Long Summer Days

At Simon Pearce, we take our design inspiration from Nature with all that New England has to offer, from the rolling terrain to the lakes, rivers and waterfalls.  We cherish time outside, a walk in the woods, or time spent at the waterside this time of the year which infuses our design thinking.

IMG_8846

As summer sets in and the days blend together, we strive to regain some sense of normalcy and a chance to relax and to recharge.  The long days of sunshine offer time to focus on comfort, warmth, and familiarity.  We rediscover ways to enjoy sunsets and the evening outdoors while we savour summer drinks or wine out of our favorite glasses.  Taking a break allows us to gain the sense of enlightenment that comes from being out in Nature whether by land or sea.

Vintner & Marble

With change in our everyday routines we seek ways to live with a new approach, and try to surround ourselves with beautiful things that give us joy.  We’ve been adding to our Vintner wine tasting collection, with the new Coupe and Tulip wine. The Vintner glasses, with their stunning good looks and refined function are an opportunity to upgrade your wine tasting experience.   We’ve also added the new material combination of glass and marble to the wine tasting story.  The marble forms are inspired by a visit to the recreated atelier of Brancusi at the Pompidou Center in Paris.  An artist of the early 20th Century he was known for simplicity, elemental shapes, and a liberal use of material which are ideas that are true to our design approach.

Brancusi's Atelier
Brancusi’s Atelier

The design process started with small clay sketches, and hand renderings to evolve the aesthetic of the group. The marble items center around wine & cheese serving, with future designs in the queue to round out the concept.  The smooth simplicity of the marble designs marry perfectly with the elegant outlines of our Vintner Collection.

The marble is another way for us to bring a new earthy material into the mix of our brand expression.  The latest introductions are the Marble Chiller and the Vintner Wine Decanter.

 

Woodbury Phone Holder

While sheltering at home, the effort to reinvent the home office became paramount for many of us.  Looking at the desktop landscape, we quickly realized we needed something to hold our phone or tablet, while video conferencing, and came up with the Woodbury Phone Holder to compliment our other items in the collection.  Having the appearance of being sculpted from a block of ice, our proportions are scaled to work with most phones and smaller tablets.   The clear solid base is an exceptional design for anyone looking for a crafted technology solution for the office or even the kitchen while following recipes.

Romance Heart Vase

The sculptural outcome of finessing a unique form with our talented glassblowers, the Romance Heart Vase is a work of art in glass.  It started out as renderings on paper, and then went to interpretation by our master glassblowers, with each one capturing a special moment of expression with the human hand.  The versatility of the fluid shape performs perfectly as a vase with summer blooms and also as a decor object that can stand on its own.  A great gift for any occasion or for someone special to give a heart to.

Shell Platter

An iconic item for this summer entertaining, is the new organic shell platter.  The new design takes it’s natural inspiration from ancient fossil spirals revealed in stones of the Isle La Motte, here in Vermont.  The concept was translated into a textured shell, starting with hand sculpting the design into plaster and then a metal mold to cast the glass platter.  It’s a versatile object with plenty of surface for serving, and a visual delight when sun shines through it.

For the latest summer offerings visit our website and stores.

Our stores are open exhibiting some of the best collections in glass, pottery, and accessories, with a focus on summer seasonal entertaining at home.  Shop by appointment, to be immersed in the assortments of beautifully crafted wares to uplift your everyday experience.

IMG_8642
Summer Blues on Display in the Mill Retail Shop

Shop our stores:

https://www.simonpearce.com/our-stores#shop-by-appointment

Sheltering at Home

With current events impacting us all so deeply, we collectively discover ways within ourselves to embrace the unexpected.  We find comfort and positive support through togetherness. We explore a new path forward and enrich our lives while sheltering at home. We find more meaning in gatherings especially around the table whether at home or virtually. 

We yearn for a warm cozy atmosphere and strive to cultivate a sense of safety and serenity taking hints from the danish concept of Hygge.  Well being is key, while optimism and finding balance in our lives helps uplift us throughout each day.  A new normal evolves, and a homebound routine incorporates virtual meetings with colleagues, while the home office becomes a dynamic hub of activity.

At home office
Working from Home

We seek interaction and connection with family and friends to compare notes on ways to feel good, be healthy, share recipes and stay nourished.  As we navigate these times a new appreciation for the things around us emerges as we curate a sense of what we want in our home environment.  While embracing the change we can still celebrate life’s holidays, birthdays, milestones, and make things work for us at home.  Entertaining can be a source of joy by sharing botanical drinks, creating craft beer tastings, wine & cheese, or sending invites to a virtual happy hour.

