It’s Seattle Week!

People always ask us about the American design scene, and for the longest time, inquiring after American design was just shorthand for trying to figure out what was happening in New York. It’s not that design wasn’t happening in other places; it just wasn’t happening at a scale and with a voice that would make it cohere into something bigger than itself. But oh, how that’s changed in the last five years. Ask us about American design, and we’ll talk your ear off about the amazing ceramics coming out of Los Angeles, or the interesting material experiments happening in Chicago, or Jonah Takagi, who’s singlehandedly making “D.C. design” happen. But the city we’re really, really excited about right now? Seattle.

Seattle pretty much hasn’t been this cool since grunge. Seattle is suddenly home to one of the best stores in the nation (Totokaelo, of course), two of the most interesting still-life photographers, heritage brands galore, and a whole mess of furniture and lighting designers creating the kind of beautifully crafted, historically relevant, just so-darn-pretty work that you know you want in your own home. Seattle is proof positive that these days you need only to find two or three talents in a local scene (that’s Iacoli & McAllister, Ladies & Gentlemen, and Grain, leading the way) before scratching the surface will lead you, Tumblr-style, to a whole community of creators who no longer feel the need to live in a major city in order to express themselves. We found so many talents, in fact, that we’ll be devoting the next week and a half to introducing you to their wonderful work. Stay tuned.

(Special thanks to photographer Michael A. Muller, who spent a week in Seattle, documenting four of these stories just for us, and whose beautiful ferry photo is published above.)