We’re on Instagram! It’s the perfect time for us to get in the habit of taking quick snaps and sharing them with you all. Reasons:

It’s Springtime, and Central Park is filled with neon green leaves and blooming flowers. Who doesn’t love a photo of that?

It’s Springtime, and calendars are getting fuller, to-do lists longer. Activity!

It’s Springtime, and we have some major unveilings coming up in the world of Fair Folks. As we work toward letting you in on what they are, there will be sure to be some peaks at the process in our feed.

If you follow us – we’re username fairfolks – we’ll follow you back.

Soon,

Aurora

Had an odd experience on the subway this week. It was Wednesday, and I stepped onto a local 6 train of absolute silence. Very literally, every ear but mine plugged with earbuds. Only about 8 to 12 people so not terribly or incredibly remarkable, but still, that is about 20 ears, deafened by the delight of their own aural isolation. And then this one curious character maybe in his early forties, late thirties, wearing sweat pants and carrying not a care in the word, moseyed on in at Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall and before the doors closed behind him plopped into a seat without ever making eye-contact with anyone and never breaking eye-contact with his Iphone. Amazingly enough, he didn’t have earbuds in his ears, but was completely engrossed in a very loud and for all to hear video game of some sort.

Silence shattered.

But no one else could hear, and not anything at all, because they all had their ears plugged. Around Astor Place, I had enough. He kept playing the same board, presumably unsuccessfully, over and over. Maybe he was aiming for a difficult golden egg? I exited and switched to the next car behind us. I usually reserve this move for awful smells and loud bongo concerts in the morning.

I was in a big rush to get all the way home, change, and get all the way back downtown in my best East Village concert camouflage of wrinkled shirt and unwashed jeans. Also, I wanted to make sure I had on shoes that could handle a crowd and footsteps of beer soaked soles. Sure enough, I put it all together (wore the exact same thing I had on the night before) and rode back down on an express train of youth and energy very different from the deflated bunch earlier in the day. Still a fair amount of earbuds. And one young lady with a tremendous hair-do jamming out a little too loud for her own ears’ safety and good. But I suppose she really really enjoyed what she was listening to and to some degree even wanted to share it with me, or at the very least share her enthusiasm.

Anyway, I was in a rush on this express train, and then off at Union Square and picking up pace to meet Aurora, who bought us tickets off the internet the day before to see First Aid Kit at Webster Hall. They are a magnificent young Swedish band that have a fairly new album that we have been listening to over and over and over, and they sing these very sweet country sing along songs, that remind me of Nashville, the good parts, and have this montage accompanying quality that has been helpful in our time working through the writing of a script for a television commercial. Not an actual television commercial, but an internet television commercial we are making for an upcoming project that there will be much much much more information about on this scrolling list of news soon. I just think of it as a television commercial because I have always wanted to make a television commercial, though it is highly unlikely it will ever make it on tv.

So I get there, and of course, I am early, and of course, I have two very awkward and strange conversations, one about my shoes, the other about smoking something I don’t have and don’t want, with two different but similar men that I suppose were scalping tickets or picking pockets, and the anxiety pushed me across the street and into The Village Pour House, which I haven’t been to in some time, and it gave me a ten minute window to order one drink and watch the third quarter of the Knicks game.

When Aurora arrived and we crossed the street and entered into Webster Hall, our eyes went up and above at the old details of the building that are now covered in paint and hidden in darkness, and then my shoe got stuck on the stickiness of the floor, and I tripped forward being bumped by another, and then another stepped on my foot and I thought thankful for my shoes that I no longer cared about.

First Aid Kit came on stage around 10:30, and I was lost up in the balcony on a architectural tour, but found my way back downstairs and toward the back bar, and the crowd had swelled and swarmed together so much so that I couldn’t get back into the middle of it all, and ended up against the bar, comfortable if at a distance. Luckily I brought my glasses, and was able to enjoy the sight of the songstresses’ wild hair all over the place for two hours. More about that and the show in general here. It was a tremendous set, and when we took the long and bumpy cab ride home, we said at least two, maybe three, times, “they were like, really, really amazing, huh?” I suggest, if you have the chance, to definitely go and see them in concert.

Until next time,

Anthony

I did it folks. I finally went to the McKittrick Hotel on 27th Street in Manhattan and spent an evening within the world of Sleep No More, the modern-day Macbeth.

I was a-shakin’ in my boots as I didn’t read any reviews beforehand in order to keep my disbelief suspended. And not to worry, I am not going to reveal any grand secrets on this here scrolling list of news either.

