We were recently interviewed by Down East Magazine, a popular New England lifestyle and culture publication. To have them come visit our living space for a home feature and see how it reflects in our work was a real mood booster. Our moods are incredibly dependent on our levels of inspiration; not a ground-breaking statement, just a personal admission. It's a bumpy ride somedays at the Daughter Mfg headquarters, but the best way to steady ourselves is within the space we live and appreciating how much it inspires us.
Our home space is attached to our work space and we are not speaking figuratively. Combining the two as a lifestyle offers ample opportunities to try color combinations, find light in a dark Cape style home, find ambiance in a cavernous shop, configuring spaces with limitations, and then change it all over again if it isn't working.
During the interview, we were asked about colors and patterns (mixing and daring to mix), about the eras of design we love and combine (unapologetically), and those very bright kitchen cabinets.The daughters thought it must have been a mistake when we unpacked them for installation.
"We would have gone brighter" was our response.
Without the fear of failing with color, we are free to learn how to temper color by what we pair it with. This is how we work in our shop and studio; if the inspiration is there via color, our work is easy to conceptualize. From there it gets a little harder, but we're not afraid of that either.
We happily live inside this house drenched in color so we can appreciate the dark Maine winters and to satisfy our need to try and try again, which ultimately helps us everyday do the work that we love. An encouraging compliment we can receive - and Down East Magazine gave us that - is to say that our home reflects our work. When we are reminded of that, we feel more certain that we are designing the right life for us.
If the real work is staying inspired, we're making easy work of it.
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