood. I like my listeners to get to know the person on the air from their youth.
Well, I did have a really interesting childhood. I grew up in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, which is the eastern part of the state, the real farming part of the state, filled with small towns. So going to Raleigh at Capitol was like going to Washington or New York for others. We grew up in a town where every set of parents had their right and
privilege to parent us like our own parents. So there were forty sets of parents that praised us, that told us to go home and tell our mothers what we had one and encouraged this, and that was a pretty amazing upbringing. The second part that was pretty amazing is that with my father being in a third generation to Bacca company, which bought and sold burly burly is the
sweet part of cigarettes. And you can imagine it. From the nineteen hundred to their early seventies, everybody smoked, and we would have foreigners in our home all the time. That was not during the tobacco season when they were all in Georgia. We had a stand up globe and Daddy would say, d people are coming from Cairo, or they're coming from Zimbabwe, or they're
coming from China, or they're coming from Italy. And look at where Rome is, and look where Raleigh. Drma would look where Rocky Mount is. We're only a plane trip or a phone call away. The world is so small, and so I grew up with this feeling of a smaller world that you could get to. As a child. The only way that I could sit and listen to the adults was to serve drinks that my father would make, or serve the cigarette types that they were smoking, and sit and not
say a word and left spoken to and were my nice Sunday dress. So that's how I grew up listening to all these conversations and learning about different cultures
and then setting the table with my mother. We had lots of dinnerware we had lots of place mats and napkins, and she loved to do flowers, and so depending upon the season, I would set the table with her and learned how to set a table, and then she would prepare usually you know, bilet and baked potatoes and spirits, or a seasonal vegetable and then either a pecan pie or homemade from scratch, you know, chocolate cake with hot milk cake and chocolate icing. And we got to sit at the table and
listen. So that was my early years, and that was the beginning of understanding that the world was small. I think that's so interesting, you know, as you talk, Susan, I think about my own family, you know, from the South, and my grandmother had all sorts of table where for every season and coverings, and it was very elaborate, and my mother inherited that. And as I now, if in December and I'm going through all this tableware, going my god, and the and the fabrics and the
patterns. My goodness, because you know, I lived in New York most of my adult life in a very small apartment. We didn't have a lot. It's wonderful tradition of bringing people in your home and how lucky you were, Susan to have that entree to the world, all these global guests coming. And I can see your father in that globe because my parents traveled around the world. When I was a little girl, they went around the world and left me with my grandmother and they gave me a globe and I would
follow their trep on my globe right exactly. And I don't know if I think I'm a little older than you are. But when when Daddy would call us, it would be a set time through an operator, and we would wait all day for that call, and it was always collect And then also he would he would sail by ship many times over and meet these glamorous people.
And Daddy was very charismatic, very handsome. My mother tells the funny story about the first time she went to New York to wave him goodbye, and they were newlyweds, and you know, he was waving to her, and she never saw him because she saw sitting standing there in the boat carry grant, and that was the carry Grant time. And Daddy was furious that she wasn't looking at him. But you know, those were glamorous years,
and the whole essence of work was very male dominated. There was a woman, believe it or not, in Rhodesia that became the first and only woman in the world to work in tobacco, and her son and his family ended up moving to Chapel Hill and they're great friends of mine. So it created, like with your parents, a smaller world with friends all over the world
as well. So I feel very lucky to have had that upbringing and have tried very hard to encourage travel and broadening those that array of people you meet, especially women's relationships, and make it more global. Well, that kind of set the stage a little kind of a foundation for what you have was just truly a global company. Now, unfortunately you lost your father at a at a fairly he was fairly young, and he was very young, yeah,
very young. And you so your mother was a widow with two daughters, right, three daughters actually, and for two daughters and two sons, that's right, four children, Okay, yes, and that's hard back then, I mean, you know, this is this is a different time. So she's got four children, she's a widow, and when did you take that faithful trip to Italy with her? So what happened was Daddy um as
