About the Studio

Marta Ferretti and Johan Kruse, Sorello Studio founders

How we started

A hill town, a farmhouse, and a long conversation

Sorello takes its name from a small commune in Umbria, near Gubbio, where Marta Ferretti's family has a stone farmhouse that has been renovated incrementally since the 1960s. Every generation added something — sometimes thoughtfully, often not. When Marta and Johan Kruse first visited together in 2017, they spent most of a long weekend debating what to do with it. That conversation became the studio.

Before founding Sorello, Marta spent nine years at a mid-size Milan architecture practice, working primarily on hospitality and high-end residential. Johan came from a different direction — furniture design in Amsterdam, then a longer detour through construction project management in Germany. When they met at a material fair in Salone del Mobile 2016, they had an argument about the correct use of Venetian plaster that lasted three hours and ended in mutual respect.

The studio opened formally in February 2019. The first project was a 70 m² apartment in the Isola neighbourhood of Milan for a client who had a very clear idea of what she didn't want and no idea of what she did. It took four months and remains one of our favourite projects.

Our approach

We work slowly on purpose

Most design practices compete on speed and breadth. We've chosen not to. Sorello carries between four and six active commissions at any time — enough to sustain the studio, few enough that we can visit every site personally and source every significant material directly.

This means we sometimes say no. We turn down work that doesn't fit our schedule, work in material categories we don't know well enough yet, and work with clients who want decisions made for them rather than with them. Those aren't the right projects for us.

The projects we do take on get our full attention. We travel to source sites. We visit marble quarries personally. We sit with upholstery workshops in Brianza until we understand what makes their work last forty years instead of four. We do this because we think it produces better work, and because we find it more interesting.

"Good interiors are not about the moment you walk in. They're about how the room feels on an ordinary Tuesday, six years later." — Marta Ferretti

We believe in the longevity of natural materials — stone, solid wood, hand-fired ceramics, linen, wool. Not because they're fashionable (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't) but because they age in ways that manufactured surfaces don't. A travertine floor develops patina. A painted MDF cabinet reveals its seams. We work with materials that reward time.

The people

Who does the work

Marta Ferretti

Co-founder, Lead Designer

Trained at Politecnico di Milano. Nine years at Architetture Lombardi before founding Sorello. Born in Perugia, based in Milan. Leads all residential projects and our material sourcing relationships in central Italy.

When she's not visiting suppliers, she's restoring furniture she finds in estate markets around Umbria. The farmhouse in Gubbio now has seventeen chairs in varying states of completion.

Johan Kruse

Co-founder, Project Director

Furniture design at Design Academy Eindhoven, then construction project management in Stuttgart and Frankfurt. Based in Amsterdam. Leads all our Northern European projects and manages client relationships across the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium.

Johan is the reason our projects generally run on time and under budget. He is much less fun at materials fairs as a result, but we've learned to coexist.

Studio team

Chiara Benedetti Interior Design, Milan

Joined in 2021. Leads the day-to-day design development on Milan-area residential projects. Passionate about historic colour restoration and lime-based plasters.

Lars Oud Project Management, Amsterdam

Joined in 2022. Manages Northern European project delivery and contractor coordination. Speaks Dutch, German, and English, and is working on his Italian with varying results.

Giulia Amati Materials & Procurement

Joined in 2023. Manages our artisan network and supplier relationships across Italy. Previously with a textile import business in Florence. Essential and irreplaceable.

Artisan partners

The people behind the materials

We work with a fixed network of Italian artisans — not a supplier list, but actual ongoing relationships built over years of visiting workshops and understanding processes.

Some of these relationships have produced things we couldn't have anticipated: the ceramic workshop in Sicily that makes one-off sink basins based on our sketches; the marble yard near Pietrasanta that holds specific blocks for us because they know our eye by now.

We don't publish a supplier directory. These relationships are built on trust, and we introduce clients personally where it makes sense.

Stone & Marble

Three quarry relationships in Carrara and Pietrasanta; one trusted yard in Tivoli for travertine.

Textiles

Fabric mills in Prato and a linen cooperative in the Casentino valley. Occasional wools from the Veneto.

Ceramics

A family workshop outside Caltagirone, Sicily, that makes custom pieces. Production is slow. Worth the wait.

Woodwork

A cabinetmaker in Brianza who does most of our custom furniture. Three generations. Excessively precise.

Small by design