Natural Selection Lookbook FINISHED!

We're SOOOOO very excited to share our very first lookbook!

We simply can't wait to share this 70 page lookbook with y'all through the magic of the world wide web!

click "EXPAND" to see it full screen! (This whole online publishing is freakin' amazing!)

Launching Natural Selection has been a total learning experience for us. It challenged us in so many great ways and also lead us to so many wonderful opportunities to collaborate with talented people we've admired.

Besides this being first attempt in creating a furniture & lighting product line, it was also our first collaborative project with an artist, Ashley Helvey, our first time having a professional photographer like Charlie Schuck help us take fantastic studio shots, our first time showing at Noho Design District during NY Design Week, which then lead to our first feature in Surface Magazine!

We couldn't be any happier with all the great responses we've been getting so far!

We really hope that this can lead to some more exciting opportunities down the line! 

 

Natural Selection Lookbook Sneak Peek!

We've been working long and hard....(mostly long) on putting together a lookbook for our Natural Selection collection we launched back in May during NY Design Week!

We wanted to create a visual guide that communicates our vision & inspiration behind the collection.  More and more, we realized just how much of the PNW surrounding has influenced us and our work. Whenever we go on nature walks, we end up collecting random nature findings, taking a ton of photos of everything we see...colors, texture, shapes, materials, and scenery with the hope of capturing all the wonderful feelings we experience when being out in nature....

The Natural Selection collection is very much about how we reinterpret the humility and warmth that nature provides.

Here are just some of outdoor shots we took around our neighborhood in Seattle for the lookbook! (which we'll soon share!)     

 

Ovis & Aura featured on Remodelista!

Besides being excited about the upcoming Remodelista Market, we're even more excited to see couple of generous mention of our new work on their site!

Read the post of our Ovis chair:

Read the post of Aura Lights:

We're so happy to see our love for each other is mutual.  ;)

NDD Report on Sight Unseen

Check out everything that Monica & Jill (from Sight Unseen) did for Noho Design District including our Ovis Chair & Aura light at Zero + Maria Cornejo.

See the full post HERE!

It was seriously amazing to see all the shows, spaces, and works they coordinate and organized for the entire neighborhood of Noho during New York Design week. I don't know how they did it all...but my suspicion is that they just don't ever sleep. Yup.

Getting ready for NY Design Week!

We've been feeling like Super Mario Brothers for the past week and a half trying to pass every level of finishing our products, taking photos of our work, editing the photos, sending out a newsletter & press releases,  pack & shipping our furniture & lights so it'll get to NY in time, remembering to pack our clothes (and underwear), making sure our water bottle doesn't have any water in them when going through security,  and remembering to put our shampoo, contact solution, utility knife, hammers, drill bits & screws in the checked luggage and NOT in our carry on.... 

It's usually stressful leading up to catching the flight, but once we're on the plane we feel we can at least relax a little being so far away from work...and instead be able to enjoy a view like this....the high altitude sunset and little itty bitty frost crystals that forms on the window...so neat.

Then we land in NY....and then it's back to frantic town all over again!! So now we're on to the next challenging level of dealing with all the logistics in New York to set up our work up in time for Noho Design District!! And this level is all about doing errands in middle of Manhattan....WITH A MINI VAN! And boy did we let loose on the horn.

It's only been our first full day in NY and we're already exhausted from all the rush and trying to get everything set up!!! Luckily there was enough adrenalin going through both of us that kept us from just passing out....

Anyway....here's what we did and some photos of our first day

11am-1pm Arrived at Zero + Maria Cornejo to scope out the space and figure out a plan of attack on how we can set up our lights, hanging chair, floor chair, side tables and plant hangers.

Lovely window display of paper cranes in Z+MC

And me (Jean) getting distracted/tempted by all the amazing beautiful Z+MC shoes & clothes.....

1pm-2pm: Went over to Heller Gallery in Meatpacking district to deliver our Nyth bowls  for RAW+UNFILTERED show by AmDC.  We got a little sneak preview and is totally psyched to have our works be shown amongst some amazing works there. Here's our bowls next to our table buddies, Fort Standard, who made these cast bronze candelabras!

2-4pm  did some major driving around where we borrowed a 10ft ladder that we somehow fit in the mini van, then  got a bunch of light bulbs at a hardware store, and went to this awesome plant called Plantworks for plants for our plant hangers.... I got to look at some AMAZING giant plants and cacti I wish I needed. I love NY for all their little mom & pop shops with the best things.  

430pm We set up a mobile work station in our friend's classy mini van and illegally parked for an hour and a half just to claim a street parking spot by 6pm...yah....parking in Noho, that's the kind of fun logistics we love. I know I should be ashamed to even admit doing something as desperate as camping out in a van just to claim a parking spot...but it was TOTALLY worth it for the spot right outside the shop and that we didn't have to pay $12/hr. Wow...I'm totally starting to sound like a cheap old lady!  yay!

6pm-8pm: Then for 2hrs all we were able to do is hang some Aura lights before everyone at the shop had to leave!! Despite the little progress we had, I was really happy with how the lights look in front of the amazing large scale photo of Maria's clothes by Mark Borthwick,  an artist/photographer and also Maria Cornejo's husband.  Talk about a super couple....seeesh!

So now....we gotta get up in butt crack of dawn to head over there and do the rest of the set up. woo hoo!!

more & more for later!

Staring Contest

If you stare at our Nyth bowls long enough....you MIGHT be able to see some 3D dolphins....Give it at least 20 minutes. nooooo blinking!

Perhaps we'll organize a staring contest at RAW+UNFILTERED opening!

Sneak Peak Process Shots on Sight Unseen

We love process shots and apparently so does Sight Unseen!

They shared a nice post sharing some pics of our chairs in collaboration with Ashley for Noho Design District.

We've been pretty active on posting our process almost daily on our tumblr & Instagram (jeanLGstudio), so you can see more there, too!

Also the Sight Unseen post shows more sneak peak process shots of other talented friends from Iacoli & McAllister and Fort Standard... plus others talents we hope to meet like Caitlin Mociun,  Makers & Brothers, Bec Brittain and more...more...more!!!

Just awesomness all around!

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!!