A couple weeks ago we spent a few days with our friend and photographer,
Ben Blood, shooting our home and studio here on Bainbridge Island.
Above and below is a tiny sneak peek. Many more to share soon!
For those of you following our wildlife adventures on Instagram, we have an update for you on the raccoon cubs nesting in our willow tree. James found the first one (see below) when she fell from her nest. Her brother (seen above with his sister) was a surprise addition James found when putting the first cub back.
At any rate, they are growing well, and have been spending more time peaking out and panting in all this hot weather. Follow along on Instagram for more.
Oh, and we are accepting ideas for names!
A few days ago our friends at Geremia Design shared photos from their recently completed design for the Lumosity HQ in downtown San Francisco. According to Geremia Design, their inspiration was "drawn from the architectural history of the space and Lumosity's mission of supporting brain health."
We were thrilled to have our Strung Chandelier for Standard Socket selected for the library. Among the other amazing lighting specified was work by Ladies & Gentlemen Studio, Apparatus Studio, and The Future Perfect. See the full project on the Geremia Design site here. Photography thanks to Matthew Millman.
Our collaborative design work in Guatemala continues with five new textile designs - all handwoven from Guatemalan cotton. The collection's muted colors are achieved through a natural dye process using leaves, flowers, seeds, barks, and roots of indigenous plants from the Guatemalan Highlands. Double sided and filled with the highest quality America made feather and down inserts, all our pillows are available in two sizes and support sustainable income opportunities for Guatemalan women artisans. Visit the shop to learn more!
Our new Circlet lighting collection, which includes pendants, sconces, and a chandelier, paris minimal solid wood canopies with hand blown glass diffusors. Efficient LED lighting components are neatly hidden in each canopy allowing the diffusors to illuminate without a visible bulb. Making the series all about glass allowed us to work with Northwest glass artist, John Hogan, to come up with a collection of diffusors that explore glass blowing and finishing techniques such as cold-cutting and sandblasting. As each reflector is hand blown and finished, each fixture is one of a kind. Shop the whole collection here!
Taking inspiration from hand carved African stools, our Dish table collection expanded this spring with our new Dish Desk. Built in the Pacific Northwest from FSC certified solid American ash, the desk is available in a clear oil or black stain finish and can be special ordered in custom sizes. Designed to be used a desk, conference, or dining table. Above and below are new photos from Charlie Schuck of the whole collection. Visit the shop to learn more!
Summer has officially begun here on Bainbridge! We are excited to welcome the season with two new interns: Rosrena Wong (above) and Katherine Zhang (below). Both hail from Vancouver B.C. and are students at the Rhode Island School of Design. To learn more about this Canadian duo, below is a Q & A that they put together this morning.
For those who couldn't make the International Contemporary Furniture Fair a couple weeks ago, we are taking the next month to focus week by week on each new design series that we launched. First off is our Grail terracotta collection, which started out with our popular cassoulet, and has now expanded to include five new vessels. The stamped icons come from contemporary culture, but take their cue from ancient hieroglyphs. Each piece is hand thrown on Bainbridge Island, WA. Shop the whole collection here.
While we were in New York last week, our Dish Side Table spent the week in Paris as part of the 5th edition of American Design in Paris organized by Jacques Barret of Triode.
Held at the Mona Bismark American Center for Art & Culture May 19th - 25th, the show included work from other independent designers such as our friends from Ladies & Gentlemen Studio, Iacoli & McAllister, and Fort Standard as well as established American brands such as Roll & Hill, Knoll, and Bernhardt. There was even a chair in the mix designed by Pharrell Williams!
Huge thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair last week in New York. We are happy to report that we survived our fourth year! The best part of the week has always been getting to catch up with friends and clients that we may only see a few times a year. It feels like a big reunion. We are so grateful to be a part of this amazing American design community.
Above and below are a few photos from the booth for those who couldn't make it. We were in the same spot, but the feel was quite different from 2013 and 2012. New pieces on display included: Our Circlet Chandelier, Circlet Single Sconce, Circlet Triple Sconce, Circlet Battuto Pendant, and Circlet Dish Pendant all made using UL Certified LED components. Also on display was our new Dish Desk and our made-on-Bainbridge Island Grail Pots and Grail Dishes. We also were excited to show off our Panajachel Pillow, Tikal Pillow, Comalapa Pillow Blue, Atitlan Pillow, and Huehuetenango Pillow which are handwoven by expert artisans in Guatemala using only naturally dyed cotton.
The handwoven wool rugs and steam bent chair seen hiding in the background are so new that they aren't even up on our site yet. More on those soon!
It's that time of year again!
We have a ton of new work launching at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Booth 850, May 17 - 20, 2014 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
As part of NYCxDESIGN, new colors of Grain’s lighting for Standard Socket will be presented at WantedDesign May 16 - 19. We will also be showing a mirror, recently licensed by Fab’s private label, at Happy Modern in the Fab New York Showroom, at 151 Wooster Street in SoHo, May 15 - 20.
See you in New York!
Our custom weavings for Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co. are now available as throw pillows in their flagship stores in Portland and New York as well as online here, here, here, and here. We were so happy to be asked to collaborate with this great company hope for more excuses to work together in the future!
If you are in Seattle Thursday, come see a sneak peek of new work from Seattle designers 16th Workshop, Chadhaus, Fruitsuper Design, Graypants, Ladies & Gentlemen Studio, Piano Nobile, Professional Associates, Seattle Design Bureau, Standard Socket, Urbancase, and Grain.
