Here’s a quick peek at the new edition of holiday candles we do annually with Luminology. They were a hit a Sunday Best and we’ll have the remaining stock at the Portland Bazaar next weekend for sale. They make great gifts! Anything leftover from that event will come to an internet near you (ie our webshop) for purchase, just in time for the holiday season.

I’m working on a full recap of the show as a first-time exhibitor, but until that’s finished I wanted to share our booth (sadly, I only brought my iPhone, so for better photos of the booth please check out Nole’s great recap of the show).

I laid everything out in illustrator to scale as I was planning (highly recommended for first-timers and those that can’t possible do a mock-up in person) to make install a quick and easy process (in all, it took about 9 hours from start to finish with two people). Our booth was 60 square feet. Click to enlarge:

First we painted the hardwalls a dark blue black (Behr’s ‘Sled‘ in a matte finish) for a dramatic contrast with the porcelain, and added our logo in a pearl white vinyl. Yes, we were conveniently (and often, irritatingly) located adjacent to the women’s restroom.

The shelves were custom-made for us. The brackets are wide strips of bent steel with a square end cap to hold the wood in place, the wood is simple planks of fir that fit snugly into the top of the bracket, held in place by gravity (so no screws to damage the surface, plus it breaks down compactly for shipping). The stools are from overstock.com and surprisingly great for the price.

To suspend our hanging pieces we chose 1/2″  black plumbing pipe in two depths. It keeps with the industrial aesthetic of the booth, is inexpensive, and breaks down flat with a simple twist. We bought some basic s-hooks from Ikea used to hang pots and pans to attach all the pieces. For writing orders we purchased a white lacquer tripod table from West Elm to echo the white of the vinyl in the foreground. Plus, it ships flat-packed, which was crucial for shipping freight cross-country.

At this point, we were mostly just unwrapping, styling, pricing and positioning lights for maximum effect. We had several metal risers also custom made for us to add variety to the shelving display. The test tubes mounted on the wall also ended up with sunflowers I purchased from the Union Square market.

We brought along the chevron pixel storage basket from our SS 2011 textile line for hiding our extra marketing materials. We also suspended our string lights along the top of the booth (one of the more challenging aspects to plan with the booth sight-unseen), and made glaze color tiles out of our facet drawer pull shapes, which were the surprise hit of the show.

Here’s the final booth during the show with the lovely Elspeth holding down the fort. We had a video about our process made prior to attending that played on a loop on my ipad throughout.

More soon…

I plowed through the new issue of Dwell, per usual. I swear this month was especially good, but that may be my affinity for Japanese design talking. There’s a great article on Japanese joinery techniques, an interview with the proprietors of one of my favorite online shops I’ve come across called Mjolk, and some beautiful homes. None of which can compete with the tranquility and beauty of the Wabi house, in southern California. Here’s a video of the home by Dwell:

My working life to date has always focused on the visual (except the right of passage that is working as a Barista) but my actual resume is a bit schizophrenic as far as the expression of that visual interest. I managed a fine art gallery, a clothing designer’s flagship retail store,  and worked as a graphic designer, all in the span of about 6 years. At the time it felt like I couldn’t decide who or what to be, but looking back now, I’ve come to realize just how damn valuable that exploration was.  It has obvious small business benefits, allowing me to wear many different hats at Pigeon Toe, which saves money while also giving me more complete creative control over the company as a whole.

Anyway, this is all to say that I now fully embrace the interdisciplinary self and have also realized just how interconnected + overlapping the creative process is, regardless of medium or subject. I suppose fashion has more of a relationship to what I do now than most, given the 3D and functional nature of that kind of work, and my background working amongst the most lovely items of clothing probably lends a second level of appreciation to this. So when I can across this video of Chie Mihara discussing how she designs her gorgeous shoes, it struck a cord with me. It was lovely to see how low-tech and organic the beginning stages of her work is – and she began much like me in fine art before realizing her place was a bit more commercial. Plus you know me, can’t resist a process video. Just wait till you see ours, it should be done in about a week (!!).

If you want to know a secret, I was a hard-core 2D artist in college and practially failed the foundation 3D design course. I couldn’t be bothered. Sorry David, for being such a little shit. It’s amazing, the things we think we know at 20. Cringe.

Thanks to the ladies at Lille for posting this video. Lucky ducks, meeting her.