a little boy had rheumatic fever and that always impacts your heart valves. And so when he got to be about fifty three, he started having to have to replace his mitral valve. And it was so new in medicine that they gave him a children's valve and it took three different valves to get it, so it worked three different surgeries, which had a huge, you know effect on his help for many years, but he got it back. Believe it or not, was down in valve us to Georgia, introducing the Italian conglomerate
because tobacco was owned by the government. Two the new owners of Katco, the tobacco company because he was selling it, came back. Felt badly called my three siblings didn't know where I was because I was working somewhere else and had a heart attack and died that night. The difficult part of was what you said. My mother was fifty five years old with four children. What ages were you all then? We were thirty two, twenty nine, twenty seven, and eighteen. And Daddy had kind of said to us, always
do not expect anything, because I promise you everything I've saved. I want you a mother to spend every penny, and so that was a lovely thing to say to us, because all we wanted was her happiness. And she asked my sister and me to take the trip she and Daddy had planned to take before he died, and so it was a trip that we would never
have been able to afford. And for the rest of her life, whenever she called the four of us, two of us, whoever, and said I want to take this trip where you go, we would stop everything and go with her. Because their attitude was if you can't travel, and your parents were the same way, you can't travel better than being at home, why leaves? And so we were able to run into people that Mom and
Daddy knew, or go to places that were extraordinarily beautiful. And this was the trip that Mama invited us to in nineteen eighty three, to fly to the Room, then to the Mouth Because, then to Florence, then to Venice and home, and that's when we came upon Edge and Aware and decided to start a company. Now it's obviously you at that time, Susan, did you have a were you working doing something else? Oh? Absolutely,
I have worked since I was fourteen. I was the kind of child that would you know, have lemonade stands, or would help somebody at a camp, you know, with handicapped children. I was always on the go. I was always volunteering or doing whatever. And at that point I graduated from college. I had gone to Boston and worked for an architectural firm because I
love design. But I was a secretary, the worst secretary in the world because I cannot proof reread, but the best as far as socially organizing those guys, and they were mostly fellows at that time. But I volunteered at Boston Children's Hospital and I came upon and was mentored by a woman named Anita Oles, who started the pediatric play program at Boston Children's Hospital. And I was so taken by how play create a venue for a child to express their
pain or worry that I started my master's at Ratcliffe. Daddy got sick, I flew home and finished at UNC, and then started the outpatient pediatric play program at Duke. How value pediatrics a totally different world. I did that, but it was during a time where I was aiding a medical student. My father was having surgeries, and my focus was on failure to thrive infants, and after about three years I burned out. Wow I UM then went into retail just for fun and worked with a great gal and um ended up
with her opening three retail stores. I was the one hiring training, being the you know, the the salesperson, while she bought and was the glamorous you know owner. But it was great fun. I then had a personal trauma. I was raped by an unknown person in my house and in your house? Was it? He was unknown, So it was a break in total break in midle of the night through a window in the bathrooms, And
that really changed my life. I went from an independent thinking go out any time day or night, felt safe, was always cautious, of course, to someone who on the outside still looked outgoing and great. But boy, when the lights went out at night, I couldn't move. I could no more walk down a street in Little Chapel Hills than anything. But what it did is it changed the compass of my life and I ended up going back up. I went to New York and went to the New York School of
Design to be invisible. I just needed some time to breathe and be invisible. And after I finished, that was when Mama called and said, would like to take this trip? Would you and Francis go with me? And there we went to Italy and happened upon this dinnerware and met this lovely man and started a company. So from bad comes good, right, it's all about. First of all, I'm sorry that you went through such a traumatic experience. I can only imagine how that would instill fearing me and distrust a
lot of things, including going out and being alone. You know, the fact that was in your own home. Though, would I don't know how I would react if I was attacked in my own home. I don't know if I would no longer why I probably Susan would want to burn down that home. That's coming back, how yeah, yeah, yeah, well you know, I think I come from again, a very pragmatic and realistic parents, who of course came up the next morning. But the at my father's
approach was well what are we gonna do about it? Versus showing anger, And it was well, we're going to try to get him and to go to court, which we did and he pleaded guilty, But but it was never now. I didn't go back to that hyn. I never slept in that hymn again because it was too frightening. I've rented it, of course, and it took it took a long time to even talk about it.
