Sun Valley Home and Design / Spring 2006 / Objects of Affection

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Objects of Affection

Details of People Through Their Stuff

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 Is it wrong to love a thing? A ridiculous question! Of course we love our things. The objects that fill our homes—especially the things we truly love—define us in a way. They manage, without saying a thing, to speak volumes about what is important to us.

Sal Caredda

Sardinian. Restaurateur. Son.

Sal Caredda has a new home: the city of Hailey. It’s a long way from his first home, a small town in the south of Sardinia, but it has some of the same attributes: peaceful, friendly, a place where it’s possible to get a good dish of pasta boscaiola.

Caredda had just sold his hugely successful Italian restaurant in Los Angeles when he learned that the Red Elephant was for sale. The signature steak house on Hailey’s Main Street intrigued him; the prospect of long winters didn’t daunt him (“I like to ski!”); and, besides all that, “I came from a small town. It feels right, being here.”

What makes his temporary apartment—in a new town, far from his family (still in L.A., tying up loose ends)—feel like home? Ah, that’s easy.

HIS OBJECT

Three golden reed baskets, exquisitely woven with patterns of red thread, grace the table. Each has taken six to seven weeks to create, and each was presented to Caredda by the artist, Edvige Falqui, also known as … his mother. This type of finely made basketry is a traditional folk art on Sardinia, though Caredda is quick to point out that “no one is near” his mother when it comes to pattern and detail. To this day, at age 86, she still gathers her own reeds, splits them into spider-fine strands, and then weaves them into the magical mathematical patterns she holds in her head.

Are they functional? Absolutely. More importantly, they hold memories of growing up on an island in the Mediterranean, they contain Italy’s luminous golden light, and they carry a mother’s artistry and love. >>>