Well last we talked (or technically I talked and you read), we were at the end of the New York gift and accessory show.  If you are in the right frame of mind, there is something very invigorating about Manhattan.  I left the show feeling like things were hitting their stride quite well.  The show was my best yet. . . . ok, admittedly I have only done the show twice now, so one would hope your second would be better than your first, but I’ll take the win anyhow.

Now the hard part comes: delivering on all of these orders in a somewhat timely fashion.  To help out with this never ending logistical problem of getting product in on time, I was very careful to spell out to people that these things take some time, that we do small batch productions in little artisan workshops in remote parts of the world where the locals hold hands and sing songs all day long while working.  Who can begrudge locals singing songs.  Not me.  So most people understood that these things take time.  Those that didn’t, well its best to find that out right away rather than down the line when you are ready to ship out to them.  The good news is that 70% or so of the orders I took will be in within the next 8 weeks.  In our business, that’s pretty good delivery time.  

The things that I am really excited about are these natural pieces that are on their way from Thailand (the photos you are seeing right now).  The curly vines and our reclaimed wood on a stand, the butterfly tables and root consoles. 

These are all great new pieces that are on their way and meeting with great reactions.  The other nice thing in my mind is all of these pieces – even the wood on a stick – are not a dime a dozen.  Especially the butterfly tables and root consoles.  They really have the feel of an art piece.  It brings me back to my rug merchant days when I used to deal in quite rare hand made Persian rugs.  There were some rug collections that people would wait in line to see the few pieces that we were able to get our hands on.  Every single on of them was a knock out, and everyone recognized it.  It’s the same with these root consoles and butterfly tables.  Even the people that come into the shop that are entrenched in a “style”  (something I think is actually quite stifling from a creative and expressive standpoint, but whatever works I guess – just seems a lot like painting by numbers – that whole "My house is country French” or "I'm all about Mission style."  Even the original “mission” people and “country French people”  weren’t all up in only their style), anyway, even those people are able to say, that these are truly remarkable pieces, without any qualification of  “it wouldn’t work in my place but . .”.  Wow, that was a long ellipses in an amazingly poorly written sentence, but after a fourth or fifth read it should make sense. . .at least that’s how many times it took for me.

Anyway, where was I, the root pieces and the butterfly tables.  The larger wood sculptural pieces and curly vines are spectacular as well and met with great acclaim at the show and in the shop (we had a few pieces here in the shop, but they sold quite quickly).  I put a lot of effort into sorting through all of these pieces to find ones that really appeal to me, so when people are excited about my choices, it can’t help but make one a little pleased with ones self.  All of these things will start arriving in 6 weeks on a 40 foot container, soon to be followed by another container a few weeks after that.  All in time for delivery on the New York and last High Poin’t orders, and also in time for orders from the upcoming High Point show at the end of March.  

Business at the shop in the retail world is slow right now, but for us retail is always slow in February, so its no big surprise.  In a way that’s a good thing because wholesale is moving along quite quickly, so we are trying hard to keep up with that.  Things ranging from shipping, getting shipments in, getting money out of people for shipments waiting to go out to them, designing new products that won’t come out until next fall if we get designs in right now, getting things that are meant to be in production actually into production, getting things that are about to arrive from overseas though the myriad of customs inspections and delivered to us.  Nice problems like do I go to Southern India next, or do I go back to Thailand and into Vietnam, or should I spend extra time in Africa when we are there this April.  These are the problems I like to have.  

Down to the minutia, I found these great Dutch wall paper rollers that I had turned into lamps.

The little patterny things are raised copper formed into the pattern of the wallpaper, the base is a simple wood turned lamp base, and I had our lamp maker find some cork to use as the connection from the roller to the lamp hardware that turned out very well.  The rollers are very hard to find, although I would think there has to be some sort of “elephant graveyard” for print rollers lying hidden in some factory somewhere in the world just waiting to be reincarnated as a lamp. . . .who wouldn’t want that. . . that or as a three toed sloth.

That’s it from the showroom at Bjorling & Grant.  It’s a lovely Monday (President’s day),  a happy 50ish degrees outside, which for us a great bit of weather to have nearing the end of February.  Especially considering the sub-zero weather we had for the last three weeks.  

Just a little aside on cold in Minnesota.  Its always a sad and yet somewhat amusing thing when my friends from around the country call in during these sub zero times and you can hear it in their voice: its not the “wow you guys are really tough for gutting it out up there.”  Not at all.  Its “Wow, you guys are morons. Why do you live there.” No matter how many Minnesotans say “we’re used to the cold weather,” or how many non-Minnesotans say that we must be used to the cold weather; we are not. I can’t tell you how many times I heard that while in New York when it was really cold there during the show.  People would find out I’m from Minnesota and give me the “well you must be used to this”.  Hey, its not as if we are cold blooded animals up here in Minnesota.  Our bodies struggle to get up and stay at 98.2 degrees like everyone else’s. Cold weather is cold weather.  Its freakin’ cold.  There is no getting around how crappy minus 20 degrees is, not even counting the minus 50 degree windchill.  Any Minnesotan that tells you they like and/or are used to that sort of weather is either delusional and should be institutionalized, or is selling something.

Anyway, back to the it’s a nice day thing.  It really is a nice day here.  The sun is out. Its, as I mentioned, 50 degrees.  Warm enough to make me briefly think “hey I should open the shop doors and let the fresh air in.”  It was that brief thought that led me to the above cold weather rant, because obviously I am part of this group of people that can be brought down so low as to think that 50 degrees might possibly give a nice cross breeze to the shop.   Still, I will take the nice early hope-of-spring day here in Minneapolis.  Business is good, my family is happy and dogs and cats seem to be getting along quite well these days.