This past summer and fall, we had the opportunity to participate in an advisory council at the Rhode Island School of Design. It is a gathering of faculty and alumni considering the future of the beloved department where we met as students.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

When we launched our second cork collection in 2022, Hannah Martin of Architectural Digest featured us in her article "Designers are Clamoring for Cork."

We started our summer season by attending a three-day workshop led by a visiting Katonah Yoga teacher. This style of yoga incorporates traditional Hatha postures with Taoist theory, geometry and metaphor.

The month of May is always an exciting time for American design. This year is turning out to be no exception. Here is where to find Grain next week as part of NYCxDESIGN.

Spring is always an opportunity to begin again. This season, we have been trying to think less about the pace of change happening all around us and more about how we relate to that change.

Currie started her first iteration of Spartan in her hometown of Austin, Texas in 2008. She now runs an evolved version with her “small but mighty" team in Portland, Oregon, where she represents over 30 artists and designers including Grain. 

Discovering where our work finds its place in the world is one of the most thrilling surprises we get to experience as designers. These moments are not easily come by; in many cases, they remain a total mystery.

"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.”

- Wendell Berry

Today marks our 15th year in business. As the date has drawn closer, we’ve been reflecting on what we have learned, what we will be taking with us into the future and most of all, what we need to let go.

When we explain what it means to be a B Corp to someone who might not have heard of the certification before, we often say that we aim to put people and the planet before profit. It is a phrase that gets used frequently in the B Corp community - one that we have tried to make our own, but usually return to for its alliteration alone.

This past weekend, we spent some time sitting in a tree in the woods watching a prodigious squirrel several stories up a maple releasing seed pods. We never actually saw the squirrel, just the results of their efforts as leaves rustled and pods rained down around us littering the trail.

Grain partner Chelsea Minola recently joined Holly Howard on our favorite podcast about creative entrepreneurship, Cultures Within Capitalism, to discuss creative partnership and the poetics of an intentional life.

We are excited to announce that our Bainbridge Island studio will be open to the public August 11-13, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm, as part of the Bainbridge Island Working Studios tour. 

“It’s a false dichotomy to say we could have human well-being or ecological flourishing. There are too many examples worldwide where we have both, and that narrative of one or the other is deeply destructive and cuts us off from imagining a different future for ourselves.”

- Robin Wall Kimmerer

We’re back from New York and have to say that it was one of the more thoughtful design weeks that we've attended in recent history. It helped that we were deeply connected to the work that we were showing and that everything we did show was done in community.

The month of May is always an exciting time for our studio as we present new work as part of NYCxDESIGN. This year is no exception. Seeing new work is always thrilling, but the best part of this time of year is reconnecting with old and new friends alike. It reminds us how grateful we are to be working in creative community!

This time of year, when our inbox and feeds fill with Earth Day sales and sentiments, we struggle with how to be. Last year, we used this time to announce our B Corp status. The year before, we wrote about why we decided to partner with Climate Neutral to offset our carbon emissions. We also recently shared our current obsession with banking for good.

We've been thinking a lot about our clients and how they've adapted to the changes in our industry and culture over the last few years. Following that curiosity, we're starting a series of interviews with some of our favorite clients and collaborators from the past 14 years in business.

Last month marked our one-year anniversary of becoming a B Corp. Over the past twelve months, we’ve been asked to meet with a handful of design studios interested in learning more about the certification process.