I studied painting at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and spent a lot of time gawking at this David Hockney Painting at the museum. I still think it is one of the best paintings I’ve seen. The over all concept hits you quickly, but there are many narrative and conceptual details that slowly emerge. I always assumed the tension in Fred Weisman’s clenched dripping fist came from aesthetic disagreements between the couple.
Now that the National Stationery show has come and gone and we have had some time to catch up on some correspondence and filling orders we wanted to share some images and details from the show. I will start off with a few of our challenges.
Frames 1-2- Our flooring was lost somewhere between California and NY. Thank goodness for the CB2 in Soho! They were super helpful and we purchased their FLOR tiles in Charcoal Grey. (Some pics of E schlepping bags to the subway). E tells me after the show that my anniversary present was in the box with the flooring! I will let you know if it ever turns up..of course his plan of surprising me at the show is enough of a present for me. On the upswing we saw Jim Jarmusch on the way back.
Frame 3- Our next challenge occurred when we arrived at the Javit’s center the booth behind us was encroaching 2ft into our booth and we were not able to put our walls up. We let the professionals handle it. GLM and Manny Stone were really great and totally know what they are doing…thanks again to Aaron and Lloyd! From here things got better.. our logo that we had made in LA and took on the plane with us went up with no problem.
Frame 4- We didn’t perform any preliminary layout before the show and taped up our designs and moved them around until we liked the arrangement. The installation was pretty time consuming because of all of the measuring and leveling of over 80 products, but we were happy in the end with the museum inspired exhibition layout.
Frame 5- The union guys were our comic relief and couldn’t understand why a woman they were helping earlier was angry because her whites didn’t match.. I can relate to both sides of that coin.
In the end our hard work paid off and we had a great show. There are many benefits to doing a show like this, but for me I really valued the opinions and insight that store owners, reps and our peers offered to us about our work. A sincere thanks to everyone that helped us with advice, who came by to say hi or sent people our way. We really enjoyed meeting everyone and we are looking forward to next year.
Also we just added new retailers to our retailer’s page. If you do not see a store near you please check back as we will be adding new shops to the list!
Make Love Plant a Garden terrarium on our mantle made by my friend Bianca. She has a voracious appetite for plant life and gardening. You can visit her awesome blog here and you can purchase her terrariums here. Photo credit: Stephen Chiu
All Cards