But I find now how important it is when we who have been successful in whatever you define success, that we let everyone know that we didn't have a perfect life either. Maybe my childhood was perfect and perfect. My father was extremely strict and demanding on us because he saw it a little bit like um, you know, the doa deer female deer, the family of von Trapp family, where we were supposed to be perfect with people that visited, but
we were just children right right. But anyway, and now bring it up often because often and speeches, because I want people to know that we all are vulnerable, even when we are the most protective of their laughs, and we can all survive. It's a very good point. And I've interviewed a lot of women who have gone through incredible trauma. I tend to gravitate to them in some kind and the level of inspiration that they have brought to this
show in rebuilding their lives and doing really amazing things. I mean, I'm thinking about it a couple of them right now, and it's and from it. I find it's interesting, Susan. With everyone I've interviewed who've gone through some trauma, how they rebuild has an interesting way of developed also what happened so in your case, and I'll give you an example. You know, I interviewed someone who was homeless most of your years and abused in foster homes
and she became a leading owner of an interior design school. So she went from having no home. Right, So you've built a business that helps make a home a beautiful place. You grew up in a beautiful home with beautiful things. Clearly you had a privileged life, but you also experience one of the most traumatic experiences of your life in what was your home? Right? And so you've reconciled home. And one of the last questions I have and how do you define as home? For many is a buildings. In fact,
I'm going to ask you this now before we get into place. Find given everything that you've gone through and that you have a leading company theatry that makes it home, We're beautiful. It is it is a built around the home your product, rightw do you define home? I define home in a lot of ways, about being around a table, about a gathering place a and I use the table as a metaphor, and I loved it when you
were describing your companies. You know, it's gat It's a place where you walk into, whether it's your physical home or your emotional home, where there is comfort and there is caring, and you feel cared for and you feel loved. And I see that place as very diverse, with it not mattering one bit if you're pink, green or orange, what your faith is, what your political views are. But it's a place where you feel safe to express yourselves. And I feel that way about my home and about gathering and
eating together and being together around a table. I like to think that people leave our home having had a wonderful time and maybe learning something they didn't know, or meeting somebody they had they would like to see again, or just being satisfied with the time spent. Many of us are tired, we are overtired, We work hard to balance, and you just don't want to really go out, even if it's going to be a wonderful night. How wonderful when you go out and you leave and think, thank goodness, I was
there. What a special place? However you define special right So that's home for me. You know. Home is home is where I want to be. I want to be in Florence in an apartment we ran, or I want to be here at the beach, or I want to be in my house much more than going out to a restaurant, you know. I want to bring life together in a place where everyone is comfortable. So that's that's home for me. I think it's a great example. I lived in New
York in a small apartment, which was not home. New York was home, but I spent a lot of time leaving. I spent much of my
life leaving. And before the show, I was telling this Susan A inherited a house my mother and fathers, and I'm grappling with it being their home and not mine and how to turn it into you know, And so a home for me is where I can gather around a table, wherever I am with friends, and also where I can sleep in peace, because I'm a big if I can't sleep in peace because I have been living on the road for two years. I sold my home in August twenty twenty and have lived
