After Christmas Musings

Merry Christmas.

We hope you have had a great Christmas and are ready for the beginning of a new year, fresh with possibilities.

As you may or may not know, we have recently relaunched our online store, SIS Studios. The majority of the work we do at Set In Stone is custom made pieces in collaboration with designers, architects, and home owners. But occasionally we have our own ideas. Ideas borne out of working with our chosen and much loved materials. And of course, it's easier to justify the amount of time, energy, and resources for such projects if they are marketable and relatively lucrative. This is the simple truth of operating a fabrication studio. Though we would like you to visit our store, love our work and maybe even spring for a new table or two, we would rather you not if you don't need it. If you are feeling the itch to buy something awesome, or the pressure to update and upgrade (which we all feel from time to time) please pause and reconsider. Though we would love to sell you a table that will be around longer than your house, we DO NOT want our table to just be a replacement for a perfectly good one that you already own. We know there are a thousand reasons to justify any purchase, not the least of which is simple desire. All we are asking is that you take a moment and think about it.

We are firm believers in owning fewer excellent objects rather than many less-excellent objects (aka junk). Junk is flashy and trendy. It is new and innovative. It is attractive and seductive. It also usually has a short lifespan and most likely can't be repaired. This puts us in an interesting position as makers of things? We build and sell for a living. Do we want to make and sell less? No, for the sake of the health and comfort of our families we do not. Do we want you to only buy from us? Absolutely not, how boring would that make your home? (It wouldn't be a home at all, it would be our showroom.)

So what are we to do?

Honestly, we’re not sure. All that we can ask of you with any integrity, is to pause and consider what, how and why you are buying. If you need a table, value handcrafted furniture and resonate with honest materials like concrete, wood and steel, then by all means head to our store and pick yourself out something beautiful. If not, maybe you could take a walk, grab a cup of coffee, or rest in the comfort of knowing you already have what you need.

We apologize if this feels a bit like a rant. We don't mean it to. We do have a small rant on our about page where we mention our frustrations with "the plastic perfection that is here today and tossed tomorrow." (you can read that here) Our frustration stems not only from the damage this practice of physical and cultural disposability is doing to our environment, but what it is also doing to our souls. We can hear you now, "WHOA! What is a fabrication studio talking about my soul for?!" Again, we don't know what to tell you... maybe more than the work we do and the materials we use we are especially passionate about living richly; living deeply. If you have read any of our past articles on the blog, you probably know that we attribute a lot of that richness to living creatively, but we also feel that buying things that last, that are beautiful, that don't poison our home or our environment contribute to good living too. Seeking a rich/creative/productive life is what led to the start of Set In Stone, not only for ourselves, but also for those we work with and for. All of this may seem a bit ironic, insensitive, or ill timed, being right after Christmas. Maybe it is, but please don't mistake this little essay as coming from a self-righteous place or for some kind of sideways promotion. Think of this more like a verbal sorting out of our complex relationship as makers to our society and our environment. If you made it this far, we thank you for your time.

And have a Happy New Year.