Our first New York showcase opens today. If you are about Manhattan do pop by and say hello. All are welcome.

We have arrived in New York. We are here for New York Design Week 2012 where we are going to be hosting a Makers and Brothers showcase at The Standard Hotel East Village. We have been working with the Noho Design District for the past few months putting plans in place and now it is a wonderful reality.

For the showcase we have James Carroll over from Wicklow. Together we will be building a small workshop in the front window of The Standard. Here, daily, he will be splitting, shaving and joining locally sourced timber into a small collection of three legged stools. All the stools will be available to purchase alongside a small selection of our favourite Irish craft and design products.  We will bring you daily updates and if you are nearby come along and say hello.

We are going to be making a great collection of green wood stools as part of our showcase in New York this week.  A few weeks back we were trying to think of a new illustration to represent this work and fit in with our previous illustrations. An afternoon in James Carroll’s workshop gave us the answer. Stools aside we will be creating a beautiful mess on the floor of the Standard Hotel. There will be piles and piles of fresh curling wood shavings. Keep an eye out for the invitation and hopefully you will spot the link.

Ilse Crawford x Georg Jensen on Nowness.com.

Studioilse recently launched a small collection of objects with Georg Jensen, we love it. Beautifully formed in brass, copper, silver and glass these are objects of use and ritual. A collection that acknowledges the history of the producers, looking to transform everyday objects into beautiful, experiential items that add elegance to routine. “I like taking very normal things and making them special, so those moments that you begin or end the day with are in some way given shape and materiality.” Ilse Crawford.

Filmmaker Justin Anderson follows a water jug, metallic bowl and candleholder through a choreographed series of daily rituals in this whimsical short showcasing the new Ilse Collection by Georg Jensen. Enjoy.

Alice Made This is a brand new company making exceptionally great cuff links. Founded by Alice Walsh, who previously worked as a designer at Tom Dixon and Conran. Alice has spent her career running between factories in the UK, across Europe and in Asia. Her love for manufacturing began whilst she was a designer for Tom. Each batch is produced in a limited number. We are big brass fans, big copper fans too, really we just like a metal that wears well and none do it better. So we were very excited when Alice sent over the first batch and here is a little video of them being made. We like how she is approaching a super technical process for the production of such a simple object.

Domino is our dog. He loves to start the day with a swim and a run along Killiney beach. This sets him up for the day happily hanging out with us all in the shed and studio. He collects sticks, pine cones and tennis balls.  He likes to help out but is not often as useful as he would like to believe. Unwrapping is what he is best at.

Remodelista, one of our favourite US based design websites, caught up with us recently and put together a nice story. It was part of a week of posts by them on all things Irish. You can check out the story here. 

Johnny Kelly was talking at OFFSET,  a wonderful creative conference that took place in Dublin over the weekend. We have a lot of love for Johnny and one of our favourite projects is what is playing above.

Shelly is an animated short film based on a short story by Irish comedian David O'Doherty, with music by Clogs. It  is the story of a lobster with a new-found love for music. After accidentally playing a record with his claw, Shelly becomes determined to make music himself. He soon finds out there is only one way for a lobster to achieve this.

The latest issue of Monocle (no.51) has some very kind words to say about Makers and Brothers. They put together a nice arrangment too.

When we started working with Europa on our graphic identity we showed them some research we had done into the original Kilkenny Design Workshops. We loved the work Louis Le Brocquy had done for them back in the 60’s.  From this came the idea of developing a series of icons based on the thinking behind our project. These icons are now used on our stickers and tape. Above is a selection of the stickers we pop onto each package that leaves the shed. There are the expected, like a map of Ireland, ‘Fragile’, and a sketch of our shed. Then there are three scales of icon; the landscape inspired by Paul Henry paintings, objects and animals from the Irish countryside (a stool, a sheep, a tree sculpted by a westerly gale) and the details of materials like wood and wool. This is just the beginning, stay tuned as we plan on growing our  wonderful series of icons as each season emerges.