A couple years ago I decided it was high time to visit some interesting looking design places I’d been driving by for years. Life’s too amazing to just look at it through the car window sitting in traffic! A friend suggested that other people might want to come along, and thus was born Field Trip Friday.
So about once a month, generally on the first Friday, I cut out of work a little early and go check out some fun location with a few peeps. We’ve been to cool vintage furniture and antique stores, a local paint factory, a downtown art gallery to visit a contemporary artist, a ginormous granite warehouse, and the Street of Dreams - - all unique and inspiring and a great afternoon adventure.
But the most jaw-dropping so far was last week’s trip to Savoy Studios, a design and fabrication company that started as a small glass-blowing and stained glass shop in the ‘70’s. Forty years later and they're creating astounding glass art installations and light fixtures for architectural projects all over the world. They work out of a warehouse in North Portland and turn out some incredible stuff.
Awhile back I met an artist who works at Savoy, and she gave us the Friday tour. Wanna see some photos?!
Just inside the door was a rainbow of glass objects and their library of samples under the window.
A view of one end of the warehouse/studio. Those big white boxes are actually kilns about the size of a king bed.
This art deco mirror is probably 15 feet tall!
These pieces were some of my favorites. They were cut with a water jet, over 3 feet tall, and were leftovers from a project that went to Venice. Just stunning!
These are a few pieces they just happened to have hanging around the place. :-D
This one was bigger than a mini-van!
Nope. Not a fancy dumpster. Another kiln:
These panels are a very small part of a large chandelier with French (or Egyptian?) linen fabric embedded between the layers of curved glass. Wish I could see this one finished. Actually I think they said they were making 300 of these puppies!
A bit of humor hanging on the wall:
Of course, those photos are only from the studio. Here are just a few of their finished projects installed in places like China and Dubai and the Philippines. Pretty incredible!
Before we left we got a pic of the owner, Dan, and my friend Jana who looks like she's about to get hit with a bunch of seriously pretty water balloons. :-D
I'm going to have to stop here because I'm officially out of adjectives and exclamations marks. You can see more of the incredible stuff they make at Savoy's website. Look for the video towards the bottom of the page. Wow.
Wanna come along on the next Field Trip Friday? Make sure you're subscribed to my newsletter to find out where we'll be going next.
