Studio Notes | Issue 03

Studio Notes | Issue 03

The seeds you sow in silence.

I opened an old notebook this week and found something I'd almost forgotten.

Anodos. A luxury resort concept we designed for the Catskills: every detail imagined down to the plaster walls, the organic lighting, the water running through the suite. We built the entire concept around a single question asked at every turn: how does this delight?

We called them "Anodos Moments" - intelligent designs that inform action, rest, reflection, connection, and play. We never built it. But looking at it now, I realize I've been building it all along. Just in different forms.

The Crepery was Anodos before I had the language. Dean & Dahl is Anodos in material form. The obsession with how a space makes you feel and the refusal to compromise on experience. That’s been the through-line of everything we've ever done.

As entrepreneurs we are always sowing seeds. Some grow immediately. Some take a decade. Some become something you never expected. And some live quietly in a notebook until you open it one day and realize the seed became a forest when you weren't looking.

The older I get the more I've learned to enjoy the build itself. Not the finish line. The build. My best ideas have always come from the same place, the desire to build a better world. Not a bigger one. A better one.

FROM THE STUDIO

The last layer.

JoJo #2 received her final layer of plaster this month. Dozens of hours live inside this piece now: every decision, every pass of the hand, every layer underneath the layers.

There's a strange mix of pride and loss when a piece is finished. You pour so much of yourself into something - your time, your decisions, your attention. Then it's done. And you realize the fulfillment was never in the finish. It was always in the making.

Gabriel knows every decision that lives inside that surface. No one will ever see them. But everyone will feel them. That's relational aura: the accumulated presence of human time embedded in an object before it ever leaves the studio.

JoJo #2 is almost ready for her reveal. Stay tuned.

FEATURED PIECE

The Autumn Mirror | Buttercream + Black Cherry

After a dozen color tests we landed on black cherry and buttercream for this Autumn Mirror — and the combination is stunning.

Watching these two pigments reveal themselves through the sanding process has been one of those moments where the material reminds you why you fell in love with it. The color lives beneath the surface — hidden inside layers until the hand decides what to reveal. You can plan for it. You can test for it. But there's always a moment when the material surprises you with something you didn't expect.

A dozen tests to get here. Two colors. Weeks of layering. And a piece that will be here long after we're gone. That's the point.

The Autumn Mirror. W 49" / D 3" / H 67"
Custom colorways available for your project.

[email protected]

A PERSONAL NOTE

The Anderson Family Olympics.

Every year the Anderson family gets together for our family Olympics. This year Nebraska hosted for the first time.

Four days. Zero mercy. Scavenger hunt. Obstacle course. Speed scrabble. Spelling bee. Jenga. A fashion show that had no business being that competitive. And obviously wig snatching.

In a turn of events that shocked everyone - Tucker took the gold. The whole thing. Champion. We're still processing.

Our voices are gone. Our bodies are battered. Someone definitely pulled something they shouldn't have. And we are wrecked in the most beautiful, exhausted, laughing-until-you-cry kind of way.

I moved my family across the country and our people still show up, louder and more competitive than ever. That's the abundance. That's why we do everything we do.

XO Brooke

THE INVITATION

Touch the material

We're shipping custom sample sets to designers, architects, collectors, and developers who want to experience our proprietary pigmented plaster firsthand.

We recently sent samples to Studio H Design Group and are in active conversations with designers across the country about custom collaborations. If you've been watching our work and wondering what the material feels like in person — now is the time to find out.

We're also booking custom commissions through the fall : furniture, wall sculpture, mirrors, lighting, and architectural panels. Any color. Any scale.

Our new collection debuts this September. Get in touch now to be first to see it.

143 Ludlow St
New York, NY 10002

Jo McKay - Director of Sales | [email protected]

Tamara Malas 143 Ludlow St, New York, NY 10002