We'll be showing a one or two of the new items that we are taking to New York for ICFF in a couple weeks. Here is a link to to the Facebook invite for more info. Big thanks to Sallyann Corn of Fruitsuper Design for organizing and Greypants for hosting!
With only four weeks until our big launch at ICFF, we are officially working overtime around here. Above and below are a few photos from this afternoon in our Bainbridge Island studio and garden.
We're excited to be participating in the 5th edition of American Design in Paris organized by Jacques Barret of the Left Bank gallery Triode. This year's show, held at the Mona Bismark American Center for Art & Culture May 19th - 25th, will highlight work from independent designers such as Grain, Bec Brittain, Fort Standard, and Chen Chen & Kai Williams as well as more established American brands such as Roll & Hill, Bernhardt, and Emeco.
We'll be showing our Dish Side Table (pictured below) and promise to post photos from the exhibition once we have some to share.
We have Italy on the brain this week as we watch our feeds flood with images from Milan Design Week. We wish we were there, instead of rushing around getting the final details for our ICFF launch organized. That said, we did have the great fortune of spending a couple weeks on the Amalfi Coast last summer. Above and below is a little eye candy from that trip. Viva L'Italia!
Now that Seattle week on Sight Unseen is officially over, we thought we'd share a few of our outtakes. Above and below are shots from around the home and studio. See the official shots and article here.
A few photos from our last weekend getaway to Cape Kiwanda on the Oregon coast. Northwest rugged coastal at it's best. We still have sand in our shoes.
Huge thanks to Jill Singer and Monica Khemsurov for featuring our work, home, and inspirations in Up And Coming on Sight Unseen as part of Seattle week! We were especially thrilled to see so many of our friends and family mentioned. Reading it back reminded us how lucky we are to have such talented and inspiring people in our lives. Read the full story here.
This just in: A proposal from Grain was selected by Shunpike and the Storefronts program as one of seventeen new projects to take over a Seattle storefront sometime in the next 18 months.
Our creative enterprise proposal, called Grain Open Studio, will be a studio and gallery of our work in collaboration with selected Pacific Northwest artists and designers demonstrating social and environmental responsibility in design.
The location of the actual storefront and dates of the project are still to be determined. We'll let you know as soon as we know more!
Image above is from the 2013 Storefronts project Somewhere Out There by Ryan Everson at the former Publix Hotel on 5th Avenue South in Seattle.
Big news: Sight Unseen, has declared Seattle the American design city to watch. Editor Jill Singer writes:
"Seattle is proof positive that these days you need only to find two or three talents in a local scene (that’s Iacoli & McAllister, Ladies & Gentlemen, and Grain, leading the way) before scratching the surface will lead you, Tumblr-style, to a whole community of creators who no longer feel the need to live in a major city in order to express themselves."
To celebrate their finds, Sight Unseen will be featuring a week and a half of artists, designers, and photographers working here in Seattle. We couldn't be more proud to be included in this roundup (Grain's post will be Thursday) with Jill Wenger of Totokaelo, Iacoli & McAllister, Amanda Ringstad, Charlie Schuck, Nicholas Nyland, Ladies & Gentlemen Studio, Ashley Helvey, and more!
Photo from our very own Washington State Ferries by Michael A. Muller.
Here is a sneak peak of the new table that we are working on for ICFF. It is a continuation of our Dish table series, and as such, is made from solid ash using a CNC router. Above and below are a few shots that James took from the cutting last week. Much more on this soon!
Spring officially started today. Unfortunately, we will not be taking a break as we are on the final stretch of our ICFF preparations. We have a couple surf weekends planned between now and New York, but otherwise you will find us here in the studio.
In honor of the imaginary spring break that we would like to be taking this week, above and below is Lille Danser. Lille Danser is a 50 foot sailboat docked in Eagle Harbor here on Bainbridge Island that we recently found on Airbnb. Next time we have a few days break (and good weather) we might just have to splurge!
If you couldn't make Future This Now in Seattle this past weekend, above and below is a small peak. Organized by Charlie Schuck and Jessica Carter of Love City Love, Future This Now was a jewel box of Northwest talent that we were so proud to be a part of!
As we get ready to launch some exciting new things at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York this May, it is also time to make some room in the studio with a site wide sale. Use the discount code SPRING for 20% off anything and everything in our shop. Sale is good until March 31, but stock is limited, so get your orders in now!
Thanks to a little Sunset magazine mention, our Totem Candles have been in high demand this month. Above and below are a few images from our last production run. Each candle is turned on the lathe here in our Bainbridge Island shop. The beeswax comes from a 29-year-old family owned and operated company in Oregon so we are happy to say that this is a truly "made in the Northwest" product. We are enjoying the smell of honey that fills our home and studio right now!
If you are in Seattle this weekend and looking for something great to check out, our friend Charlie Schuck has put together an amazing roster of Northwest talent for Future This Now at Love City Love. Below is a list of the line-up. The champagne opening is Friday March 15th, 8:00 pm - 11:30 pm. Come celebrate the future!
We had the most amazing day in the hot shop with John Hogan and Lydia Boss yesterday. After years of talking about working with glass locally (the Northwest is know for its strong glass community), we ended the day feeling very lucky have the jobs we do and to be able to collaborate with such talent.
Above and below are a few pics from the day. For more on what we are working on, you'll have to wait until our May launch at ICFF in New York. It's coming up quick!
It definitely feels like the beginning of spring on the island today. The quiet post-holiday period has ended here at Grain and we are ramping up each week with final details for the textiles, ceramics, lighting, and furniture that we will be launching in May at ICFF. Above and below is a sneak peak into our in-process studio world.