I will say that I haven’t had so much fun in a haunted house since Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios in the late and great 1990′s.

It is so much more than a haunted house though. It is a whole world you walk into, an aesthete’s delight, and a sense of nostalgia hits the second it ends. I am going to go back, but I am also hopeful that this will kickstart a trend in entertainment, or even retail, or just in the real world in general, and that these types of experiences will be replicated again and again so I don’t have to spend so much time watching movies, reading books, etc and can burn calories in all the walking and exploring.

Anyway, Aurora and I ate pizza afterward and talked about a similar idea (it is obviously a very inspiring place), where we would build an imagined airport terminal, and after you spend an abbreviated amount of time- dranking dranks- aboard a flight to your decided destination, you land and encounter whatever world it is you wish, ie Paris in the 20′s, London in the 60′s, Mars during Newt’s second term (Wokka wokka wokka).

Also we saw Trey McIntyre- the great choreographer of our generation- at the bar. Randomly. But not that randomly, I guess, as I am sure that a whole host of interesting and creative people were all over the place, unbeknownst to us and underneath a mask. The bar is amazing, and the closest I’ve ever felt to New Orleans in New York. It is worth the visit in itself. If ever there were a stage for Meschiya and the Little Big Horns in New York, it is it.

There is a quote of Andy Warhol’s, maybe even a couple of them, about the idea one feels of watching television rather than living his life, and Sleep No More gets all on that idea in a way and up and down because for three hours you are actually “watching television” in a sense, but instead it forces you to turn inward, within your own mask, and in a way makes you more present in the moment, un-dumbed, so to speak, by the constant clatter of computed connection.

I am not hating on the internet though. I love the internet. If it weren’t for the internet, where would I buy my razors?

In other news, how is your bracket doing? Wisconsin ruined mine. And for a period of time all enjoyment in even watching the sport. I have MSU going all the way, not because I know much about them, but just because Izzo recruits for the tournament, or as they say in the south, turnament.

Till next time,

Anthony

ps. One little spoiler. There is an actual scene at Sleep No More that includes several fair folks getting crazy with a goat. I thought I was losing my mind when I came across it. But keep your eye out for it.

This here’s a guest post from Claire Anderson. Claire’s been a great help to us at Fair Folks over the past while, and we’re fans of hers. By the way, she volunteers for a fantastic program, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, which is just the type of thing we think is important to support. They’re having an event on Thursday evening, the 12th, in Manhattan, and we think you should go! We’ll be there.

Take it away, Claire!:

Imagine what it takes to design, build and sell a single chair. You would need to detail and build every element from scratch– the back, the seat, the legs, the joints, the feet.

You’ll choose wood, cut, build, sand it and stain it. You’ll need to rent shop space with the right equipment– for instance, industrial drills or routers. You may need specialized metal parts that can only be made by a dedicated metal smith, preferably one that produces high quality work and does so for a reasonable cost.

You will also need to be mindful of the market, developing a strategy to ensure your chair will sell. You’ll take professional photos, build and update your website, and participate in design fairs to show your piece to prospective clients.

Now imagine that your mission isn’t simply to design and build a chair, but to design and build a chair to such a standard that it can be considered a family heirloom, crafted to withstand generations, beautiful in its thoughtful and timeless construction and made largely by hand. Imagine doing this for an entire line of furniture: chairs, tables, lights, mirrors, beds, dressers.

The Stumped Lamp

This article started many, many months ago on a trip to New Orleans, when I met Hillary Petrie, one-third of what is currently known as Egg Collective, a refreshed and revived furniture design/build studio that recently relocated to Brooklyn, NY. In following the company, I have gotten to know Stephanie Beamer and Crystal Ellis, Hillary’s creative and business partners. Their mission, to design and produce heirloom quality furniture, is ambitious; it’s appealing even to a non-designer like me, who, until a few months ago, knew nothing about furniture design. But their story also touches on what it takes to start a new business based on old world ideals, as well as the incredible friendship and creativity at the heart of this company.

The Brass Credenza

For three-and-a-half years, Egg Collective was run via weekly conference calls, each of its members calling in from a different kitchen table in a different part of the country. Shortly after college in St. Louis, the three women went in different directions to pursue independent professional paths. Hillary called in from New Orleans, where she worked for a custom fabricator. Crystal lived in Rhode Island, completing her MFA in sculpture. Stephanie was working in NYC as a master furniture finisher. All gained invaluable professional and artistic experience that would prepare them for running their own company.

