About

Blanket Fort is a design studio and occasional shop in Beverly Shores, Indiana — nestled within the Indiana Dunes National Park, an hour southeast of Chicago. Founder Matthew Buccilla works with individuals, families, businesses, realtors, architects, and designers to source the right furniture, art, and objects and then make spaces feel genuinely lived-in and true. Beyond the design practice, the studio opens its doors for browsing and shopping the first and third weekends of every month to peruse an ever-changing mix of antiques, home goods, and found pieces.

Here's a little more about how it came to be.

The Origin Story

It started with a flashlight, a bedsheet, and a copy of Stuart Little.

Matthew was maybe seven years old — building forts in his bed past bedtime, under dining room tables, between backyard trees, out of cardboard boxes dragged in from the garage or cushions dragged off the couch. At some point the forts became furniture rearrangements. The furniture rearrangements became a career. First, helping run his family's special events destination. Then leading global showroom experiences for Herman Miller — the legendary American furniture and design company — before founding Cowboys and Astronauts, an independent lifestyle shop that became one of Chicago's most beloved. And now this.

But the through line has always been the same: some spaces feel right and some don't — and the ones that feel right make the people in them feel something.

Why Blanket Fort?

A blanket fort is the first space most of us ever designed even though we'd never call it that. No budget, no blueprint, but special as all get out — made with instinct and whatever was nearby. Then we grew up, and that instinct got buried under paint swatches and Pinterest boards and the vague but ever-present anxiety that we're doing it wrong.

The name is a reminder that the instinct is still there. It just needs a little company, a little imagination, and the right stuff to work with.

What Actually Happens Here?

People ask: is it a shop? A design firm? A gallery?

Honestly, a little of all three — and also none of them exactly. The studio is an active, working practice. Matthew works with clients to source art, antiques, furniture, and both functional and curious objects — and then helps figure out how they all come together in a space. Just the kind of thoughtful sourcing, arranging, and editing that makes a room stop feeling decorated and start feeling lived-in.

Along the way, Matthew collects — pieces that strike the right chord, that feel too good to pass up, that deserve a real home beyond his own shelves. The studio opens the first and third weekends of every month so you can come see what's landed. You just might also discover the world's smallest National Parks souvenir shop inside! Appointments available anytime for the more personal work.

The Place

Beverly Shores is a small, quietly remarkable town tucked between the National Park and Lake Michigan. The Indiana Dunes are one of the country's most biologically diverse landscapes — rolling sand dunes, ancient oak savanna, great marshes, migratory birds by the thousands — and almost nobody outside the region knows it.

Matthew didn't end up here by accident. He wanted his next chapter rooted in nature, somewhere the natural world wasn't backdrop — it was the point. The studio sits right in the heart of that, and the location shapes everything about how Blanket Fort works.

If you've never been to the Dunes or haven't been recently — come. And stop by when you do.

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Let's Work Together

If your space doesn't suit you or bring you some joy, that's a solvable problem.

Whether it's sourcing one transformative piece, styling a whole room, staging a property for sale, or partnering on a commercial space — it starts the same way every time: a simple conversation about what you want the space to feel like.

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