When our intrepid wordsmith, Susannah, decamped this summer for a six week artist's residency in Tuscany—to go write songs with her musician husband Andrew and their two-and-a-half year old daughter Lois Rose—she had a very specific packing list, the barest essentials:
When it comes to entertaining, sometimes you want to pull out all the stops: Creamy nests of homemade pasta. Perfect pours of a special sip, made to order. Tiny soufflés. Any sauce that has an -aise at the end of it. One Foundry Family member likes to make "latkes eggs benedict" brunch for 20, which has the labor-intensive-triple-whammy of making and frying latkes, poaching 40 eggs at once, and whipping up an -aise, holland. WHEW! While we certainly love challenging ourselves to up the ante on our entertaining game (and these end-all-be-all party show-stoppers are, indeed, absolutely wonderful) SOMETIMES you just want to have a few people over and not stress about it, right?
While adorable dogs, the magical smell of beeswax candles, and oodles of gorgeous glassware are pretty darn nice, the thing that REALLY makes The Foundry feel like home is our family. While well-made objects of beauty and use make the daily rhythms of life more pleasant + effortless, like in any home, it's the people inside that really make it glow. Since not all of you live within striking distance of our real-life shop, we wanted to bring a little Foundry Family magic your way (if we close our eyes and *wish* it will almost be like we all live together on the same block).
Not all heroes wear capes, but most of them carry a functionally stylish, infinitely serviceable bag. From James Herriot to Mary Poppins, there is a certain workaday grace in keeping exactly what you need close to hand. While our daily adventures might not (always) call for birthing a foal or pulling a floor lamp out of our purse, the same powerful magic applies.