Mr Kitly

Above a fabric shop on Sydney Road, up a narrow staircase easy to miss from the footpath, a first-floor space filled with ceramics, textiles, plants, books and jewellery has been trading since December 2010. The owner spent five years living in Japan before opening the shop and built the collection around that country's sensibility for restrained, functional design rather than the maximalist gift-shop model most homewares stores default to. Stock spans kitchen items, ceramics, textiles and wood objects, curated for materiality rather than category, alongside a dedicated gallery space inside the shop that runs a rotating program of exhibitions rather than a single seasonal refresh. Big windows look down over the street, giving the upstairs room a quality of light unusual for a retail space, closer to a studio than a shop floor. It also runs a wholesale and trade arm supplying stockists elsewhere, a sign the curatorial eye extends well beyond what fits on the Brunswick shelves. Fourteen years in, it remains a single-site operation rather than an expanding brand, which is presumably the point.