Italian Furniture Studio | Olive Burl Crafted to Order

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Meola Interiors

In the foothills of the Matese mountains lies Alife, a small town in southern Italy shaped by Roman walls and olive groves. Its streets follow an ancient grid, unchanged for centuries. Agriculture defines the landscape. Craft defines the people.

Life here moves with patience. Workshops sit quietly behind stone facades. Harvests mark the seasons. The rhythm is steady, unhurried, grounded in land and lineage.

It is here, in 1992, that Meola Interiors began.

The studio’s roots were not in production, but preservation.

From a modest warehouse just beyond the historic centre, the Meola family sourced and restored antiques from across the south of Italy. Cabinets, desks, and tables often carried burl wood, a rare material formed from irregular growth on a tree. Through years of restoration, a deep respect for the material developed.

Burl revealed itself slowly. Its swirling grain resisted uniformity. Each surface demanded careful handling. In learning how to restore it, the family learned how to understand it.

Nearly three decades later, the business reached a crossroads.

Rising costs and a changing market placed pressure on a studio that had long relied on word of mouth and market selling. The question surfaced quietly but seriously: whether to sell, and whether to let the story end there.

That same summer, a romantic partnership began to unfold between Vincenzo Meola and Joel Gibson, built on a shared love of furniture and interiors. What began as conversation gradually became collaboration. Together, they stepped forward as creative leads, offering renewed perspective while honouring the studio’s history.

The shift began modestly. Furniture was carried into a small flat in East London. An improvised photoshoot was styled between daily life and captured in borrowed light. Those early images, created without expectation, later appeared in Vogue Living.

It marked the beginning of transformation.

n the years that followed, the studio made another decisive change. Production, which had temporarily expanded to Egypt, was brought back to the south of Italy.

The move was intentional. It reconnected the work to its origins and restored proximity between design and maker. The same artisans who once worked alongside the family restoring antiques remain central to the studio today. Their hands now shape original designs using techniques refined over decades.

Every piece is made to order. The dialogue between material and maker remains direct. Nothing is outsourced from its roots.

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