Path of Every Day

Hello March! When did you get here? I know February is a short month, but this one seemed to go by exceptionally fast.

We started February off with a trip up north to San Francisco for Design San Francisco, a three day event for design professionals at the San Francisco Design Center. Design San Francisco, which everyone calls, “Market,” is something that David and I try to attend every year because so many of our clients are located in San Francisco and it is always a good chance to see everyone (not to mention a great excuse to sneak off to the City by the Bay for a few days). This year was especially exciting because it is the first year that we’ve had showroom representation in SF! We are officially installed at HEWN which is located on the fourth floor of the Design Galleria and it is one of the prettiest showrooms I have ever seen (and I’m not just saying that because they feature some of our pieces… it is seriously a knockout).

Seriously… how pretty is this showroom?

Several months ago, David and I were asked by the good people at HEWN (they are the BEST) if we could do a little talk. David said yes… I freaked out… the usual. Only kidding – I would never freak out (ha!). Seriously though, we both thought that it would be fun putting together a little presentation and decided that our theme should be on customization. We have set through countless power point presentations at design events and decided that we wanted to do something different. We wanted people to be able to not only see, but also feel how a piece of furniture can be completely transformed by making a few simple customizations (actually, I’ve been informed by my woodworkers, upholsterers and finishers that none of these customizations were, in any way, simple, but they are all totally doable… I’ve yet to dream up something that my team can’t do… and trust me, I’ve tried).

We chose one of our dining chairs and then the design team brain stormed all of the different incarnations that the chair could take on. Really, the sky is the limit when it comes to ways in which you can customize a dining chair, but we decided that we should limit ourselves to four or five. We chose our Emerson dining chair because they have two of the standard version in the showroom already so it would be easy to demonstrate our starting point. After much debate we chose to do one in teak for outdoor use, one carved out of solid walnut, one that had leather wrapped legs and a slip cover (so it was really like two chairs in one), and one that is as eco-friendly as possible (FSC certified wood, green-guard certified fabric, no VOC finishes, latex and organic cotton fill, etc).

Here are some of our reimagined Emerson dining chairs along with our Noosa Teak Lounge.

A couple of weeks before our trip, the program for the event arrived and actually seeing the schedule with our presentation description in print made everything feel exceedingly real, extremely fast. We were actually doing this! We were also surprised to see that our presentation was going to be a luncheon (we assumed that we’d be at the end of the day when most people have gotten tired and gone home). Still, because we are pretty unknown (like really, really unknown), I figured that (maybe) about ten people would show up, if we were lucky.

The program cover and a shot of our event description

The day of our talk finally arrived (and our dining chairs all made it in one piece!). David doesn’t get nervous and I pretend not to get nervous, usually with mixed results. This time, I felt good; maybe a little too good. The feeling lasted until about twenty minutes before we were set to talk when I had a mini-freak out. They were expecting a full house (way more than ten I had envisioned) and even people who hadn’t RSVP’d started showing up. I could feel that an anxiety attack was imminent. Thankfully I had both my friend Heather in Minnesota and Michelle back at the office talking me off of my ledge via text messaging (seriously what did people do before smart phones?). Crisis averted! The talk ended up going very well. David was a star (as always). We presented our pieces and then did a little question and answer session before everyone was whisked off to a champagne luncheon.

Don’t be fooled by the smile. You can’t tell but there is a mini freak-out going on here… I think the champagne helped.

That night we were invited to the California Home + Design awards gala and we had the best time (as you can see in our photo booth picture). The rest of our trip was spent enjoying other talks at the HEWN showroom and meet-ups with friends and colleagues in the design world. Then, to cap off our trip we got to attend the Grand Opening for HEWN which was THE EVENT of Market. Despite my crowd aversion (and it was quite a crowd, let me tell you) I had the best time (thanks, in part to fabulous champagne, tiny milkshakes and delicious caramel bees… but mostly thanks to such gracious hosts).

The Hewn group at the California Home+Design awards (I know I’m biased, but I think we had the best group there).

Our parting gift from HEWN, Caramel Bees from John and Kira’s. They are a new favorite and I can’t rave enough about them.

These are some of the best candies ever! Seriously.