The joy of decorating your home with antiques is not only about connecting to the past, but also knowing those pieces will tell a story long after you’re gone. This sentiment—collecting for posterity—is at the heart of Olive Ateliers. The Los Angeles-based lifestyle brand, cofounded in 2021 by Kendall Knox, Ben Knox, and Laura Sotelo, began with curated Instagram drops and weekend pop-ups selling one-of-a-kind goods sourced from around the world. This eventually led to a 22,000-square-foot atelier showroom in the arts district and a permanent e-commerce platform.
After a few short years of notable success, the trio realized that incorporating designed collections was the best way to serve their growing customer base, with the first assortment (“Vestige”) arriving in early 2025 and a second (“Lieu De Vie”) launching later that year. Now, on February 11, Olive Ateliers unveils Tetbury House: its third and most expansive offering to date. The line is made up of 29 pieces ranging from solid-wood dining tables to a 1920s-inspired lamp (also signaling their first foray into lighting).
Each piece in Tetbury House resembles something one might unearth while searching for rare European antiques. “They’re individual, they’re very expressive, but they still work nicely as a collection,” Ben says. He explains that for the team, it’s all about capturing the feeling of discovery, which is what drew them to the antiques business in the first place. “We are deeply inspired by the concept of inherited objects and family heirlooms, and the tradition of passing down pieces that are really well cared for and have a beautiful story behind them,” Sotelo adds.
The spark for their collections is always a feeling—and for Tetbury House, the cozy spirit of the Cotswolds served as muse. You see it in the cotton dobby skirt that lines a nightstand, and in the mix-and-match wooden dining chairs. But the references don’t stop there. “A lot of the pieces are deeply inspired by designs across Northern Europe, so it s not just an English-looking collection,” Kendall says.
Take the Adlestrop dining table as an example, which was inspired by a 17th-century Dutch piece they sourced and sold before they could even open their doors. (The lucky buyers? Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco.) “For Adlestrop, we worked with artisans to develop our own Delft-inspired tiles,” Sotelo says. Each tile was hand-painted in the perfect blue with a crackled glaze and then inset into a rich, dark stained wood.
It was critical to the team that everything in Tetbury House was imbued with the feeling of inheritance and history. But how does one achieve that kind of patina on a newly-made product? “Our in-house team of designers has really become students of antiquity… they’re deeply obsessed with how materials age and how the finish of something might change over time,” Kendall says, pointing to solid oak, reclaimed pine, aged metals, and heavyweight linens as important materials for the collection. (”Plastic is not part of our repertoire,” she says, with a laugh.)
The James Martini table is a perfect example. “For this piece, it was layers and layers of paint,” Sotelo says. The approach was born from a technique their artisans in India had developed over time, but reimagined together with the in-house design team. “The process doesn’t happen quickly,” she explains. “It’s layers of paint, then they come in and kind of chip it back, and then they come in again with the paint. The process can take days.”
Or there’s that Neverland nightstand mentioned earlier with the detachable cotton dobby skirt. “This nightstand actually has eight layers of wax on it, just to give that feeling of a really well-cared-for antique,” Sotelo says. “So when you run your hand over the top, it feels waxy, and it s deep, and it s smooth, and it feels like it has lived many lives.”
The release of Tetbury House presented an opportunity for the team to expand into lighting, a category they’ve long been keen to enter. There are two lamps: the Langford floor lamp, inspired by Hans-Agne Jakobsson circa 1930s, and the Agatha table lamp, whose silhouette was brought to life after spotting a similar, more petite 1920s version on the Orient Express.
The collection also offers a handful of smaller objects, including exquisite candelabras and the Devon shell dish. “We found something really similar in a bric-a-brac in France and had to find a way to share that sweet piece with more people,” Kendall says, adding that it was important that it shared the same hand-feel. “There’s something about having a weighty silver piece next to your bedside cradling something special that feels really nice to us.”
It’s this ritualistic, everyday utility that taps back to what Tetbury House is all about. “I think timeless objects are made to be used, repaired, and lived with,” Ben says. “I think timeless objects also show restraint. They’re not over-designed. They re definitely not hooking into trends. They’re also not overly precious. They age in a way that adds character rather than detracting from it.”