on the road as a nomad for two years. I've slept in a lot of guest room Susan. I could write a book the better way to have a guest room, but it's been creating. So I had to come home to care for a mother, and that was it was weird. I'm learning to adjust to the concept of home, which is why I wanted to ask you that question, because it is so much more than what many people sometimes think. It's just the showpiece, you know, the structure. It's such
a state of mind. It's a state of mind. And you know, I would say to you, hey, four rooms that you think you're going to spend a lot of time and just paying them creamy white, not dead white, but a white was a little bit of warmth and start over unless what we're trying to do. That's what we're trying to do. It's a little complicated in this took her house, but I have taken all the paintings and I love. I basically moved everything into my childhood bedroom, got a
better bed, and put all our paintings. That everything I love is in my bedroom. Because my mother died in one room, my father died another room, so it's kind of creepy, you know. So we we're basically taking three areas of this fairly large house and making it ours the dining room, the living room, in my bedroom, and then then we travel a lot. So let's get back to I love the fact your sister Francis sounds like a really fun person. I mean, you are too, But she
was like went to the she's like me. She had to go to the bathroom on a plane and just had to go first class to go to the bathroom, which is something I would do. And she chats up this man Fabio, which is I would do, because the drink cart was in her way. So that man was kind of like a good fortune guy because you're still he helped you when you got to Italy and then you're got robbed. He did. He Fabia Puccinelli was his name, and we've gotten to know
very very well now. But he came back after he met Francis to meet this mother and two daughters. Very fascinated with that, and in conversation gave us names of three restaurants in Rome and his phone number and said, oh, please call when you're in Florence. Well, we thanked him very much. We tried the restaurants. They were fabulous, and never ever would we
have called him accept we had Mama's pocketbook stolen. So we went from Rome down to the amount he coast, which I'm sure we'll talk about where we had this idea of a company. But when we got to Florence in a southern way, my mother said, okay, to remember the trip. I want to value all a piece of jewelry. That's what you kind of do. And those are the years of only cash and traveler's checks. So Mama
had all of it, plus the passports. We roamed ponte Vecchio and up that via Guiciardini, didn't see anything yet, but had dinner at this lovely restaurant, drank a couple of miles of wine, toasting Daddy, toasting Mama talking about how lucky we were, came out, had a one and only argument. It was a moonlight evening. Francis and I wanted to walk back to the hotel. Mama wanted a taxi. She lost, and then walking down a cobbled stone way, too small street and not lit well, two
motorcyclists came by and Mama grabbed her pocketwork and we lost everything. So we then went to the police station, and as you I hope don't know. Spending time in an Italian police station is not your best use of time. And after two or three hours it was sure, it's one button to debt and they were flirting with Francis and me, who were young at the time.
And at the end of that the next morning, Mama said, let's call that nice gentleman on the plane in Fabio, which we did, and he happened to be there, which he now will tell us always that he was there because he knew we were going to be in Florence, because he's a big fisherman. He picked us up, he helped us get passport, he lent us money, and at the end of lunch he said, and Mamma, where do you want to go? And she goes, I'm dying to see the leaning Tower of Pizza. So all we go to see the
leaning Tower of Tiza. We spend all afternoon, have dinner, and then since we've told him about our twelve plates, in this dream, we end up in the hills over Florence, going down this long driveway to a beautiful villa and knocking on the door of this beautiful home that was one of his best friends, Tita Uzilli. The first chapter of the book, and she has worked for Macy's and she goes fabulous designs, but the factory their crooks.
