L&G + Ashley Helvey
This all started back in March when we went over to Ashley's moving sale (yes, I got some awesome stuff!) at first was just us doing a little shopping, but one thing lead to another, we ended up talking about a collaboration of some sort!
This year, we REALLY REALLY want to make it out to NY for ICFF & NY Design week, since we've never been!! We firgured this would be the best time to collaborate & come up with something to submit.
We've always admired Ashley's warm & natural sensibility of using super natural materials. So we thought it would be great to merge both of our aesthetic to design & create furniture pieces for NY Design Week. We' were so excited to hear that Ashley was just as excited about it as we are!
Our first brainstorming session was at Elliot Bay books. Without shame, we sat down and just covered the whole table with bunch of vintage books, drawings, inspirations, and materials to look at together. We were like kids in a playground going from one idea to another getting more and more excited as we talked & sketched.
At the end of the meeting we decided to go with designing some sort of lounge chair or hanging chair...the concept & design was still a bit undefined, but we continued to explore...
We then looked at some random materials we had sitting around our house in hope to find something that can really compliment Ashley's rustic warm aesthetic and also utilizes her textile skills.
Below are some of Ashley's felting & weaving project she was working on another day when we went over to talk. If you follow her blog, you'll quickly get a sense of how everything she captures is beautifully simple, warm, and balanced....and something that we really want to embrace.
I held on to this little tiny ball of Navajo wool sample from Ashley for the longest time...not only to look at it as a sample, but also because it was so darn cute & fuzzy!
playing with some materials....but ended up looking like a robot!
Various cotton ropes to mock up a mini hanging chair concept
All this is still quite priliminary....but I think we've honed in on some good general direction and pallet focusing on a more natrual, simple, and warm feel. Good thing we live & work in the same place, so we can literally look at all this 24/7!!