Honor and Folly
stay shoppe cook host blog

ABIGAIL MURRAY
ceramic dinnerware

I met Abigail when we found ourselves in the same cooking club (one day, I'll tell you about the transcendental things she can do with tomatoes), and over dinner one night, she volunteered to make a collection of dinnerware for Honor & Folly. A graduate of Cranbrook, Abigail currently lives in Ann Arbor, where she shares a studio with her architect husband. Her ceramic work is largely commission-based, but with her new delicate and immensely beautiful dinnerware, her work will be accessible to a much wider audience.

AMY BEM
aprons | table linens

Amy is a star hobby seamstress. She makes the Honor & Folly house collection of linens, aprons and fabric pillows, and helps with the overall vision and execution of everything else. Translation: she drives me around to thrift/antique stores, promptly answers my panicked do-you-like-this-fabric texts and even helped design the website. Amy graduated from architecture school, works as a graphic designer for a recipe catalogue, plays in a band (former member of Pascal, current member of Computer Perfection), and is one of the most creative people I know.

BECKI CHERNOFF
big clay bowls

Born and raised in central New York, Becki moved to the Motor City because she is totally car-obsessed and decided there was no where else for her to be. She's been working with clay since high school, and she made a few medium-sized, brightly colored bowls for the lucky Honor & Folly kitchen. Unrelated, Becki has the most amazing curly head of hair in Detroit.

BILLY LENNOX
wooden bowls | mortar + pestles | wine stoppers

A Corktown neighbor, Billy is enrolled in the jazz program at Wayne State University. But when he's not studying or playing the guitar, he spends a lot of time in his contractor Dad's woodshop, where he's been helping out since he was a kid. These days, they collaborate on bowls, rolling pins and small household items made from scrap. He's disarmingly humble.

BOURGEOIS WALKER
work aprons | feather sculpture

This Detroit-based design collective turns out screenprinted t-shirts, clothing and utilitarian personal and household objects. Three of the four work at Astro Coffee (hello, neighbor!), so it makes sense they wanted to try their hand at a heavy-duty work apron, designed by Benny Saginaw. Meghann Rotary is responsible for the feather sculpture above the bed (which is not so utilitarian). Full disclosure: She has watched my kids, so I clearly trust her. But after seeing their apartment—amazing collections of macabre, fashiony and old timey objects with plenty of feathers, wood and leather—I knew I could trust her enough in another department: "Will you make a feather sculpture for above the bed?" "What should it look like?" "Whatever you want."

BRUSH FACTORY
Rosie Kovacs & Hayes Shanesy
Bags | benches | objects

Rosie is a fashion designer, and her boyfriend Hayes is a woodworker. I stopped into their shop while passing through Cincinnati, and was blown away by their seriously beautiful old workshop and studio housed in the old Brush Factory. The honest approach to their craft, whether working on an apron wrap-dress or a hand - turned walnut bowl, is all about honoring method - "the way things should be made" – and for that very reason, their work feels like an extension of where its created. Sometimes Hayes' dad, who recently retired from Popular Woodworking, comes in to help out in the shop; I think that's pretty cool.

CRISTIN RICHARD
lights

Cristin is an immensely talented Detroit artist known for her delicate, frilly dress sculptures made with most unconventional of materials. Created from pig intestines she gets at Eastern Market, Cristin's sausage-casing gowns do a stunning job of exploring female sexuality, haute couture and the perception of beauty. I asked her if she'd be willing to apply her honed, fine art technique to a home-related pursuit, she agreed, and we decided on lighting - beautiful, illuminated sculptures that hang from the ceiling - every bit as ethereal as her dresses.

K.I.D. Knit in Detroit
Claudia Wigger | Sara Woodward

Almost two years ago, my good friend Sara Woodward - a patient soul - taught me to knit. Since then, she taught any willing person in her Detroit neighborhood, Lafayette Park, and started a knitting club to share patterns, problems and encouragement. They have turned into a talented force. A few of the Lafayette Park knitters have been making things for Honor & Folly, namely speed-knitter Claudia Wigger, who is responsible for the beautiful greige and neon yellow blanket in one of the bedrooms.