In the summer of 2011, they decided it was time to make a real “go” of it, choosing to locate the business (and their homes) in Brooklyn, New York. Now, they are able to devote themselves full-time to the company they started years ago.

The Chest of Drawers

I asked Hillary, Stephanie and Crystal about their respective roles in the company. They emphasized that all three members collaborate equally on the design and building of each and every piece, from beginning to end. But they also recognize the value of having distinct roles, each person inhabiting a special sphere of influence that adds up to the big picture. Hillary tends to the “business of being a business” – the operations, budgeting, subcontracting, licenses, marketing, and endless emails that make up the back-end of Egg Collective. Crystal brings an artist’s perspective, drawing on her training in sculpture and fine art to influence the aesthetic qualities of Egg Collective’s work. Stephanie is the master finisher, trained in sanding, staining, glazing, filling, and lacquering techniques, bringing out the beauty of built pieces and informing the design process through her knowledge of traditional and cutting-edge finishing techniques. (As I learned in my conversations with Egg Collective, finishing is to woodworking is as baking is to cooking. Meaning, generally speaking, that people tend to excel in one or the other, each dependent on a different, subtle understanding of how wood behaves.)

The bottom line is that the three women remain the best of friends even as they maintain a careful professional balance. In fact, as close friends tend to do, they share many personal and professional ideals. For the three members of Egg Collective, “heirloom” furniture is simply shorthand for the values they hold dear: it’s a commitment to superior craftsmanship, timeless design, and sustainability. It’s a way to work with their hands and with the people they love. This could be turned into a corporate mission statement, but it’s also a reflection of who they are.

Mirror Mirror

Hillary, Crystal, and Stephanie are currently hard at work on a new line. They tell me to expect a shift away from slick modernist design they celebrated in architecture school, towards something more timeless and classic, a result of their growing appreciation for traditional woodworking and artisan techniques. Their process starts with broad inspiration, perhaps a single photograph that resonates with the three members, perhaps even a friend whose singular style can be channeled into an entire line. They brainstorm and refine their ideas through hand drawing, now gathered around a single kitchen table, the entire process informed by their knowledge of materials, construction, finishing, and their intended customer.

As Fair Folks and I follow this company, we’ll continue sharing more on Egg Collective, their upcoming line, and what they’re learning now that they’ve officially joined the New York design scene.

Until next time.

- Claire

Editor’s Note: Should you be interested in purchasing any of the pieces from Egg Collective, get in touch with us and we can help!

We have been awfully busy lately offline with pitches, plans, schedules, scripts, strategies, schematics, and this that and the other, but yesterday, in a fit of cultural curiosity and hunger for that ever elusive Otium, I made it all the way down to 82nd street and the Metropolitan Museum. The day before, between bites at lunch, there was talk of the new galleries for the art of the Arab lands, and I had it in mind that if I did get out and about and away from Google Docs, I would make it in to see. They are tremendous. You should go. But there isn’t an incredible rush as it is a permanent installation, and right now it is a little nuts in the city and a bit of a melee horror-show inside with all the people from all-over in town to see the lights and the tree and the ball drop and Lady Gaga and everything else.

"I don't know.....it's Versace."

However, and speaking of Italians, there is an exhibition up only until mid-March of Italian paintings and sculptures (made possible  in part by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation), also at the Met, which is well-worth the push, rush, scusi, no excuse me of the moment. The title of the show is “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini” but of course, Botticelli steals the show.

"Petrarch is trending on Twitter."

As if that weren’t enough, just next door at the Guggenheim, yet another Italian, Maurizio Cattelan, has taken over the rotunda with his much talked about and much lauded “show of the year” spectacle, “All.”

"Oh, I get it."

This is winding down and will be up only until the 22nd of January and again, well worth the crowds, which may very likely die down in a week or so. Although, the popularity of the exhibition has brought more and more folks each week lined up all the way around Fifth and down 88th street.  So it is anyone’s guess as to whether or not you will have to fight the crowds. Hopefully not. In my experience, because of my fear of ledges, and interest in distance from them, I sort of saw the entire show with other people’s shoulders as frames. If you are not afraid of ledges and can enjoy to lean over, you will love it.

I also have heard that if movie theatre going is your thing that “Hugo” is fantastic, and even better is “The Artist” which is playing at The Paris Theater, the perfect movie theater to see such a film and located on Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan.

