Fornace Ottavia

The brief

Design a luxury e-commerce storefront with outstanding typography, responsive layout and working commerce logic.

The idea

Scarcity is usually a marketing trick. Here it is a physical fact: a kiln fires eight times a year and the shop is whatever survived. The interface counts down to the next firing, and each piece carries the number of the firing it came from.

Decisions

• Products hang at different sizes like objects on a wall, never as a uniform grid.
• Roman capitals in Marcellus echo inscription rather than fashion.
• A soft band of sunlight crosses the page as you scroll, so the site has the same light as its images.
• Every product note explains a making decision, so the copy sells craft without using the word.

How it came together

1. Wrote one lighting brief and reused it for every product, so seven separate images read as one series.
2. Built routing, filters, sort, quantity, gift wrap and a persistent bag without a framework.
3. Tested the flow with scripted clicks: add, wrap, total, reserve, filter.

How it works

A single HTML file with hash routing. Shipping rules, wrap pricing and the date of the next firing are computed. The bag persists in localStorage, and reserving clears it with a clear note that nothing was charged.