The house was built in 1901 by a local man as a dream home for his new bride. A long, tall house on three floors, it looks imposing but is compact inside – just one room wide. When the couple arrived, the property was neglected and rundown, but has been slowly and sensitively brought back to life using natural and reclaimed materials that feel in keeping with the place.

‘The bottom floor, where we have our kitchen and dining room, would have been for the animals,’ says Nicola, pointing to original wooden feeding troughs in the dining room that are now stacked with logs. The crude cement covering the stone walls has been chipped away, and where new dividing walls were needed, they’ve been textured cleverly to resemble lime-plastered stone. For the kitchen countertops, the couple found several slabs of rough-cut stone at the back of a plant nursery – perfect for the rustic look they wanted to create – and bought them for a bargain price. And in the first-floor sitting room, they have kept the original pipework visible and added an old sink discovered in an antique shop, now filled theatrically with pelargoniums.

The rooms are populated with carefully chosen antique or handmade pieces, each with a tale to tell. The quirky wooden bench in the kitchen, which is painted yellow and has unusual painted panels along the back, came from the nearby town of Città di Castello. ‘We like to think that the three panels are scenes of the Umbrian countryside,’ says Ryan. ‘We are always searching for these unique things for our home and the shop.’

In the main bedroom, the four-poster was a serendipitous find at the antiques market in Arezzo, painted in the same shade as the original colour of the walls. Everywhere there are objects and textiles that the couple have sourced for their shop. ‘We refuse to sell anything we wouldn’t want to have in our own home,’ says Nicola. On one side of the house is the double-height tobacco barn, formerly used to dry tobacco leaves and now a storage and display space for their products.

On the top floor of this small farmhouse is Ryan’s studio, where the windows can be thrown open to let the breeze run through. The walls are covered with Ryan’s own sketches and paintings, and the shelves are loaded with books, candles and experimental sculptures of mushrooms, seedheads and fruit. ‘Since moving to Umbria, I feel I have so much more time to draw and paint,’ he explains.

Having originally studied art and graphic design, Ryan was working as a creative director of Spring studios in Milan when he met Nicola: ‘My aunt and uncle had an antique shop in New York, so perhaps that’s what gave me the inclination to start the store.’ Whatever the motivation, once the idea was mentioned to Nicola, it soon became reality. ‘He makes things happen. I’d spend too much time weighing it all up,’ admits Ryan.