Holly Hudson lives a glamorous and busy life. She surrounds herself with objects of art and design—and people—that she adores.

Holly Hudson lives a glamorous and busy life. She surrounds herself with objects of art and design—and people—that she adores.

The daughter of an Air Force pilot, moving every few years, brought Holly Hudson and her family to Cape Cod when her father retired. Her travels with her family gave her the gift of easily adapting to many different cultures, from the deep south of Mississippi to the hip culture of 1960s California. Her history of moving and assimilating into a variety of scenarios gifted her an invaluable set of talents; ones which taught her to adapt easily and assess her surroundings with an astute sense of understanding. All in all, her life experiences were an interesting theater in which to spend her formative years. As an adult, positions in the retail, design and architecture industries prepared her well for a position as vice president of design and construction for some of Boston’s most prominent, iconic, and beautiful hotels. It was a demanding and challenging position which led to extensive trips to Europe to work with world-class manufacturers of fabrics, custom carpets, and journeys to various quarries to select the marble used in many of the hotels’ renovations. In 2000, after 15 years she made the decision to leave the hotel industry to live in Italy. “I wanted to celebrate my fiftieth birthday there and I ended up staying,” she says. “It was the best gift I could have given myself and the most wonderful thing I ever did.”

When she returned...