Nora Blog — #Detroit

The husband and wife team of Melissa and Shane Douglas founded Douglas & Co. in Detroit. They drink coffee with coconut oil, raw milk and butter for breakfast. They also make beautifully crafted leather products in small production quantities. They see their joint endeavor as an experiment in growth and learning. Their favorite green space in Detroit is the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory at Belle Isle. They design products for people who love the elegance of simplicity. They see a positive impact in the people who have persevered through hardships in Detroit as well as newcomers to the city who...

Ruth Koelewyn (pronounced cool-eh-wine and meaning fresh wine in Dutch) makes products for people who love to try new things, and who feel a strong connection to the their belongings, their place and their people. She started making jewelry when she was 12 at a community art course and has not sopped since. She has created earrings and necklaces from sterling silver and upcycled maps of Metro Detroit. Her favorite greenspaces in Detroit include the River Walk and Woodmere Cemetery. She believes that everyone in Detroit who is thinking creatively and trying to do or learn new things makes a...

Fran Gross has likely been knitting for longer than you’ve been alive. Her first knitting project was something known as a half hat. As a child she would spend Saturdays at Kresge’s on Livernois or on Wyoming at Spitzer’s Knit Shop with her mom and sisters waiting for a turn with Mrs. Spitzer, who would take their measurements and create a pattern for whatever they dreamed up to create. Fran has knitted some beautiful heirloom pumpkins for Nora that serve as festive autumnal home décor. Growing up in Northwest Detroit, Fran loves Palmer Park and all the newer farms and...

There are tables, and then there are tables. Husband and wife team Ali Sandifer (Abir Ali & Andre Sandifer) have made multi-functional trays for people who love food, handicraft, and can do without tablecloths. Back in 2007, the duo was in Chicago working with walnut, and they realized that plywood was not for them. The hardwood allowed for both freedom and discipline, opening a space to explore form more organically. Their first public art installation was an enormous recreation of the biblical table from the last supper. Diners were invited to then carve their name or a significant event into...

Addie Langford is named after her great grandmother from Elizabethton, TN and lived to be 103 years old. Like her great-grandmother, Addie’s work has a timeless longevity. In collaboration with Scott Hocking, Addie has created sculptural tasting cups perfect for wedding gifts, bridal showers, entertaining, anyone over the age of 21, people at Hugh, your friends, your neighbors, and anyone you’re trying to impress. After her first sleepless year in architecture school, Addie was enrolled in a ceramics class (thanks to her mother) that shaped the course of her life. She studied under the wildly surreal Estonian ceramic artist Sergei...