Happy New Year,

Anthony

We require a good deal of cultural inspiration to feel like ourselves here at Fair Folks.

Some days it feels like it’s easy to be spoiled of such things with Museum Mile and Lincoln Center and the other mainstays of New York City institutions of beautiful or historically significant objects or performances.

Inspiration is also easy to be found walking through the streets of Soho, Noho, and beyond, popping into one design shop or boutique after another, perusing the latest.

When we want to mix it up a bit, it’s nice to get ourselves over to events like the one at Fritz Hansen last week, the opening of a show entitled Kin Coda, conceived of by design collective We Are Familia. There’s a brilliant write up of the origin of the show, which has been a long time in the making, over at Cool Hunting, where you can see some fabulous shots of the space and the objects concerned  with here, sans milling guests. Damaged pieces from Fritz Hansen’s production which would otherwise have been discarded were turned into high-design housing for fine art by a whole host of names in the contemporary design world, ultimately called “keepsake boxes.”

Milling guests, meeting and greeting and taking it all in.

I came away from the opening still thinking about it, well after dinner and my cousin’s amazing concert we went to later that night. What we saw there was neither design for design’s sake, nor art for art’s sake. Rather, it was design for art’s sake, or art for design’s sake. You want to take a piece home to sit by your sofa or next to your bed, to tuck in a corner for seating purposes, yet you are also compelled to dig into each box, to find out what treasures are stored inside, and why. Each feels like a narrative in a glance.

Anthony, checking out the piece by our friends Matthew Bradshaw and Sergio Silva.

Kiel Mead, telling an onlooker about the conception of his work.

If you’re interested – go, and soon. There are only two more days for this one, friends.

Until next time,

Aurora

This post is a bit belated, from the backlog:

The last time I was in Baltimore was my freshman year at Emory when we played Johns Hopkins and if I remember correctly they blew us out and it was embarrassing, as most of my relatives came down from Philadelphia to watch the game. To be honest, I don’t have any immediate plans to return, although I recently saw my friend Tom who lives there with his wife, and also my friend, Heather, and it would be nice to visit them and their neighborhood as he explained it is something to see in concern of young people leading interesting urban lives.

Anyway, on Monday, because the building I was supposed to go to all the way downtown was closed due to damage from Hurricane Irene (this dates this post), I instead decided to walk up the block for a change and passed the Cooper Hewitt, which had this funny sign on Mr. Carnegie’s gate.

I was hoping to get one last look at the museum store but oh no, the door was locked.

Instead, I kept on walking up along the park another block and stopped at the Jewish Museum which I later learned once belonged to and was bequeathed by a Mr. Warburg and is stunning, and warrants a visit in architectural admiration alone.

At the entrance, I waited behind a funny old man that had  an incredibly difficult time with the metal detector and then his wife. He and I shared a laugh as she nagged him about this and that. It was crowded and like most of my favorite outlets of entertainment, the average age was somewhere between 72 and 82. The majority of the people seemed to live in our neighborhood and the hurricane and whatever else kept people close to home and in the museums. Anyway, right on the first floor, as soon as you walk in, is the exhibition of the Cone sisters collection. Do you know anything about the Cone sisters, Claribel (which is what I think I want to name my daughter) and Etta? I didn’t know anything about them and felt sort of ridiculous and upset that I wasn’t introduced to them sooner, or perhaps I was and just never paid close enough attention. Did Marshall P. Duke mention them in “People in Paintings.” Did the Cone name come up at all in all those books about Somerset Maugham and Van Gogh and Gaugin and the inspiration behind “The Moon and Sixpence.” Must have, right? Did Woody Allen think to pop them in a quick scene of Midnight in Paris while I was stuffing my face with popcorn? Maybe I missed them. Maybe I never thought to pay attention to the periphery, to the collectors, to the capital behind the moment in France way back when. Well, regardless, it is too bad that I wasn’t introduced to them sooner, but well enough that I learned who they were at all. And like anything else in the world these days, you can just as easily catch a glimpse via wikipedia into where they were born, what Gertrude Stein had to say about them, when they died, what company their family built, etc, etc. But if you really want to get close, really want to fall in love, you have to go follow the show to Baltimore where it lives permanently, where they lived permanently.

Henry James, I think, said something to the affect that everything from the socks we choose in the morning, to the pajamas we put on at night is an outward reflection of our inward self, and to walk amongst the paintings and sculptures and textiles and letters of the Cone sisters is to see the outward reflection of two magnificent women’s inward beauty.