Look for What Speaks to You

Throughout our Simon Pearce line, we have many of the quintessential handmade elements available to make those home moments special.  Our drinkware collections contain a fine selection of beautiful and functional items you can use to curate your home.  Having the time to pay attention to details, you can appreciate the nuances of the handmade. 

A few Spring New Arrivals now available are the Coral Tealight, Vintner Wine Decanter with Marble Stopper, and the Sunderland Artisan Board made in Vermont.  We are now offering the Alpine Tasting Flight that is excellent for chilling beer on the soapstone base.  The perfect addition to outfit the home bar cart for any tasting event.

Keeping the Furnaces Turned On

At Simon Pearce, we have adapted to the new paradigm and are continuing to practice our craft. Our ethos of ‘handmade quality’ drives us forward and everything we make is a unique expression of humanity.  

The hand is involved in every step of bringing each object to life.  We hand draw, and model concepts, like the dog and the new puppy then work out the details on the glass floor with the expertise of our glassblowers.  Each object is a combination of the hand of the maker, the form, the fine quality of the material, and that is blended with our distinct  ‘point of view’ about design.

These elements cannot be separated. Our passion for handmade excellence permeates everyone in the company with ‘purpose’.  We love to share what we create, because we are confident it will make these times spent at home, that much better.  

To see the latest items for sheltering at home please visit our website.

Link to the At Home Offerings

Try Our Take Out

If you need a break from cooking in your kitchen, and you are in the Upper Valley, the Simon Pearce Restaurant has a new menu with delightful dishes of ready to heat dinner. Jerod Rockwell is running the kitchen for take out which can be picked up with curbside service.

Link to the Simon Pearce Restaurant

 

Holiday Gatherings

IMG_2696

Come in from the cold and create warmth at your table this holiday season with our new candlelight designs. The Engraved Aspen Forest Hurricane brings a new feel to our assortment with its engraved art. The engraving lends itself to wintery themes and the candlelight reflects between the branches. It’s a simple silhouette with a unique touch.

Another way to incorporate candlelight is to place one of our many tea lights at each place setting. Every guest can enjoy their own candlelight gift to take home at the end of the evening. The Echo Lake Tealight is a new treasure with strands of molten glass that wrap around, creating shimmering light. We’ve placed one atop our red napkins, with a clever fold that holds evergreen sprigs. The KP Love Your Brain Snowball Tealight * adds whimsy with its shape and texture of a freshly formed snowball and would also add a festive flare at place settings.

* 20% of proceeds from this item fund Kevin and Adam Pearce’s LoveYourBrain Foundation, and its mission to promote holistic healing for those affected by traumatic brain injury.

Down the center of the table, we begin with our customer favorite, the Scandinavian White & Natural Runner. Any of our candlelight vessels will captivate with their handcrafted shapes, weighty presence, and unique surface treatments.  To create a centerpiece of candlelight, nestle tea lights and hurricanes of various sizes amongst seasonal flora. In Vermont, it is red-berried branches and various evergreen sprigs that we can bring inside. Eucalyptus would add another interesting shape and hue. Shown here also, is our Alabaster Votive with a milky marbled surface that plays off our clear glass and adds dimension. The final accent is our twinkle string lights set in and amongst the greens and candlelight. Read on to learn about the new hurricane and tree collection that is quickly becoming a new favorite.

In Northern Vermont, the Long Trail winds around the edges of Sterling Pond, whose icy waters inspired our Sterling Pond Collection. Small crystals of glass encase the simple soft hurricane shapes, creating beautiful candlelight flickerings. The same crystals cover our conical shaped trees for the ultimate winter wonderland forest.

The beauty of the Sterling Pond Trees is the many ways in which they can be lit. We love the way the twinkle string lights (also available in battery-powered) create a glow when placed inside each tree or amongst a grouping. They can also fit over our mini LED light (an alternative to placing on top of our larger LED base). These 6, 8 and 12 inch trees create the perfect trio to use on your table. They can be moved to the sideboard or window sill when more space is needed at the table.

For place settings, consider adding pieces from our Barre dinnerware in the satiny Alabaster glaze, perfect for this crisp table setting. Framing the settings here is our new Charlotte flatware. We love the textured handles with their simple, geometric shape and the perfect balance of the pieces when we hold them.

* linen is a sustainable fabric. Far less water and pesticides are used to grow flax, from which linen is woven, and no parts of the flax plant are wasted (yielding linseed oil, twines, and ropes)

Our partnership with Celina Mancurti to design holiday linens has led to a favorite motif, the evergreen, and we offer it in a variety of colors, shown here in white on red. Also, Andrew Pearce wood side plates are shown layered here in cherry wood, for a light and crisp holiday setting.

