Tea Bowls & Carved Spoons & Chairs, Oh My!

Jae and I rolled bleary-eyed into Park Slope at 1am this morning after a three-day trip to NH. We were there to visit studios and bring back lots of fresh new work (filling these many boxes), including:

:: Stunning new bowls and tea bowls by Kit Cornell

:: Dozens of best-selling mugs by John Zentner

:: Sponge-painted bowls & new tea pots by Jeff Brown

:: New orbs, fingerpuppets, and wall pieces by Jane Kaufmann, including ones with poppies

:: More mesmerizing wooden spoons and a few magic wands by Dan Dustin

:: A gorgeous Canterbury 4-slat rocking chair in tiger maple and Enfield side chair in cherry by Brian Braskie

We've been buying for Greenjeans for over a year now, and think we're starting to get the hang of it. Instead of buying just everything we like or think is really good, we're checking our impulses against what our customers seem to like. It takes a while to develop a sense of what does and does not appeal to customers, and it differs from region to region. Wood-fired pottery that comes out especially rust red, for instance, doesn't play well here, though in NH that's a desirable look. And for some reason, no matter how lovely they are, our customers don't seem terribly interested in stoneware or porcelain tumblers, although there is great demand for pottery mugs and tea bowls. It's all very curious.

In other news, we've received new shipments of toys by Frank Ridley over the past few days, so we're flush with classic wooden toys again!

I'll post pix of what's inside all these boxes tomorrow. But I'll have to make a few more trips to Parco for espressos if I'm ever to get even half of this unpacked today! If only I could remember which box contains those magic wands...

Here are a couple pictures from our trip.

Jae goofing around at Brian Braskie's

Many of the artisans we visit live down dirt roads like this one. This is the road Brian lives on. It's easy to love these trips!