Born from Elements

For as long as people have created, they have turned to nature as a source of inspiration. Across cultures and centuries, the elements of the earth have found their way into songs, fabrics, paintings, and carvings, reminders that they are not background, but origin. Nikola Tesla, working with coils and currents, listened to those same forces in a different register, seeking to translate nature's energy into motion and light. In his words from the The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900),“Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe.”

What traces of our lives will remain when future generations look back, as we now look back upon our ancestors?

In our modern lives, the natural world surrounds us, steady, patient, waiting, yet we rarely pause to truly appreciate it. Our ancestors did, and we know this not only through their stories but through what they left behind: fragments of pottery shaped from local clay, pigments made from soil and ash, and artefacts etched with the forms of animals and plants. Historic sites preserve these remnants, enduring reminders that the elements of earth have always been woven into human heritage.

Born from elements is more than a phrase, it is the thread that runs through every expression of nature, from ancient artefacts to modern design. Earth, water, fire, and air are not just materials or forces; they are the origins of life, the beginnings of culture, and the foundation of how humans have always shaped the world around them. To speak of being “born from elements” is to acknowledge that our homes, our rituals, and even our bodies carry this same inheritance.

The ancients spoke of the elements as first principles, the irreducible forces from which everything else is made. In Greece, they were known as stoicheia, the foundations of matter itself. In India, the Pancha Mahabhutas taught that earth, water, fire, air, and space lived within us as much as around us. In China, the Wu Xing described the elements as a cycle of transformation, each flowing into the next. As the Huainanzi records:“Water soaks and descends, fire blazes and ascends, wood bends and straightens, metal yields and changes, earth receives and gives.”
Huainanzi, 2nd century BCE

And here in Australia, Indigenous wisdom has always taught that the land is inseparable from life. As Kakadu elder Bill Neidjie expressed:“The land is my mother. Like a human mother, the land gives us protection, enjoyment, and provides for our needs; economic, social, and religious. We have always belonged to the land; the land has never belonged to us.”
Bill Neidjie, Gagadju Man (1986)

Though the philosophies varied, they shared a truth: true understanding begins with the elements themselves.

Today, innovators like Elon Musk use first principles in a similar spirit, as a mental model for breaking down complex problems into their most fundamental truths and building solutions from there. In an interview with Kevin Rose, Musk said “I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy… You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason up from there.”  

This approach isn’t about incremental tweaks, but about stripping away assumptions and designing from the ground up, echoing how ancient cultures built from matter itself, not abstraction.

In the modern era, the call to return to the elemental was taken up by designers and architects seeking harmony between human life and the natural world. Frank Lloyd Wright called it organic architecture, a belief that buildings should grow out of the land itself, following its contours, drawing from its materials, and opening the indoors to the rhythms of light and air. As he wrote: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” His designs were never an act of erosion for the sake of dwelling, but a harmony with the landscape, its geology, its seasons, its resources.

That lineage continues today in the movement known as biophilic design. As Stephen Kellert defined it: “Biophilic design recognises an inherent human need to affiliate with nature in the modern built environment.” At its heart is the recognition that human wellbeing depends on connection to the natural world not only through gardens or views, but through the textures of timber, the palette of stone, the geometry of leaves, and the play of daylight across surfaces. Biophilic design insists that our homes should breathe with the same vitality as the landscapes beyond their walls.

For covellite, the lineage of elemental design becomes deeply practical. In our earlier reflection, We Touch Plastic More Than We Touch the Earth, we named an uncomfortable truth: the bathroom is the most wasteful room in the modern home. Plastic dominates our daily routines here, even though it is also the space most intimately bound to the elements, water and air, warmth and steam, earth beneath our feet. And so, it is here that our work begins.

Much of our collection is shaped from clay, returning the element of earth to the most elemental of rooms. Ceramics are among the oldest materials humans have worked with: drawn from soil, strengthened by fire, enduring across millennia. The earliest known fragments of pottery, dating back nearly 20,000 years, were discovered in Xianrendong Cave in China, making this land the cradle of the craft.

Today, covellite continues this lineage by working with skilled craftsmen and women in China, where the art of clay has been refined and celebrated for millennia. Archaeologists still unearth ancient shards long after entire civilisations have faded, because clay remembers. Sculpted by hand, it carries both the intimacy of touch and the permanence of stone. In future journals, we look forward to journeying to China itself,  to sit with its craftsmen and women, to hear their stories, and to share the living legacy of this ancient art.

Winter has been a season of pause, of refining, of quiet formation. In Victoria, the land wears winter like a painting stripped back to its lines, bare bones of trees, their branches etched like charcoal against a pale sky. The ground is dewy, and the air is cool, carrying the scent of damp earth. Along the coastline, Port Phillip Bay mirrors the grey skies in watercolour hues, the distant mountain ranges softening on the horizon. On early morning drives, fog rests low across the fields until the first golden sunlight lifts it, releasing colour back into the sleepy farmland. There is beauty in this sparseness, a reminder that rest belongs to every cycle, and that renewal begins in silence, deep beneath the surface.

Now, as winter loosens its hold, spring arrives almost imperceptibly at first, and then suddenly, all at once. Light lingers longer on the horizon, the air carrying a softness absent only weeks ago. Today, on the very last day of winter, Victoria’s tree-lined streets are already in full bloom, a canopy of colour signalling that change has begun. Golden wattle bursts against grey skies, blossom drifts across footpaths, and the landscape hums with quiet anticipation. Spring is the delicate moment of becoming, like the first wash of colour on a once-blank canvas, the season where nature gently starts to paint its masterpiece.

And so too with covellite. From the stillness of winter, we prepare to emerge. From earth, water, fire, and air, our debut collection has taken form. We call it Dreamy Vesuvius, born of the elements, designed for the most elemental of rooms, the bathroom.

This summer, we will open the doors to our first preview and preorder prelaunch season. Our subscribers will be the first invited to step inside, to hold in their hands what has until now lived only in shaping and refining in silence.

The ancients saw the elements as the origins of life. Wright saw them as the future of design. For covellite, they are both beginning and promise. As winter yields to spring, and spring opens to summer, so too do we begin.

Join the shift this summer with covellite, sustainable design, elevated spaces, a gentler footprint.