Welcome to the Worktable

There is a particular kind of "poker tell" that gathers on a studio worktable.

A messy notebook. Your favorite black pen you can't seem to find...again. A color swatch that keeps insisting it is almost right and stay another hour working on it to be sure...but it still might not be quite right. A cup of tea. A list with three things crossed off...and seventeen new things added. It is a flat, tiny museum of possibility.

"August, Otherwise" begins here.
This is a love affair between images and words—and the beginning of something I've wanted to do from long, long ago.

This is not quite a magazine, not quite a shop and not only a studio journal.

It is a place to gather the things that seem worth observing, feeling and being inspired by while we make our way back into a more tactile creative life.

We are devoted to paper, cloth, color, tools, music, beautiful objects, little ceremonies, seasonal moods, and the happiest feeling that bubbles up when you find that one more special something that serendipitously takes a passion project from ordinary to extraordinary.

Is this what it is to chase joie?

This is the editorial side of August Ellery: a worktable, a broadcast, a field note, a drawer left slightly open.

Some things here will become products. Some will become printed pages. Some will become boxes, fabrics, playlists, patterns, notes, or arguments for why the handmade and the analog still matter in a world that keeps trying to smooth everything into cold as glass.

And some things may simply, remain, quiet (and quirky) observations.

That is allowed too.

The Worktable is where we will think out loud about making, living, noticing, and arranging a life with a paradoxically literal and figurative texture.

We will report from the atelier when the paper jams (which it does so much--what is with our printer?), when a palette finally comes to life, when the fabric arrives, when the music changes the feeling of the room, and when something small begins to feel like a door.

The worktable is open.

Pull up a chair.
We are so glad to are here with us.