I wouldn't do it. And that was the beginning, and we thought at the end, you know, well why not give it a try. You know, Southern women, we can do a lot of things. Of course, we gave it a try, and here we are forty years later, and Tita continues to be a wonderful friend and early the mentor, well, I love Tita. Just to underscore every chapter, you start with a family or a dear friend, and many of are have been involved in Vatri for a while, or personal friends. I loved you know. I've been
to Campania several times on wine trips, and where it all started. You named that. You named Vatri after the village where the first pottery. I call it pottery, but it's plate ware YE made. And you, like you guys, had no experience an import export, which I's unfascinating because I'd love to start an import poses myself. But something did the research you right since break you got like a postage stamp area, and I could I usually as you wrote this, I could see this because I got the fancy food
and I know those small booths. You got this tiny, little but well situated at the trans display area, and you did everything right. You got to tell you waiters, sister Prosecco. You did everything and you ended up catching the eye of Name and Marcus. Let's talk about can you believe it? Well episode, yeah, somebody like remote, but you got Name and Marcus and they loved it. There you go. Life was good. You know, you can look at your career path and say, oh, yes,
it was a lot of luck. There's there is luck involved. There's a lot of hard work, as you know involved. But but this was one of those lucky moments. We had were told we could the show was completely sold out. I had spoken to mister Wolf. I said, please just let me show you my plates. They're coming in in six months, I have you know, this is their chance to start selling, and can
I just come and bring them to you tomorrow. I was in North Carolina, but I told him I could need him in New York that next day. When he said yes, I quickly got a plane ticket and went up. We were right beside the registration desk and friends had brought a table in a hutch and it looked great. And Mom and I were standing there and here come these very well dressed threesome who walked barra booth and looking those were the days where they did not wear any kind of signage to know who they
were. And ask a few questions, and then this woman said, we'd like to place an order. This is what we'd like to do. And the order totaled up to twelve thousand dollars and twelve million dollars and that was Neiman Marcus and they have been an account of hours, four four to years. That's just an incredible story. I mean, I believe it. I believe hard work, luck and serendipity, those are there. You go, and you know I'm Southern two. You don't give up. I mean,
you know you're fairly. That's wasn't fabulous because I just would not give up. And I've been knocked down enough times where I just keep bopping up. Sometimes I'm a maze, but I'm curious. You know, I'm a shark tank addict. So I have to ask how you managed to scale the business because I know one of your challenges and the and the woman you met with
in Florence said be careful first of all their crooks. You got to get in partnership and collaborate with people that you know have a way of doing things their way. We know the Italians, they're setting their way, and you've got American businesses that are like, I need it by this date and need this quantity. How did you manage to scale and bridge that tradition with contemporary business needs where it's like meet this deadline or you're going to use the account
right. Well, the first thing we did, Melanie, is we set our mission and vision to always be on the luxury high indside good of tabletop and decorative accessories. And what that meant for us also was to start with specialty stores. In nineteen eighty three, when we started, every small town everywhere had a beautiful gift store. You know, Bridle was really big at
the time, and there were a scattering of large department stores. That's how we started, so we built with The first sales trip I went on was going down to a wedding in see Allen, Georgia. My mother and I drove down. We stopped in every nice town or city on the way down. Found went to the nicest clothing store and asked them what was the nicest gift store in town, and then we would go there and I would go
in with my basket of plates and my prices. We limited the number of counts we had in the beginning to build our inventory, and we did not go with sales reps until we could build their inventory. And then we started with reps from Seattle, Washington. I went the longest place I knew I could not get to to test what it was like to work with reps. So I scaled in the beginning according to what I could get in inventory. With time I found out about gift shows. Fabio became our sales agent in
Italy. He had never worked today and of his life. We found out he was from royal background, and he did it out of love for what we were doing and for nothing else. So for eight years I was either working full time, you know, twenty hours a day at home or over there, traveling with him, going from town from factory to factory, looking at product and kind of building this look, building a dhry look. So we grew the company according to the amount of product and the look we had,
and so we were doubling in size every year. Of course, you know we you know, we did three hundred thousand dollars the first year, unheard of. We went to a million dollars, We went to a two million dollars, and up and up and up, and then when it became the size where we had to scale really largely, we we really scaled always according to what we could get without undermining the luxury market. So we chose not to go into mass markets. And that's what we've done, and it's
it's fair very well for us. It's a really good strategy. You know, a lot of luxury companies, brands, particularly in the fashion world right they have had to go into the they called the bridgeline or mass market because they can't sell their luxury market goods fast enough. And we all know those names. There are many. You're lucky you're able to do it in this area and at a time when I am told many young people are not buying china and nice things now for the table, I mean at the local Fisher
Evans and Chattanooga shutting down their china department. Yeah, uh, do you find for And you've been a business forty years running, Va Tree, have tastes changed? Has the client changed? You know? Really, before the pandemic, I would have been saying yes to all of what you're saying. And now I would say this than a real resurgence of being at home and dining at home. And before the pandemic, you know, there was just young people making so much money. It was just unbelievable, and all they
were doing was eating out. Their houses were painted white, they probably had two plates, two mugs that were given to them, and they were very mentalmalistic. They spent their money on fashion and a look. You know, it was what do I look like? In what restaurants am I going to? Well, then we all had to be home, so people reassessed their homes and suddenly they got back too. We need to cook at home, so let's cook something delicious. Let's be at home. Let's set a table.