EMILY BRENT
cutting boards

Emily is a poet and substitute teacher who lives on an urban farm with her arborist boyfriend in Detroit. When he gets a call to take down a tree, he brings it home and she makes something beautiful from it. Something useful. I took my kids (ages five and two) over one afternoon to check out their farm spread across a handful of city lots. It's a magical place with chickens, a huge vegetable garden, flowers growing everywhere and a tire swing. You can feel the heart of the place in the wood of her boards.

PALACE PAPERS
Casey Gunschel
wallpaper

I've been writing about Casey in interior magazines since she launched her hand-blocked, small-production wallpaper collection six years ago. I'm thrilled to finally be hanging Parsnipity somewhere, and will proudly serve as her distributor in the Detroit area. In addition to being a wallpaper designer and fine artist, she recently added furniture design and leather work to her skill roster.

STEVEN HAULENBEEK
lights | vases

Steven is a Chicago-based lighting designer, who also designs a bunch of other stuff: vases, chairs, paddles and cast metal dishes. He worked for Holly Hunt for a bit but decided to strike out on his own, designing lighting installations for local businesses and spearheading a collective called the Object Design League. The skin vases were designed by his collective, The Mighty Bearcats.

LAKE SUPERIOR WOOLEN
wool blankets

Eric Wallis is a third-generation farmer of the bicentennial farm in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He grew up raising beef and dairy cattle, but as he explains, "This far up, we grow grass. And sheep are made to pasture." But when it came to the wool, he was losing money. He started looking into alternative options to help with the farm's bottom dollar. For the past 10 years, they've been using all their wool to make blankets, produced at a small company in Rhode Island. These beautiful woolen blankets have literally saved the family farm.

ZEB SMITH
stools

Zeb is the exhibit coordinator at MOCAD, which means he's always building things, namely the infrastructure for new exhibits. But sometimes he still makes stuff for fun on the side-- like the rough-hewn counter stools for the island at Honor & Folly, which he crafted entirely from scrap wood. Five years ago, he collaborated with photographer Corine Vermuleun on a credenza for our living room, and we love it, so I knew he'd be just the guy to ask.

LAUREN BRUYNINGA
vintage scout

Lauren Bruyninga used to run a vintage furniture shop out of Peoples Records—back when it was still in the Forest Arms building. But she was a few years ahead of her time. She once scored 100 original Bertoia chairs at a school library closing, and she couldn't give them away for free. Lauren delivers little bits and bobs she knows I'll love, and from time to time, she'll curate special vintage sales at Honor & Folly.

THE ARTISTS

Megan O'Connell
Megan is the founding director of the new Signal Return print shop in Detroit, and founder of Dead Skin Press. I first saw her work hanging in Rogues Gallery in Maine and learned she was leaving the area for Detroit. When our paths crossed months later, she showed me her work - and I fell in love with her tableture and texts crafted from hand-cast, dyed and carved paper suspended in Italian beeswax. The triptych hanging in Honor & Folly was inspired by Virginia Wolf's Orlando.

Don Kilpatrick
Don teaches illustration for the College of Creative Studies in Detroit. His print was printed for Signal Return, and I fell in love with it at the Clandestine dinner in honor of the opening of the print shop.

Liza Berkoff and Lora Fosberg
Liza is an old, dear friend of mine from Chicago. She took one of these photos when we were visiting Detroit, staying in the apartment that now houses Honor & Folly. The photo was taken out the big front window, showing a glimpse of a barely recognizable Michigan Avenue. Eight years later, the photograph was used in a series collaboration with artist Lora Fosberg. The pieces just came down from a show at the Linda Warren Gallery in Chicago, perfect timing for the opening.

THE CREATIVE TEAM

Illustration, Michael Burdick
Michael hand-drew the skeleton keys and the logo, which could not be more perfect. See his work here.

Photography, Marvin Shaouni
Marvin is a fine art and editorial photographer. See more of his beautiful images here.

Website, Alivia Zivich
Alivia is an artist, who also knows her way around code. She built my website. See her work here.




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