Nora Blog — #Detroit

Andy Malone’s name means Wolf Boy, so you know he’s not playing around. He still manages to be charming and affable, so don’t let the name fool you. When he was ten years old, Andy built a pinewood derby car, and while he didn’t truly learn how to work with wood until after college, he recalls loving the feeling of shaping the wood into a new form. For Nora’s pop-up, he has made one of a kind mutoscopes, or kinetic animation mechanisms. They are like sophisticated and beautiful flip book televisions that will be irresistible to animation lovers and nostalgic...

Looking for a little light in your life? Patrick Ethen of ROYA Design has lovely lamps that will cast a floral geometric shadow on your heart. These cardboard beauties are designed to be flat-packed for easy shipping and assembly. Cardboard is a ubiquitous material, and Patrick believes that it’s actually so useful that people have lost the ability to appreciate it objectively. Think about how sturdy cardboard is, and the way it catches light so nicely. While he tried other materials to design these polyhedra lamps, he came back to reliable cardboard. He loves the Dequindre Cut and believes that...

When Clover and Mars get out of bed in the morning, they eat quinoa, blackberries, yogurt and hazelnuts while dreaming about being on Belle Isle. They make products for those among us who love to host dinner parties and afternoon teas. For the Nora’s Culture Lab pop-up they have created a lovely entertaining set, a table runner with napkins . They first used these kinds of materials when making tea towels that were organic, functional, absorbent, and left no streak behind. They can get behind anything that is rustic and modern simultaneously. Their name, Clover and Mars comes from their...

Abigail Murray loves Detroit because there are so many people positively impacting culture here. She takes her eggs over-easy and laid by her neighbor’s chickens and she grows her own watermelon. Her love of ceramics began at Andersen Ranch, where Ken Price taught her how to make cups, and that passion has carried over into her products for Nora. She has created stacks of black porcelain planters and vases that were made from slabs cast on plaster molds. The textures were taken from reclaimed materials from her project Afterhouse, which converts an irreparably damaged home into a greenhouse. The...

If you are someone who doesn’t shy away from politics at the dinner table, this collaboration between Iris Eichenberg and Nadege Roscoe Rumjahn might be for you. They’ve embroidered, stitched, stained and printed an incredible tablecloth that merges mundane needlework and the language of industry. This experimental collaboration uses abstract presentations of city grids and plants taking over the grids as a Detroit table drawing. They love blue chicory and wild flowers breaking through asphalt. Fun fact about chicory: if you put it in a vase, the flowers will brown by the end of the day and every morning new...