How do you set a table? Amazingly many young people did not know how to set a table. Well, this is continued to transcend into warning a pretty table or combining things that their parents have given them with new minimalist things. I really believe that a table does not have to be formal or casual. It does not need to be everything looking alike. A mix and match is always more interesting and you don't have to stress over it. You do not have to stress over cooking. You can make a few things and
bring in a few things, right. You can light some candles and have an apperall sprits and some good wine and you are a happy camper. But there is this, especially in the South. The bride has come back and abandoned and abundance, and they are buying again. Now they know what we sell is not porcelain. So the fine fine China's struggle those some of them
are coming back the whole time. China look is coming back. But we sold better stonewares and ceramics that you could mix and match and create your own look. Well, they're very fun. The designs are incredible, I mean their eye catching. Um, they're fun. I happen to love pottery. Thank god, my mother did too. I've inherited a lot of purple pottery. She loved purple. So I have a lot of purple pottery, but beautiful, beautiful pieces of handmade pottery, which I always find because I happen
to love supporting artisans. Yes, yes, good, thank you, thank you. And what you do at Ventris you support I mean, and it's clear because as going through you, your ventry supports families. We do we you know, from day one, we wanted to support artisans, We wanted to support families. We wanted to support women in business. We do work some in India and a few other small countries, always women run and always with no child labor. We will never work in China. We will never
work anywhere where it's not safe practices and um and properly run businesses. We do work a little bit in Portugal to supplement what we do in very simple product lines that as we were talking about, can be scaled to bigger mass market bigger markets. But we always we do not work in decalt We do not. We always work in hand paint because that is what we are about. I think it's important, you know, I don't even like to try.
I am becoming a conscious traveler when it's you know, my dying my time, as I say, versus hosted trips, which obviously accept with glee,
right, you know, because those are learning experiences. But I think about when I travel now, if I'm if I'm investing my personal money into traveling or anything products, restaurants, I check and make sure that there's no violations that are offensive to me. With starting with human rights, I've had I've had a tough time with the whole restaurant outing of how people are treated. I've dined out lesson Listen. I come from a career promoting restaurants.
So the home is important. I think, you know, going back to the definition at home. Home needs to be where you're comfortable and safe, and you also can have your identity. It's where you can have fun with your personality with no judgments and underscore no judgment, no judgment. And you know, I speak a lot to women who aren't confident in creating their home
that they and I say women, but also men. And the real key to it is if you want a clean palette, that is fun, but you've got to figure out who you are and how you want to make that your identity. Not look at a picture and say I want exactly that, because that's not who you are. And when I go into someone's house and it is so sparse and so so accepted, I think that's the word.