The tablescape is inspiring and inviting. Your guests are about to arrive and you have chosen your wines for the evening. The recently launched Vintner stemware is our choice for the table this season. Its bowl and stem are shaped and pulled from one gather of molten glass, creating a beautiful angled shape with a lightweight feel in the hand. These are the characteristics of a great wine tasting glass, ready for an evening of friends and festive times.

 

In Good Company

Twin Farms/Opus One Collaboration

Gathering around the Table

We recently had the pleasure of joining forces with Opus One Winery and Twins Farms, to provide a beautiful Vermont based dining event for guests at the Twin Farms.  The aim of our efforts, was to bring people together for an elevated experience around the dining table, with the combination of great food, amazing wine, and handcrafted excellence in glass.

This dinner event, at Twin Farms, featured seven courses, by guest Chef Sarah Steffan, of Blackberry Farm, and Nathan Rich, of Twin Farms. France Posener, who is from Opus One, told amazing vineyard tales of the company history, it’s evolution, and gave an in depth background on the wines being tasted. To compliment the theme of the evening, each couple attending the event received a Bristol Wine Decanter from Simon Pearce.

IMG_2091

The decanter, is a special glass vessel for us, which started out much like the Bristol Tumbler adhering to proportions from the golden section ratios found in nature.  Simon brings a keen eye to proportioning, and attention to detail that is a hallmark of our design philosophy. We carry these values through every new design, and it is innate to this modern decanter.

We blend distinctive form with function. The character of the design first started with renderings on paper while considering the right capacity for a bottle of wine, and creating the proper amount of interior surface area for the wine to decant. Through the sampling process, we tested them and made  revisions, before the process of manufacturing began, right here at our workshops, in Vermont.

355DABA5-33D3-4C9F-AEDA-9F9FA5E0FAE4

With our trip to Napa last spring, we set out to form relationships with companies like Opus One, and cultivating a deeper connection with handcrafted American wine.

Our first collaborative dining and wine tasting experience around the table was at Ocean House, an amazing destination in Rhode Island.  The culinary expertise for the food was a combination of Twin Farms with Ocean House, and France Posener eloquently spoke about the Opus One wine being served, and I gave the guests insights about the design and making of our Barre Pitcher which we featured that evening.

 

The Barre Pitcher is a contemporary fluid form that  is a joy to use, and is reminiscent of the silhouette of an Egret.

Shaping the Wine Tasting Experience

Introducing the Vintner Collection

 

“We set out to build a glass line with characteristics that are designed for the serious wine taster.” -JM

Last May, Jay Benson, Dana Sabatino, and James Murray ventured on a trip to the California wine country to visit tasting rooms and meet with wine producers we are considering for partnerships. Being inspired, we came back to Vermont and created new stemware to appeal to people serious about wine tasting, and lovers of thin, hand-blown glass that enhances the tasting experience, without having a glass that overtakes the wine, in weight and physicality.

 

The pulled-stem technique that we use, results in a thinner, more lightweight stem and bowl typical of a classic Sommelier’s glass.  The thin stem and base offer functionality and grace.

 

The line was designed with modern proportions, taking cues from our Bristol red wine glass in form.  The glasses are generously scaled to show off the wines within.

There are many options of wine tasting glasses by European makers that are machine made, and have a seam on the stem.  The Vintner Collection from Simon Pearce does not have seams because we hand-craft each glass.

p1200234

The thin bowl of the glass is designed to have a lot of volume, and room for air to circulate with the wine, and yet not be heavy. Ripple lines of our handcrafted process still appear in the bowl of our glass, different from machine made glass by other wine tasting glass companies in the industry. Our bowl shapes are ideal, and relate to how quickly  we want the wine to pass into the taster’s mouth, which effects the experience and flavor.

 

An additional benefit of the thin base, is that it is easy to swirl the wine while holding the foot, during a wine tasting.

vintnerstemware_shot11_10.24.18-2870-edit.jpg

The Vintner Collection is sure to please anyone looking for the “whole wine tasting experience”, with the refined balance of the preferred wine in a high quality hand-crafted glass.

Set the Table: Urban Natural

final_springsupplement2018-209-edit-e1515086456981.jpg

The solstice has passed and days are getting longer, but temps are still frigid and the landscape is decidedly mid-winter. Up here in Vermont, we waffle between deep drifts of snow and melted patches of ice, as January cannot decide whether to thaw or freeze us out.

silverlakecenterpiecebowl1.jpg

All this indecision with the weather has inspired us to find ways to clean and refresh our table settings with dark and light contrasts and clean and simple lines, incorporating the warmth of beeswax candlelight and the texture of our beloved Silver Lake glass serving pieces.

