Brazil’s Tania Bulhões Brings Her Namesake Luxury Brand to the U.S.

With its Brazilian artistic flair and appetite for international growth, luxury tableware and fragrance brand Tania Bulhões has entered the U.S. with a compact and chic showroom in Manhattan’s A+D building.

The 1,700-square-foot space, on the ninth floor of 150 East 58th Street, serves a dual purpose: It’s for both retail buyers and the general public to shop. Meticulously displayed on large white onyx tables and stainless steel gold-painted cabinetry are Tania Bulhões’ tabletop, glassware, decorative pieces and home scents, including the more expensive Limoges porcelain collections from France as well as seasonal porcelain collections produced by manufacturers around the world.

The 36-year-old brand is based in São Paolo, where it has a flagship situated in a 23,000-square-foot French-inspired maison with tablescapes, sensorial spaces, art, an homage to Limoges porcelain, and a company-owned restaurant serving Brazilian-French fusion cuisine.

From 2021 to 2023, the luxury brand raised 100 million Brazilian dollars (about $16 million U.S.) through private equity, opened 30 Tania Bulhões stores bringing the total to 40, all in Brazil, and acquired Royal Limoges, the oldest porcelain factory still in operation in Limoges, France. Those maneuvers set the stage for advancing into New York with the showroom, to build a U.S. wholesale business. In the U.S., the brand is currently only sold online and at Scully & Scully on Park Avenue.

“With this showroom, we’re just starting to internationalize the brand. This is our first location outside Brazil,” Virgilio Castro Cunha, chief executive officer and the son of Tania Bulhões, said during an interview at the new space, which opened Dec. 13. “We feel the brand is already very well established in Brazil with a very big client base there. I’m confident to say we are one of the few luxury brands that has come out of Brazil over the past few years.

“We’re probably going to have to develop products specifically with the U.S. market in mind,” Castro Cunha added. “For example, in Brazil and Europe, no one uses mugs. We don’t have any mugs in our portfolio. We probably will develop coffee mugs. In Brazil, we sell a lot of espresso cups, much more than tea cups. And here, I’m expecting it to be the opposite, but let’s see how it goes. We’re here to learn, and to hear from our clients.”

Castro Cunha said the agenda also calls for launching personal fragrances in addition to the home scents already offered, and opening a U.S. store. “A store on Madison Avenue would make a lot of sense, hopefully next year or so,” he said.

Anticipating greater demand for his products, Castro Cunha said his company is “in the process of building our first factory in Brazil, located in Uberaba, a small city where Tania was born and raised. The complex should be finished by the end of next year or early 2026. It will have its own china factory, along with home scents and personal fragrances manufacturing. The complex will also have an area dedicated to art and a beautiful café. Think of it like the Lindt Museum in Switzerland, but for porcelain in Brazil.”

Tania Bulhões founded her namesake brand in 1989 in Uberaba selling everything from plates to paintings, and opened her first store in São Paulo in 1991. The business is family-owned. Bulhões, the majority owner, serves as creative director and is an artist working closely with the product development team. Her drawings are the sources for the paintings on the products. She also approves the campaigns and imagery of the brand. Before launching her brand she had a little school in her home town where she taught porcelain and ceramics painting.

Typically, the handpainting on pieces in the collections is inspired by birds, plants and trees native to where Bulhões grew up. In addition, “There is a lot of Picasso and Klimt influence,” Castro Cunha said. “Picasso did a lot of work on ceramics. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but he was the first that brought faces to plates.” The family likes to say their products “bring a modern expression and timeless elegance to the dinner table.”

Tania Bulhões produces 11 collections at the Royal Limoges factory, which prior to the acquisition the Bulhões family worked with for 25 years. “We’re very active in terms of launching new collections,” Castro Cunha said. “We do, on average, eight collections a year for porcelain. All the Limoges collections are permanent collections. Even if we don’t have them immediately available you can order them. We want you to be able to replace a plate that you broke, and always have that kind of access. We are doing a very extensive job of cataloging all the original designs [created] over 230 years. We’re going to do interpretations of those designs, because we don’t have the original design, but we have beautiful drawings.”

There are 11 Royal Limoges collections available in the showroom, including “Portrait,” personally designed by Bulhões and handpainted by artisans in Limoges, and “Casa das Orquídeas Rouge de Fer” depicting rich red orchids from Bulhões’ childhood surroundings, also handpainted in Limoges.

Besides what’s produced in Limoges, the brand utilizes factories around the world. These collections tend to be more informal, more playful, and less expensive. “In total, we have over 3,000 items in tabletop and decorative categories,” Castro Cunha said.

Among the home scents, there’s the bestselling “Chá Blanco” which Castro Cunha described as “very fresh, very clean” and the second-bestselling Floresta, a musky, woody scent. The scents are created in partnership with renowned perfumers in Grasse, France.

In the world of tabletop and decorative design, “We have a take on this space that I think is very fresh compared to what more traditional brands do, and how they present the products,” Castro Cunha said. “We see ourselves more as a fashion lifestyle brand in terms of the amount of collections that we put out, and our creative process. So there are a lot of similarities. It’s just a different vehicle.”