I wonder what they think about, and I do find that I'm asking questions about what are their loves, what do they do with their spare time. What are they reading? Just to help understand who they are. I happen like you to love Italy and love textures and love a feeling of mixing fabrics together and UM thing in a place where you can take off your shoes or keep your shoes on and put your feet in the on the sofa and who
cares, and and that is um that's that's a home. It's a restaurant that you're comfortable in when someone greets you and they say bunjourn or they welcome you, and you're going, this is going to be a wonderful night. Great and again no judgment. You know, you know I dread. I won't go to a restaurant where I feel like it's like, all right, do you have a reservation? We're only doing five and eleven. You know,
I could write a book on snootie and hoodie. And I'm particularly since I moved out of New York. I'm so keenly aware of the rest of the country and attitudes. UM. I have to say. You're friends with someone who is one of my um I have a book. She inspired my selling My House. Francis Mays, who's featured in the book she wrote a book, not mat her I want. She wrote a book called I think it's called A Year in the World. Yeah, and I sold my house
to live a year in the world, like Francis. Unfortunate that COVID had so we didn't go in the world, but we went all around the United States for two years, trying on different places to live, finding I knew home, as we say, and then I ended up had to come back to my original home to care for my mother. So home has been a recurring theme because people say, where do you live, where's your home? And I'm like, well, home is where we roam right now, and
it's where we're happy together, my husband and I. Right. But she's an amazing writer. You have to do have a beautiful section about visiting her home, she's a friend and entertaining at Bramo Saul. I mean, I have to say it's Italyana plays a beautiful book because you bring the people into it, and so it's not really a book. Let's say it's a book of friendship and people you have met. It's very much a memoir as well,
because I learned a lot about your story. But I'm a big fan of hers and we will do that year in the world in Europe soon. We're just waiting for the right moment to do it, probably next year. But it was an inspiration to me and her writing. So how lucky you are to have wonderful friends like her, and how lucky she is to have
a good friend like you. Well, thank you, and she is somebody you should meet and you should get on your program, and I can certainly help you with that with a gentle gosh, there's something about her and Ed that when you are around them you feel a gentle spirit of enthusiasm, like you said, acceptance of anything and everything, a love for nature, a love for food, a love for people, a love for the arts. And no one is a stranger, no one. One of the times I
was so taken was I was visiting and were I was there. We were talking about the book and we were going to walk into Coartana and we saw this car with these two young people looking up to at her house and she was commenting on how many people, especially during the summer, come to see Brahma Soli and she said, let's go speak with him. So we go down the driveway. She opened the gate and this gal did not start crying,
but could have. And they were from Switzerland. They were driving around Italy and one of her things she wanted to do was see Brahma Sole. Well, so you know, Francis stood there and talked to her. And the question they get all the time is is there really an Ed? And yes there isn't Ed. And she called Ed and Ed came down to meet them, right, you know. And that's the kind of person she is.
She's she's quite giving, loving and so interesting. Well, I love how you The chapter of six is kindred spirits and I can tell you are and I think we are too. I have to we have to meet in persons sometime. I've really enjoyed speaking with you. This was so fast as the end of the show. I have loved speaking with you. Susan, we've talked with Susan Gravilly. She is the founder of Vietrie, which is
a wonderful dinnerware, beautiful painted dinnerware, just gorgeous. But her book Italyana Plate is new just releases year commemorating the fourtieth anniversary of the founding of Vietrie and really part travel memoir, will travel memoir and profile some of the wonderful people she has connected with in Italy like I have, and wonderful menus that they have created. Many we're going to try as well. We can't wait to get back to Italy. We'll probably get to North Carolina sooner, but
you never know. But I've enjoyed speaking with you very much, Susan, So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Well, Melanie, Mahouse is waiting for you and your husband, so right down Chapel Hill as part of your trips North Carolina. Okay, oh, I'm sure. Well, we have a very good friend that just opened a distillery and Durham, so we will be She's a walking and she's amazing, so we will be there. So for all my listeners, I hope you're inspired.
I hope you find your definition of home your way because always my show Fearless Fabulous Shoe is about learning to live life on your terms, your choice always. So thank you for joining me and stay for your loss and fabulous than you