Alla prossima,

Anthony

My favorite way to learn is by seeing and doing. It’s always been that way, for me, and it’s not changing anytime soon. I’ve mentioned wanting to find a space, a room, and to be able to make a mess. And while I still long for it, until my Fall travel schedule calms down a bit, there’s just no point in making it so.

Thus, a corner of the apartment will do in a pinch, and a surface and the lifetime of supplies I’ve amassed are all I need to get going on projects. Also, momentum. And confidence. Those things are harder to come by but more fulfilling to harness.

Anyway, as I’ve been in early stages of projects, I’m looking for the ‘seeing’ part of that learning process before the ‘doing.’ A trip to Metalliferous for some missing supplies and the book I thought I needed for adequate learning sent me home with assurance that while books are helpful, they’re not necessary. Home, with a million ideas and a block of untouched wax staring up at me from my table, I began looking for videos to gather a few tips on carving technique.

What I found was actually not as much as I’d have guessed would be available online. There are a fair number of tutorials out there, but they’re a bit vague and incomplete. I know that in the process of creation, there are always however many different routes to the same end, it’s simply a matter of preference, and in that a matter of experimentation. There are some wax carving videos that are quite lengthy and helpful:

Some that are ridiculously bad, almost to the point of being funny:

And then of course, there are the strange things one finds when one doesn’t mean to. For instance, did you know how they gave anatomical sculptures found in medical oddity museums that lifelike texture, with pores and hair? This one tells you, though I must warn it’s all a bit creepy:

And fruit carving gets a whole plethora of meditative, peaceful instructional videos that make we want to break out a melon or mango stat:

Do you have any sources you go to for instruction when you need it? Do you get as easily sidetracked as I do by the irrelevant things you find?

Until next time,
Aurora

Finding an apartment in Manhattan is quite the ordeal. What some might call a pain in the tuckus. Many people think it is a question of price and neighborhood, but what you later learn is that it is much more of a matter of whether or not the heat works in the winter.

Anyway, a residential one year lease is a walk in the park compared to the search and then commitment of a multi-year commercial lease, at least in my experience, as a first timer. We have recently been out pounding the pavement and here are some photos from our adventures in American small business.

The place above is on Bedford Street. Not Bedford Avenue. We haven’t ruled out Brooklyn. We are just sort of canvassing the West Village first because we thought it was the practical thing to do.

“Do you want to see the basement?”

“That’s okay, I’ll pass.”

Scaredy-pants.

Here is another place over on Orchard Street, near where they have the outside street fair on the weekend. Get it, Fair Folks? I don’t know. I really like it over there, but this place in particular was a little hard to re-imagine in my head.

And then we went back West the other day to this space on Washington Street, which I really liked.

And it had this cool flag on the storage door, which we would definitely have kept on if we moved in. USA!

But we reasoned it would have been tricky to serve our coffee in the space, and we love serving coffee.

So, the search continues.

Alla prossima,

Anthony Mazzei

ps. Have any tips? Know of any available spaces? Send me an email at anthony(at)fairfolksandagoat.com

It’s the start of a new school year, and along with that, in the past, always came the feeling of unlimited potential, new beginnings. At least for me – there was little I liked more than a pack of freshly sharpened pencils and blank paper waiting to be scribbled with lessons and notes. Here we are facing down September, and it feels somehow not much different, even though school days are long gone for me.

So yes, it’s the very end of August or the beginning of September depending when you read, and it’s giving me the urge to pull my knee socks high and push my imaginary glasses up the bridge of my nose, to get down to learnin’ and being creative. We’ve also recently been working on a transition for Fair Folks & a Goat which you might have noticed on our site, pushing our big idea bigger. With any transition comes a moment for reflection, meaning we get to take this transition and make sure that we’re steering the business in a direction that really resonates, with us and with you. And so this too, September aside, has me eager to dive into productivity and proactive pursuits – to learn things and to make things.

Odette, making

With this in mind, my recent find of The Makers Project instantly sent me off searching for a little space where I can get messy without consequence. In New York City especially, this seems like the ultimate luxury. But the website is fascinating, enlightening, and emboldening. Truly, take a look for some peeks into inspiring spaces where work is done.

Odette, making

I’ve taken a few classes since finishing college, but this time around I’m convinced that with a Room of [My] Own and an instructional book or two, magic can happen.

Joya, making

Until next time,

Aurora