Shop Spotlight: Furbish Studio

Filed under: Design, etc, News & Trends

Blogworld it-gal Jamie Meares has made her mark on Raleigh, NC with a shop and interior decorating business. Now, fans rejoice as she launches her online shop.

When life closes a door, it opens a window. It's a fitting cliché if we're talking interiors -- particularly a nailhead-trimmed door and well-dressed window. Such is the story of how we found Jamie Meares. In early 2009 when Domino folded, the New York Times ran a piece on the many devastated fans and introduced us all to Meares, a blogger who won our hearts with her all-too-familiar magazine ritual: "I would get my 100-calorie M&M's and my hot cup of tea and my Domino and go through the whole thing cover to cover."

We followed her blog, I Suwannee, obsessively through 2009 as she prepared for the launch of Furbish Studio, her shop/interior design business. Now that it's an Elle Decor-approved destination, we're delighted to celebrate the news that starting this week Furbish is shopable online.

"Going from a blog to a store was scary and exciting, but also sort of epic. I'm not familiar with anyone else who did it quite like this," she explains. But with the fear and excitement comes some major perks -- like getting to be her own boss, a super-short commute (two minutes!), choosing her co-workers and of course, having her dog Rowdy, the unofficial Furbish mascot, at work every day. There's also a bit of wonder in it all. "I love doing those tiny bits of magic everyday that makes me shriek," she confesses.

Followers of I Suwannee know that Jamie's a mean eBay shopper. She frequently rounds up favorites and readers will snap them up ASAP. What does she plug into that eBay search box the most? Hollywood Regency and Vegetable-Dyed Kilim. And as for her eBay finds that get revamped into heirloom-quality pieces -- those specs are a little harder to nail down. "They must have interesting lines, be useful and be structurally sound," she explains. When it comes time to update them, her plan of attack is pretty spur of the moment. "It's usually a game-time decision. I have 50 million paint colors staring at me and when it's go time, one will speak up." (Sounds like she was right about that magic.)

Jaime's picks are always so spot on, and we're delighted to showcase them over at The Inside Source later today. But we had to ask her -- with all the success, has there ever been an eBay let down? "I bought a dog leash for Rowdy on eBay last week... and lost it yesterday." Can't win 'em all.

Check out our past collaborations with The Inside Source.

 

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