Nora Blog — #Detroit

Do you have a little one in your life who loves to be in the kitchen? José Regueiro Studios has created beautiful “Li’l Chef” cutting boards, which, like Wu Tang, are for the children. This product is intended to inspire and encourage children’s early interest in food and cooking with a professional grade product. José first started working with wood as a child himself, making a model boat to play with in Lake Michigan. Like a high octane chef, he drinks a lot of espresso for breakfast, and like most Detroiters loves Belle Isle. Come chop it up with him...

You’re probably asking yourself what a hornbook is. They are study primers, originating in 15th century Europe, which were often shaped like auction paddles but meant for primary education. Don Kilpatrick III has created an homage to hornbooks with his “Horn Block Printing Kit” for Nora. The kit can be used for learning to relief print or can be displayed as gorgeous artwork in the home. It is an interactive and educational product designed for art collectors and anyone interested in teaching themselves (or others) printmaking. Or, for those already in the know, it can be used to create beautiful...

Tiff Massey is about that life. She is a Detroiter through and through. She liked Belle Isle before the state took it over, and will tell you that just because they renamed Cass Corridor as Midtown, it “doesn’t mean you can treat it like Royal Oak”. The 2015 Kresge Fellow says that the people positively impacting culture in Detroit are the natives, and people who are vested in the city, not invested. She started as a scientist, and now she’s here, creating a bag made of scraps from the automotive industry. Her body of work is sculptural. often wearable, and...

Sarah Rose Sharp is a woman of many talents, and a 2015 Kresge fellow. She loves breakfast and artists so much she blogs about both. When asked who is impacting culture in Detroit in a positive way, she’ll tell you that, like your Facebook semi-official relationship, it’s complicated. She is a self-taught quilter whose first quilt celebrated the seasonal rhythms of life in Detroit. The quilts and leather tree ring placemats she has made for Nora are for “people who cherish living with art and embracing functionality and beauty” in their day-to-day lives. She loves the Shipherd Greens Community Garden...

Sometimes artists experiment with new materials and things get weird. Other times, artists do weird things and experiments end up smelling like French fries. One of Thing Thing’s first experiments involved deep frying recycled plastic in vegetable oil to its melting point and molding it to cardstock models. It worked, and the result became a prototype for the rotationally molded plastic pillow lamp they created for Nora’s Culture Lab collaboration. The collective chose their name by creating a big funny list with a short list of rules: no pretentious acronyms, and they could not use the word atelier. Their friend...