Our sources

It has been an oddly warm winter this year- I think we have all noticed it.  Things feel pretty topsy-turvy in so many ways right now, big changes, curious shifts globally and ecologically and socially.  But we keep doing what we do, and what we love, and finding beautiful new things and appreciating the fine craftspeople and craft-work we are lucky enough to be surrounded by.

We are setting up for NY Now this weekend, getting ourselves ready for our big wholesale trade show.  The show is massive, with every imaginable design and medium on display in the midst of the Jacob Javits convention center, in the midst of New York.  I feel like a very small fish in a big, big pond, especially after the sleepiness of our mountains.  And I also feel more quietly connected to the sources of our products- everyone is looking for a hustle, for the name and the buzz and the catchword to sell their widget, but that hustle is just window dressing, catchwords to dress up whatever they are trying to sell.

The fact is, there are real people with old skills behind the finest things, whether they come from the Appalachian mountains or the Moroccan desert.  I think the integrity of a product is the heart of it.  Made by actual skilled hands.  We are all looking for that connection, as things change and untether- not a thing made to LOOK like a thing, but actual things, fashioned by hand, using skills pulled from deep knowledge, limited in their production to what is possible to make, not what is demanded to be made; and made to suit a functional need, not a whim.

We all find arrowheads on our mountains- there are tons of them.  Things, made from deep knowledge, used for their purpose, time spent to fashion them.  I am sure Manhattan has buried tons of them beneath mountains of concrete and steel.