20 years ago I wrote my senior design thesis on sustainability at Georgia Tech. It was a concept the whole world was still a bit “green'“ to, and ideas on the practice were even limited in a (pre-Google!) internet search. Having a consideration for our environment has been important to me since my childhood, when I designed my first invention to reuse filtered sink water to water the grass outside. Green practices weren’t really a hot topic in the early 90’s, but 4 years studying product design and manufacturing really had me considering the entire life cycle of a product, it’s materials and production resources. Where did all of this “stuff” go? Why design another widget when it was obsolete before it hit the assembly line? Design for design’s sake was becoming less appealing, but designing for a purpose was something I could get behind.

Laura, circa 1999, and the modular furniture concept born from the study of sustainable design. Made from bamboo plywood and lightweight concrete. Revolutionary stuff in the 90’s!

Fast forward and my design philosophy hasn’t changed much. An inherent core value of our business since its inception has been the importance of sustainability. Our products were born out of the desire for pieces that could last a life time and transcend fast trends. We maintain practices to reduce our impact on the environment - sourcing materials locally when possible, producing everything by hand in our Atlanta studio, recycling packaging, and investing in high quality machines and tools are just a few examples.

This year, and with this collection, we are taking things a few steps further to express our passion for sustainability through our products. The majority of our collection is made strictly from, or uses, vegetable tanned leather. The process used to finish this leather is safer for the environment, not using harmful chemicals to tan the hides. It is long lasting and durable - truly meant to last a lifetime. The effort we are most excited about is our intent to leave less waste behind. All of those smaller pieces of leather left on the cutting table were piling up (faster than we could donate to local art teachers) and screaming for attention. For the last couple of years we’ve been turning them into earrings our local friends were loving, and begging for more of. So, with this collection we are excited to bring them to the masses, along with our bangles, and sliders for our linen belts. Waste not, want not. Or in this case, waste less equals more useful products.

It’s a chair, it’s a table, it’s a bookshelf! The senior thesis moved with Laura to her first San Francisco apartment in 2000. The shape lives on in our Peanut earrings.