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.

As this year creeps to a close and the gradual waning of daylight hours is reversed and begins to grow again, I can feel the pull of solstice in my bones.

We are excited to announce that we have a selection of our most popular braided rugs on sale this week. We had these made for photography for our new site and now we are ready to find them forever homes.

We’ve been through a few changes over these last couple years - from moving our studio to integrating our new robotic milling arm (more on that soon) to becoming a B Corp to launching two new collections in cork.

We are thrilled to celebrate the autumnal equinox with the introduction of our newest cork collection, Clover, this week at Colony in New York.

We believe in human rights. We believe in the rights of individuals to construct the families that they want to have for themselves. This includes who they choose to love and whether or not they choose to have children at any point in their lives. There is no freedom in a society that does not allow for this right to choose.

Like most Mother’s Days, ours came and passed in the usual way - with certain expectations that are almost impossible to meet, because, well, you are still mothering your way through the day.

A month ago, I (Chelsea) moved back into the studio after 2+ years of working from home. Over the last couple of years, school and childcare haven't always been consistent for our family. We needed flexibility to get through, so it made sense to move my work home.

Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. This anniversary is now widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people each year as a day of action to shift human behavior and create policy change.

We are beyond excited to announce that Grain, our tiny studio in the woods, has joined the community of 4,000+ visionary businesses across 75+ countries to legally commit to balancing purpose and profit as a certified Benefit Corporation. This community of B Corps is driving the global movement of business as a force of good and we are deeply humbled to have our efforts working towards this common goal.

We were planning on writing a newsletter summarizing the highlights from the past year and there were many - from launching our cork collection to shipping our largest order ever to becoming Climate Neutral - but as we enter winter and are surrounded again by so many uncertainties, we can’t help but throw up our hands to the season's call of rest and retreat.

When launching our cork collection last month, we knew we wanted to start off by sharing our fascination with cork itself. Being a rapidly renewable material and a powerful carbon sink is what drew us to cork to begin with.

That said, it is our hope to build furniture and objects to be passed down for generations. In order to do so, we know we need to speak to more than just material features but to the physical connection you experience when living with these objects.

We are thrilled to be launching our new cork collection this week at the Colony co-operative showroom in New York. This collection is three years in the making and is fully inspired by the unique properties of cork itself.

In order to talk about the collection, we first have to share what it is about the material that has fascinated us for years.

Three years ago we began to research a material that had long held our curiosity. It is a rapidly renewable material. It is a powerful carbon sink. And, it fully represents the vision we see for our work and our business as a whole as we adapt and grow into the future.

Though autumn solstice is still a few weeks off, the change of season feels upon us both at home and in the studio. Our kids go back to school (1st Grade! Pre-K!) in person this week with new teachers and class pets. Our studio is feeling a similar eager and optimistic energy with two new woodworkers joining us full-time.

Earlier this month we experienced a record-breaking heatwave here in the Pacific Northwest that is now linked to hundreds of deaths and the loss of over a billion sea creatures. This may not be the best opener for a furniture design-related newsletter, but experiencing that heat makes it hard to think of anything else.

When we launched our Pool Rug in 2016, a designer we admire came up to our booth at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, took one enthusiastic look, and said, “Oh, I get it. It’s the new cowhide rug.” You get used to taking in spontaneous first impressions at trade shows, but this one kind of stuck with us because it gave us insight into what it was about the rug that was exciting. This kind of reciprocal relationship with our clients over time has more deeply shaped our practice than I think we’ll ever know.

A few weeks ago, The New York Times ran a story about the Michelin-starred restaurant Eleven Madison Park going plant-based that momentarily took our breath away. Within a few hours, several friends had sent us the link. It was clearly a moment they knew we’d want to note.