Welcome to our Blog!
We’re excited to have this new place to share with our community, and want to make it a forum for both news and inspiration as we keep you up to date on how we work creatively, and as a business, as well as all the day to day, season to season excitement around our studio.
By way of introduction, as is only polite, let us tell you a little about who we are and how we got started. AHeirloom is a family run business based in Brooklyn, New York. We are Amy Stringer Mowat and Bill Mowat—with occasional help from young Henry Winslow. We met while each completing our architecture degrees at Columbia University, and our first real project together as AHeirloom were two state-shaped cheese boards—one for Connecticut, and one for Michigan—our two native homes, which we wanted to honor as we gathered our families to celebrate our biggest collaboration, marriage.
To be honest, we never set out to be a state-shaped cutting board business. It totally happened organically. In 2010, after Bill and I had just gotten married, I was out of work and looking for a job in architecture. The economy was terrible. I had made those two boards of our hometown states for the cheese spread at our wedding reception, and I decided to put them up on Etsy in May, along with some of our wedding decorations, just to see what would happen. A few weeks later, people were contacting us to make different states and the journey has continued. I do think this kind of start helps us to feel forever optimistic about what might be around the corner next.
Nowadays, Bill and I actually run two different companies. Bill has been a partner in a Brooklyn based digital fabrication company for almost 10 years, focused on larger scale architectural projects, so he has his own creative life along with being essential to bringing AHeirloom concepts to fruition through his skill and organization. It does make for a more inspirational and less frustrating relationship. I’m in our office in the Brooklyn Navy Yard most of the time without him, so we’re not on top of each other 24/7, which helps us stay inspired. The weekends are as much about working together as playing together, though, and we’re always happy to have Henry’s input—he’ll be four in September—on our new visions.
Our home life is very much an inspiration for what we decide to add to our collections. We are the type of people who tend to make things for ourselves around the house, rather than buy them. I think my strength lies in looking at too many food blogs! I really think of our work as and creating tools for the multitudes of food cultures. There are celebrations centered around these items. We want to help people find the easy ways to display and concentrate on having a good time. Thank you for joining us on this journey!