Levels 2@2x

Our Barre and Westport Dinnerware can be layered in a matte Slate black and creamy Alabaster white , to create the canvas for a tablescape that is a study in lights and darks.

apsideplate.jpg

From there, add dimension by layering Andrew Pearce’s 7” wood plates or bowls.  The Westport dinner plate nests the 7” wood plates perfectly, as they share the same silhouette of flat base & straight rimmed sides.

RS4954_2017FallHoliday-148@2x

Two favorite Simon Pearce Glass collections are shown for this table. The Hampton Stemless Wine Glass is a lighter weight glass, with simple lines to use everyday on this modern tablescape, or try our Woodstock stemware, Simon Pearce’s classic wine glass, with the iconic hand finished opening.

Round out the theme by choosing one of our mixed media flatware patterns – Westport with its black resin handles, or the more delicate Sabre with horn or teak riveted handles. These patterns are all refreshingly casual alternatives to the usual stainless flatware.

Levels 1@2x

Gorgeous table linens in black and natural are less stark than the typical black and white theme, and will carry you through a multitude of table settings. Choose our stripes, solid, gridded or feather prints. Mix and match to bring some life to to your dining landscape. Add a sprig of green for the final contrast on this table of neutrals, clean and simple.

Holidays in Vermont

Copy of Holiday2017-601.jpg

There are times when simplicity makes a bold statement. We invite you to pare back your table. Let the rich tones of the wood surface create a backdrop for candlelight, glassware and our warm Belmont dinnerware with its interesting crackle glaze (we’ve used ivory, but the Celadon is also a natural for the holidays).

Copy of Holiday2017-612.jpg

Then, before your friends or family arrive, take some time outdoors.  Gather up some natural elements such as evergreens to style your hurricane, or red berries to adorn your napkins, tied with twine. Here we’ve used Hipericum berries, but you could snip winter berries from the woods, or rosehip berries if you live near the coast. Finally, eucalyptus is a foliage abundantly available at this time of year. We tied bits of Silver Dollar Eucalyptus with our red berries, but another favorite of mine is Seeded Eucalyptus.

Copy of Holiday2017-613.jpg

This simple Vermont style is punctuated with some holiday sparkle from stainless serveware. Fill a Georg Jensen pitcher with water, or serve salad from one of our hammered bowls for a natural, textured look.

3258_HammeredSteelSalad

Special enough to celebrate, but simple enough to leave the focus on those with whom you gather. Christmas, Vermont style.

Copy of Holiday2017-607.jpg

Forest Alchemy: Holiday Table

RS4988_2017FallHoliday-364

Frosty mornings in Vermont inspire us to create table settings for the Holidays with natural elements. In this table setting, we create a lavish setting by combining our beautiful new Burlington dinnerware and redesigned Stratton stemware with botanical elements and a sophisticated color palette of silver and white.

rs4989_2017fallholiday-365-e1510857360896.jpg

The elegant swirling pattern of the Stratton stem and the organic shape of the Burlington dinnerware make for an ethereal pairing. The stemware swirls take on a natural vine like appearance, and the cloud colored, irregular surface of the dinnerware adds a warmth to the sophisticated tones of silver and white.

 

Beneath the cloud colored dinnerware, we layer our Eucalyptus Runner, in white linen with a silver print. The artist screenprints these runners by hand in a color mix exclusive for Simon Pearce. I love the look of this runner on its own, down the center of the table, but you can also layer it with our Stonewashed tablecloths in Silver or White, and nothing is stopping you from placing multiple runners across the table under the place settings, as shown above. We’ve paired the runner with our silver and white stonewashed napkins in these shots, but the Eucalyptus print napkin is subtle enough to pair with the print runner as well.

BloomBowlS

Stainless adds the final pop to this tablescape, in the form of hammered Simon Pearce napkin rings and mirror polished Georg Jensen serveware, all available online and in our retail stores. We are excited to offer Georg Jensen designs for purchase for the first time. The modern and timeless designs are a favorite of Simon’s.

rs4985_2017fallholiday-330-1.jpg

Finally, we’ve shown our newest hurricane, the Echo Lake on the table for the ultimate candlelight experience. You could opt to use the Echo Lake hurricane for floral, and add in Georg Jensen Cobra candlesticks. It is the versatility of our product and the mix of materials that makes Simon Pearce tablescapes come alive. Cheers !