Marin County, California
Ashmere works quietly behind the household. We take on the arrangements that fill a family’s week: the table and the room, the introduction, the seats, each house made ready, and the staff who move between them. We work in Marin County and across the Bay Area, and nowhere else.
Most of what we do falls into five kinds of request. Each is taken from the first call to the final detail, and reported back to the person who asked.
Tables, rooms, and travel, including the places that do not list availability.
Some tables are never released to the public, and some rooms are offered only to people who know to ask. We know who to ask. We hold the booking, tell the restaurant or hotel what it should know before anyone arrives, and change the plan as often as the evening does. When the family travels, the arrangements begin here.
Introductions, memberships, and the rooms and calendars that stay off public channels.
Much of the Bay Area’s private life is arranged by introduction. We make those introductions on the household’s behalf: to a club or a private dining room, to a dealer who shows a piece before it is offered, to the evenings that never appear on a public calendar. We do it carefully, and we never spend a relationship lightly. What is arranged privately stays that way.
Seats, openings, benefits, and the change of plan at five o’clock.
The opening night, the first evening of a gallery show, the benefit table, the recital that sold out in an hour. We secure the seats, keep the season in view so that nothing arrives as a surprise, and take the late change in stride: two more seats, a different night, a car waiting after the curtain.
Kitchens, wardrobes, linens, and arrivals, house by house.
Every residence has its standing orders: the coffee in the pantry, the flowers in the hall, the wine for the weekend, the wardrobe sent ahead for the season. We keep a house book for each home and work to it, so that the family arrives to a house that is ready, and the staff hear of the arrival in good time. No one should have to ask twice.
Schedules, coverage, and handoffs, held by someone who knows the whole picture.
With more than one home, the hard part is rarely a single task. It is the handoff: who opens the house on the coast, who covers the weekend in the city, who knows the guests arrive on Thursday. We keep the schedule across every residence, arrange coverage when someone is away, and make sure each house knows what the others know. The house manager stays in charge. We keep the picture whole.
We work through the people a family already trusts, and never around them.
Ashmere is usually engaged by the family office and works day to day with the people who run the homes. Here is what that means for each of them.
Time returned, fewer fires, and one inbox.
Your office carries a great deal for the family, and little of it should be dinner reservations, opera seats, or whether the coast house has been opened for the weekend. Ashmere takes those threads off your desk and gives you one place to send them: one inbox in place of a dozen vendors, one standing arrangement in place of a dozen favors. Fewer fires reach you, and the time goes back to the work only your office can do.
More reach, never a replacement.
You are the person the family trusts, and that does not change. We work for you and alongside you. We take the overflow, the calls that run long, the reservation that needs chasing at ten at night, so that you can stay with what matters in the house. We report to you, never around you, and when the weekend goes well, it went well on your watch.
There are three tiers. Each brings the desk closer to the household, answers sooner, and reaches further. None of them is a lesser version of the work.
The whole of the desk, from the first request.
Founders is the full work of Ashmere: reservations, private access, tickets and cultural life, houses kept ready, and coordination between staff. A small, consistent team learns the household and keeps its house book. Requests are answered within the working day, and whatever has been arranged is looked after through the weekend.
Closer handling, quicker answers, and first call on what is scarce.
Principals builds on Founders with a named lead at the desk, who knows the household by name and by habit and is the person your staff speak to. Requests are answered within hours, evenings and weekends included. When something is scarce (a table, two seats, a room on a holiday weekend), it goes to Principals first. Each season opens with a planning conversation with the house manager, so the calendar is settled before it is urgent.
One person, every house, the same day.
Family begins where Principals leaves off. The household has a dedicated point person at Ashmere who knows every residence, every member of staff, and how the family likes things done, and who can be reached directly. Nearly anything within reason and reach is handled the same day. Your point person walks each house as the seasons change, joins the handoffs between properties when it helps, and holds the whole picture alongside your house manager.
Membership is by inquiry, and each tier is open to a limited number of households. Terms are discussed in conversation and never published. Write to us to begin.
Ashmere is based in Marin County and works across the Bay Area: Marin from Sausalito to Inverness, San Francisco, the Peninsula, the East Bay hills, and the valleys of Napa and Sonoma. We know the people who run the places here, and they know us. We do not work farther afield. Staying close is what lets us be there in person.
We do not name the households we serve, and we will not ask to name yours.
There is no client list on this page and no testimonials, and there never will be. What we learn in a house stays with the people who need it to do the work.
Write to us with a few lines about the household and what you have in mind. Every inquiry is read personally.
Not every request is accepted, and we would rather say so at the start.
Your inquiry has been sent. You will hear from us in confidence.
