April 2012

Hurray! Loll, Outdoor Furniture for the Modern Lollygagger, has arrived at 75 Market Street - and it looks right at home alongside Furniturea's Rural Modern indoor furnishings!

As most Mainers know, there is an absolute dearth of options when it comes to outdoor furniture. There are high quality pieces, which are formal, traditional, and conventional... and there are less expensive, sometimes colorful, plastic pieces, which last a few seasons at best. Sturdy, attractive, contemporary products have simply been unavailable... until now.

Loll - recycled, outdoor, made-in-Minnesota, furniture - is exactly what Maine's been lacking. And it's especially fitting for Loll to assume fresh New England digs here with us - where simple lines and bold color come alive in iconic designs that are made responsibly, locally, and with original flare. So come one, come all, to experience the stylish (and comfortable) transformation of thousands of milk jugs into seating, tables, accessories, and more.

(and it's for modern pooches, too, you know!)

For better or worse, it's simply not enough to do what you do, insulated from community - at least not when you're in the business of making a selling goods. The marketing and promotion of products are significant separators of hobby from business.  What we've come to learn is that the story of what you do as important - if not more so - than the thing itself.  

For those of us who design and produce material goods (be them widgets, wool blankets or wall shelves), the apparent power of story can be disheartening, and the shadow world of intellectual property can seem redundant, less important, and a hassle.

But the intellectual, virtual, and viral life of any product is like the air we breathe - it's as vital and essential as it gets.

The images in today's posts were generated by us, but configured, described, and re-broadcasted by other like-minded web-based entities. And so it goes... we envision the widget; we make the widget; we present our widget as intellectual property, and offer it to customers, vendors, and the anonymous web. We do so with the hope that digital and physical realms of commerce will propel the other into places and points of otherwise impossible growth.

This is the power of story in action - initiated by us, and driven by you.

With flowers, plants and trees bursting forth with sun-cajoled fervor, it's certainly understandable - the human urge to bring what's lively outside, in.

One of the most tempting blooms to steal away indoors is the ever-vitalizing, ever-illuminant olive family shrub:Forsythia.

There's something wonderfully reassuring about Forsythia's yearlong presentation. During most months it rests quietly, in a snarled, brown heap. But come spring, it's many arms produce abundant buds that explode in masses of bright, yellow blooms.

The comfortably fallow, yet eager while active, forsythia is a New England favorite. Just when summer seems impossibly distant, the hearty forsythia alerts us all of impending delight.

The demystification of Spring continues with Ergen Anders' String Gardens...

Found by way of Remodelista, these suspended, sculpted orbs of growth fancy the inner gardener and daydreamer in us all.

Of course, the indoor installations have immediate whimsy, but the out of doors suspensions are just as, if not more, appealing...

... By isolating otherwise integrated plant-elements - and artificially hanging these elements in otherwise foreign depths of field - the core assumptions of landscape design are challenged in a most playful, imaginative way.

That plants grow in the ground is secondary to their growth requirement of root-worthy soil. And soil, whether terrestrial or airborne, is soil nonetheless - and as such is the trusted and true companion to our most cherished and admired photosynthesizing friends. Let us keep this in mind as we garden downward.. and look up toward new frontiers of growth!