Craft Around the Country

In Downtown Portland, Oregon, A Craft Gallery is an Oasis of Calm

At Storied Objects, proprietor Alexandra Hughes showcases the quiet presence of minimalist homewares.

By Megan Gannon
August 14, 2026

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Photo by Alba Betancourt for Storied Objects

Glass and ceramic wares line the shelves at Storied Objects in Portland, Oregon.

Just off a busy corner in the heart of downtown Portland, Oregon—where commuters hop on and off the light rail and readers drift in and out of Powell’s City of Books—there’s a small gallery that invites moments of quiet.

At Storied Objects, shoppers encounter wood-fired ceramics, delicate handmade glassware, paper-thin wooden bowls, and other items carefully chosen by owner Alexandra Hughes.

“The pieces that I carry in the space are all ones that call to me to a certain degree—they’re muted in tone, quiet and unassuming,” says Hughes. The objects are usually utilitarian, too, and Hughes tries to provide enough education on the care of those handcrafted pieces that her customers can incorporate them into daily life.

Photo by Alba Betancourt for Storied Objects

Storied Objects sits on a side street in downtown Portland.

Hughes developed her own appreciation for craft growing up with a photographer mother and woodworker father in Troutdale, a suburb east of Portland. She launched Storied Objects first as an online shop after the pandemic started, hoping to provide more transparency than other online marketplaces about the artists and the labor behind craft objects. She jumped on the opportunity to open a physical version of the shop in 2024 after the storefront on Southwest Oak Street became available.

Hughes cultivated relationships with many artists featured in the shop as a customer herself years earlier. She carries work from Pacific Northwest makers such as the glass artists Andy Paiko and Sayuri Fukuda and ceramist Marité Acosta, alongside national and international artisans.

The artists Hughes stocks are united by their understated, earthy color palettes—and an obsession with their chosen material. “The resulting work feels very natural, even though it’s been manipulated by someone’s hand,” she says. That nature-focused sensibility, she notes, feels “quintessential” to the Pacific Northwest.

Still, the objects reflect a variety of approaches, and Hughes tries to avoid too much crossover. “If I have three people that are making a mug, I want to make sure that each mug is distinctly different so that they can still stand out on their own,” she says.

Photo by Alba Betancourt for Storied Objects

A stool by the Portland-based furniture maker Nick Tretiak.

New to the shop are “very emotional and expressive” vases from Jotham Hung, a Taiwanese American ceramic artist based in California. “You get these really technical forms with freehand inclusions and reused materials like pieces from failed firings,” she says. “The surface textures are so, so interesting and something you think was just dug from the earth.”

Hung’s vases stand in stark contrast to smooth black-glazed porcelain vases from Tracie Hervy, a New York–based ceramic artist Hughes has long admired. “Her work has remained incredibly consistent in its simplicity and really focusing on utilitarianism,” Hughes says.

Hughes documents her travels and studio visits with makers in an online journal. Her written output not only highlights the artists she represents, but also broadcasts her individual perspective in a way that feels intimate and comfortable, much like her encounters with customers in the shop.

“In-person interactions, I’d say, is where I thrive—it doesn’t feel as forced,” says Hughes. “Some people come in here to have a quiet moment or calm down, which is a really sweet thing to experience.”

Photo by Alba Betancourt for Storied Objects

Jars made from wild clay by the Seoul-born, Quebec-based ceramicist Mie Kim.

Megan Gannon is a writer and ceramist based in Seattle. She is a manager at Third Place Pottery, a community clay studio, and her journalism has appeared in National Geographic, High Country News, and Scientific American, among many other publications.

Visit Storied Objects online.

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This article was made possible with support from the Windgate Foundation.

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