THE MENDOTA COLLECTION

OUR FURNITURE HIATUS IS OVER

My brother-in-law had put together a booth to promote his home theater business for the NARI show at the Westside Marriott the year we moved back to Wisconsin. Rick and I were directionless, and clueless about what we were going to do now that we were in this, as we referred to it when we were feeling sorry for ourselves, Podunk backwater town called Madison. We started out knowing no one but my relatives and had no business contacts to speak of to revive our business. It became a daunting task to find any way to connect with the Madison design community or to get potential local clients to notice us. So the day the NARI show opened I drove over to the Westside Hilton, plopped down my entry fee and began my walk through the aisles of vendors at the show. There were plenty of manufacturers of building supplies, a couple of interior designers, a bunch of builders and a handful of architects. I handed out a half-dozen business cards and collected three or four. One of those was an architect, Ed Linville, whose work shown through. We had a long conversation about the design climate in Madison. I told him about our history.

When it got to our furniture business he recommended we contact a furniture builder he had worked with, Terry Sweeney at Black Wolf Design. I emailed Terry several times and we spent several months trying to set up a meeting. We ended up having lunch and talking about our separate businesses and the dismal prospects of the industry. We left with each other's contact info and I thought that was pretty much it. It was about six months later when I got another email from Terry requesting another meeting at our studio. An idea had been percolating in Terry's head. When the three of us sat down this time there was something in the air that made the meeting almost electric. This time there was a connection that seemed to link our two futures in ways we hadn't previously imagined. We were designers with a slumbering furniture line. Terry was a manufacturer with a product line in need of design direction. Terry had lost his wife to cancer. It wasn't until this meeting when we showed him our furniture catalogue that he saw the line of Emmy furniture named after our daughter. Emmy was Terry's wife's name. It was like something was meant to happen.

That's how we became Black Wolf Design's consulting design team. It's been a collaboration that has now produced a new line of furniture, The Mendota Collection. The collection will make its debut introduction at the MillerRossom showroom in Minneapolis at a cocktail party on October 25th,

The collection consists of several casegood pieces, including a console and side table, cocktail tables and seating. The pieces will be offered in natural walnut, rift cut oak and ash with top plate options in natural wood, lacquered wood or concrete. Seating comes with a cane back and upholstered seat cushion and lumbar pillow.

The collection will be available through the BWD website, www.blackwolfdesign.com or through MillerRossom, www.millerrossom.com.








WHICH CAMP ARE YOU IN?
I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday. It happened twice but I think it indicates a human attribute that separates us into two distinct camps. I'm not sure if it's gender related but I'm thinking this might be true and the test for this might be a visual one.

Before you go any further take a look at these two pictures and make some mental notes about what you see.

If you looked at these pictures and saw a piece of furniture and a beautiful girl you're in camp "A". If you looked at these two images and saw a dark line running down the left support of the console frame adjacent to the green concrete top that made it look like a construction flaw or if you saw the printing dot on Emmy's nose than you're probably in camp "B".
I think a lot of people look at life in very broad strokes. This is my camp, camp "A". I tend to see things as a big picture, which means I miss a lot of the details and tend to minimize their importance. I could probably have looked at that picture of the console for hours and never picked up on the black grain of the wood or thought it important. My bad, but I think a lot of people (and men in particular) tend to look over these kinds of things and that's where we get into trouble. There's a perception that comes over me that they're no big deal until someone points them out and doesn't understand how I could have missed something so horrendously wrong. Sound familiar? Try this. You were responsible for getting your three-year-old dressed for daycare and you put her t-shirt on backwards. You see that the kid is dressed and clean. Someone else says, "How could you let her go to daycare with her shirt on backwards?" Now her t-shirt that says, "Kiss Me Kause I'm Kute" reads right over her little hinny and although you might not be embarrassed your partner is mortified. The same held true for so many more issues where we in the "A" camp are thinking no big deal but to the person in the "B" camp it is Armageddon. The same was true for the picture of Emmy. I raced to get them printed because I was so proud of the picture. I grabbed the prints and even cut up the wallet sized ones without seeing the big printer's spot right on her nose. When I gave her the pictures later that night she flipped out over this big bugger hanging off of her nose and demanded I rip them up and make the photo lab reprint them. I saw the beautiful picture. She saw the detail and the flaw.
I don't know if we "A" people can learn to take the time to see the little things and inspect all the details. I don't know if it's because of our gender (mine, of course, is always in question) or if it's because we're less patient and tend to rush through life or if we see things on a bigger canvas and are more able to move on not sweating the details.
I'd love to hear everyone's or anyone's response. Until then I'm going to try to look more closely at those little things that I know truly do matter.

ADDENDUM
POINT - COUNTERPOINT
Okay. Rick here and I know that at the end of each week's post it reads "Posted by Rick Shaver and Lee Melahn" however as many of you know Lee does most of the writing, because he's better at it than I am and he usually posts it only after asking me to proof it. Well I've been in NY for the past week and Lee has had his hands full and spilling over, but I have more than one nit to pick with this particular post. First of all I have at times maligned Madison (a town I LOVE by the way) but the phrase is "this PROVINCIAL backwater". Now as to my gender, it is the same as my gender preference and I for one take great pride in my attention to detail and think it has nothing to do with how many X chromosomes I have. I was the one to point out the dark streak on the console, it was the first thing I saw and though it is not visible in person, in the photo it sticks out as a big flawed sore thumb. Thankfully the Emmy booger (not bugger, which is something else altogether) was rectified before I got home. Lastly, while Mister Linville's work was SHOWN at the NARI show it was there indeed where it SHONE through. So Lee I think I just gave you some fodder for next week's blog ... and I'll make sure I take time to proof it. Respectfully submitted, Rick


THE GALLERY

The Public Enemy, 1931
Photographer, unknown
Movie Still, Warner Bros.