VILLA BOLOGNA POTTERY, MALTA
Villa Bologna Pottery has been producing hand-painted ceramics on the island of Malta since the 1800s — a family business in the truest sense, with nearly two centuries of craft behind it and three generations of children who have grown up with clay on their hands.
The pottery has been in Jasper de Trafford's family since the 1920s. In 2020, he went into business with Sophie and Rowley Edwards, close family friends whose connection to Villa Bologna runs even deeper than friendship. Sophie's mother is Maltese, and she spent her early childhood on the island — the villa and its pottery woven into some of her earliest and most affectionate memories. She and Rowley were married at Villa Bologna in 2017, then spent five years working in East Africa before deciding to move to Malta and take on the pottery together. It seems Villa Bologna, always a family business, now runs in the Edwards blood too. Their children — Rocco, Zadie and Olimpia — are often spotted playing with fistfuls of clay in the shop in Attard.
The ceramics they produce are bold, vivid and entirely Mediterranean — painted by hand in the traditional Maltese manner, in the colours and patterns that have defined this pottery for nearly two hundred years. At The Voyage Dubai, we carry Villa Bologna because their work brings history, warmth and genuine charm to a table in that unhurried Mediterranean way that is very much our own.