By Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen
Winter is a cherished season in many countries, marked by the lighting of fires and candles, baking breads and dimming lights. Yet, in North America, we sometimes spend more time fighting the season than enjoying it.
The art of wintering lies in how we embrace this time of slowness, allowing nature to show us how to find inner sources of strength and illumination. As we enter into a darker time of the year, marked by long stretches of unyielding cold days, we’re invited to find how winter contains its own reservoir of beauty. By finding or returning to intentional rituals, we can learn to embrace the season with greater joy and meaning.
Match Striker designed by Josh Owen
winter rituals
Rituals become more than a way to survive the winter; they help us find the magic in it. In Vancouver, where we live and work, wet and cold weather is accompanied by reduced daylight hours and heavily overcast skies. Rather than complain about the conditions, we have an opportunity to delight our senses with contrast by creating cozy, warm spaces.
In many Nordic countries, there are cultural practices, particularly during darker months, that help sustain joy through the season. In Denmark, the philosophy of hygge does more than define a warm, cozy aesthetic; it is a state of mindfulness that seeks slow moments of togetherness. Arranging logs for a fire, brewing tea, and lighting candles can become actions of remembering.
Anything can become a ritual, and we created our objects with this in mind. When designing float bubble, we were inspired by the Finnish tradition of illuminating Christmas trees with burning candles. In our iteration, water is used to float a candle within a glass sphere that can then be hung on the tree, over a table or as a welcoming beacon in windows. Through finding a place to hang float bubble each year to lighting the candles every night, quiet rituals are formed.
steeped in warmth
During the holiday season, we enjoy finding creative uses for our glassware. From our barware collection, martini glasses become vessels for crème brulée, and chocolate fondant is baked and presented thoughtfully in our float tea cups. Made from durable borosilicate glass, these vessels can be kept in the freezer or used in the oven without stressing the material, making them perfect for desserts.
In addition to post-dinner tea, we also enjoy serving our guests mulled wine or hot cider with an optional splash of rum in our float tea lantern and tea cups. Brewing a rich red wine with cloves, spices and orange peel immediately fills our space with warmth, and that feeling continues as our guests sip from a glass meant to be held with both hands.
elemental additions
The warmth we crave in winter is the kind drawn from elemental sources. Wood burning, candles flickering, and dimmed lights all generate an instinctive, almost ancestral atmosphere of comfort.
Our buildings in Vancouver are heated with wood-burning stoves. Each morning, the team will light the fire and arrange their workstations around its heat, using softwall and benchwall to create insulated alcoves. A concentrated point of warmth creates a natural choreography throughout the day, and we watch our team either move closer or further away from the heat.
Lighting plays a crucial role in the atmosphere during the winter months, too. In the summer, we barely use the lights in our studio, but in the darker season, we enjoy how 2700K LED diodes become warmer as they are dimmed. In tandem with cloud softlight, there is a golden hour effect that we look forward to all year long. Nothing beats walking home on a cold, rainy evening and seeing the warm, glowing lights of home in the distance.
In older buildings with limited insulation or single-pane windows, spaces tend to run cooler. One of the ways we’ve remedied this is by using softwall across walls and windows to act as an insulator. Thanks to its cellular structure, softwall creates a thermal barrier, almost like a quilt, to naturally block cold drafts and contain heat.
Using softwall in this way is akin to how old Japanese homes were once heated. Using charcoal braziers or a hibachi, a heat source is moved to an area where it’s needed, then covered with a quilt to create an inner cell of warmth. The use of softwall offers a similar experience and paper softwall may even be placed near (but not in direct contact) to wood-burning fireplaces due to its fire-retardant coating.
handcrafted wooden surfboard designed by Danny Hess
When we think of our spaces as living embodiments of our lives, we open up the beautiful possibility of delight in each season.
We hope you are able to embrace the wonder that this winter brings.
