Our Quilt Rugs take direct inspiration from the patchwork quilt making process. Blocks of braided wool lines are ordered but not exacting as we try to evoke the looser style of scrap quilts which allow irregular shapes to make up the whole. During their conception, we looked at everything from Alabama's Gee's Bend to the work of Oregon artist Shiela Laufer.

Maybe it’s the start of the new decade or just twelve years of unbroken practice leading us in this direction, but our vision for Grain as we enter 2020 is one of complete and total optimism. We started this business with the personal goal of working creatively in partnership along with the deeper intention of social and environmental responsibility.

Originally launched in 2013, our Utility Card is a word search puzzle that includes over 100 salutations. It is our attempt at a minimalist greeting card - the last one you'll ever need.

If you are already overwhelmed by the holiday season, take a chance and opt-out with us. You may miss a few deals, but you might just save yourself.

We are celebrating this long weekend with a house full of friends and an attempt to reflect on gratitude in between the busyness.

Ok, listen up friends: We've made a small run of our popular Totem Candles in the original beeswax formula just for the holiday season. This limited edition batch was cut on our lathe here in our Bainbridge Island studio from the highest quality Oregon beeswax. They smell amazing, naturally!

We've always taken the less is more approach to design and this extends to our own home as well. As we start to prepare for the holiday season, we find it is easy to get distracted and lose sight of the simple pleasure of time spent at the table with friends and family.

Several years ago, we began a conversation with a family-owned mill in New England making traditional braided rugs. This historic fabrication technique was made popular by early American colonists as it could be executed by hand without a loom using textile scraps.

About six years ago, James cut the first candle that would eventually become our Totem Candle series on a lathe in our garage shop. The original prototypes received nice feedback at a local pop-up, so we decided to produce a small batch run for our friends and family. The wax cut like butter on the lathe and quickly became the favorite job to do in the shop.

We've been thinking a lot about time and place this summer. Back in 2007, when we decided to return home after nearly ten years on the East Coast, we were nostalgic for the Northwest but didn't really know if we could build a design business here.

We live in awe of the natural world. Summer in the Northwest is the time when we feel this most. The day extends into the night and the draw to be outdoors pulls us like no other season.

One of the rewards of running a small design business for over a decade is seeing where our work ends up - how people live with and care for the products we've made.

Above and below are images of our new collection made in conversation with artist Shiela Laufer in response to Pas de Deux, a duet between art and design, at Colony as part of NYCxDESIGN.

This month marks our tenth year in business and we celebrated with our first solo show, Doing and Being: Ten Years of Creative Collaboration at Grain. The show welcomed visitors into the understated Grain aesthetic with select works from our current collection as well as a few pieces made specifically to shape the Colony space.

Our new Walling Rug made its debut in the Balance / Unblanced show at Colony last week. Colony is a community of independent furniture, lighting, textile and objects designers coming together on a New York City stage to celebrate American design with an international audience.

Our 2017/18 collection of furniture and lighting was inspired by a recent residency experience in Northeastern Oregon — think alpine mountains meet prairie. We were so energized by this new, but also familiar landscape. We endeavored to capture some of the quiet drama of that wilderness in our new work.

We made the list! We have so much respect for the editors at Sight Unseen and for all of the designers that have made The American Design Hot-List this year and since its start in 2013.

What an honor to be an American artist and entrepreneur in the strange and wonderful time that we live

Last month we had the incredible experience of traveling to Joseph, Oregon to attend an artist residency at The Jennings Hotel. We hiked through mountains, along rivers, and through prairies and later used the inspiration from our outings on a series of watercolors

To anyone feeling powerless, marginalized, scared, or angry today, our friends at Sight Unseen have created a fundraiser to benefit some organizations doing important work to protect groups and issues in need of the most support after this election: Planned Parenthood, Everytown for Gun Safety, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Human Rights Campaign, EarthJustice, and the National Immigration Law Center

We're thrilled to finally share these new photos of our recent collection shot by our friend Charlie Schuck in his new Seattle studio. The collection includes our Drift table and lighting series made in collaboration with local glass artist John Hogan.

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Areaware, the Brooklyn-based producer of everyday objects, who will be producing our Totem Candles from here on out.