How It All Began

Christa SanFilippo, Andrew Helms and Antonio Gentile are the owners and creators of Solid Objects, a local Austin, Texas business that specializes in handmade concrete planters. These three have been friends for over 7 years. 

Image of the three owners Antonio, Christa and Drew posing for a photo at a market

 
Solid Objects was born out of quarantine boredom. The stir craziness of 2020 got the best of these three and they were looking for a new hobby to provide a creative outlet. The ultimate goal was to start a small candle business, but instead of using glass jars they wanted a more sustainable and reusable vessel. After experimenting in the kitchen with waxes and fragrances, they decided to pivot to creating concrete vessels to hold their candles. As the group started experimenting further with concrete and color pigment they decided to ditch the wax and wicks and focus solely on mastering the creation of concrete vessels. 

 

"The positive response from customers and friends made them realize their products were completely unique from your typical planter..."

 

As they started to experiment more and more, they gathered quite the collection of good and ‘not so good’ vessels. They needed to just get rid of them, because they were taking up a lot of space, so they decided to post about them on Facebook Marketplace and do a mini pop-up shop in front of their home garage. The response was overwhelming and the three received encouraging feedback. 

 
This fun Covid hobby quickly turned into a business, and it all started from selling them in their driveways. The positive response from customers and friends made them realize their products were completely unique from your typical planter and provided motivation to continue to create one-of-a-kind designs. In January of 2021 they officially launched Solid Objects, LLC.