wants to know...what's your favorite summer color?
7:05 PM Jul 13th
New conversation: Colorful partner: Clay & Cotton: We are thrilled to share some pictures of the grand opening of ... http://bit.ly/auebyQ
2:30 PM Jul 12th
Posted some more photos of the new Clay & Cotton in Kirkwood, MO! They are a fantastic partner! http://bit.ly/aNDuc3
2:15 PM Jul 12th
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We’re always ecstatic when one of our designs inspires someone! Check out the blog post from Maison Decor – a great designer from the Boston area who recently purchased one of our April Blooms rugs from our Concord store. She made it the centerpiece of her living room and it prompted a redecorating project in both her living room and dining room! She takes you through the process step-by-step here. We highly recommend her blog for great tips!
We are thrilled to introduce part one of our series, “Iris and Witching Hour Farm.” Guest blogger and designer Tracey Davidson of The Furniture Solution in West Friendship, MD, shares with us the process of putting together this project – including a room inspired by a Company C pillow! Stay tuned as we watch the room transform from a blank slate to the beautiful finished product!
When I previewed Witching Hour Farm I loved the setting and knew I’d wanted to be involved. The little room on the third floor was cozy and inviting, I remembered the Iris pillow I’d seen on the Company C site and new that it would be a perfect starting point for my design.
Here is the room description:
This warm, cozy space is a place to escape from the demands of a busy life. Inspired by the pillow on the inviting chaise lounge, walls are washed in a golden tan and accented with yellow, leaf and iris. The long wall is enveloped by a hand painted mural of irises. The mural technique plays with scale – the small scale of the room contradicts, and accents the large scale of the painting. Colors are directly touching without harsh line, or linear composition. The room’s style is crisp and clean. All family members will want to linger in this personal retreat to read, write or watch the birds in the trees… 
Company C co-founder Walter Chapin has been visiting with the skilled artisans from all over the world that bring our colorful designs to life. They’re busy working on our Fall 2011 Collections now and we’re so excited we just couldn’t resist sharing a preview of a textile design with you! 
We recently announced the winners of our Passion for Pink rug-naming contest. The Facebook- and blog-based contest was designed to raise awareness about breast cancer and honor those affected by the disease. The two newly named rugs are spin-offs of Company C’s best-selling Garland and Giverny rug designs; now re-colored in shades of pink, the rugs will be named “Karen’s Warrior Rug” and “The Sisters Rug.”
Company C will donate twenty percent of the retail price of each rug sold to support breast cancer awareness, research and education. In addition, all contest participants will receive one of the new accent rugs, and the namesakes will have their stories featured in Company C’s Spring 2011 catalog.
“The Sisters Rug,” is named after Allison Moir-Smith of Manchester by the Sea, Massachusestts and her sisters. In Allison’s family of five sisters, four battled breast cancer in the last five years, and the fifth participated in a study to help understand how women’s genes and their environments influence risk of breast cancer. All five sisters are living and well today.
“Karen’s Warrior Rug” honors Karen List of West Palm Beach, Florida, who first learned of her cancer when she was a young mother of two boys. Karen helped to raise awareness of the disease by becoming a breast health advocate and educator, and was later honored by Susan G. Komen for the Cure as their “Warrior in Pink.” Recently named Chair for the 2011 Race for the Cure, Karen continues to fight “not just for me, but for my fellow warriors.”
“Our entire organization felt very strongly about supporting this cause and what better way to show our support than through the use of color and design,” said Walter Chapin, co-founder and president. “This contest was part of our larger Passion for Pink initiative, which we started in 2008 and continue to stand behind with the hopes we can inspire colorful living for our customers and all those affected by breast cancer.”
“Karen’s Warrior Rug” and “The Sisters Rug,” will be available for sale to end consumers in September 2010 at more than 800 specialty retailers nationwide; at company-owned retail stores in Hingham, MA, Portland, ME and Concord, NH; and online at www.companyc.com. Both limited edition rugs are hand-hooked 2-feet by 3-feet accent rugs made of 100 percent wool.
Thank you to all of those who participated in our Passion for Pink rug-naming contest!
A Colorful Evening with Matthew Mead!
We were lucky enough to host Matthew Mead, celebrity lifestyle and entertaining expert, a couple weeks ago at one of our Company C retail stores. We all got together to support Matthew in his new venture and celebrate the launch of Flea Market Style, his new decorating and lifestyle magazine.
Created in partnership with Ki Nassauer. It’s premiere Spring 2010 issue is now available on news stands. Follow the making of Matthew’s magazine on his popular blog www.fleamarketmag.blogspot.com.
Check out this short video from our Colorful Evening!
We hope to see you all again this winter when Matthew returns to present Decorating for the Holidays …..Follow us on Facebook, www.companyc.com/colorfulliving for news on our upcoming events.
“We were working on a design collection inspired by Asian patterns, thought it would be great to do our own bold, colorful version of a traditional Oriental floral design.
Our design team was inspired by a porcelain vase that I picked up on a trip to Hong Kong. I was on a product development trip for fashion, but would sneak out any chance I got to shop for Chinese Arts and Crafts.
This vase is a typical Chinese floral, but we love the bright, happy color combination and the way the reds, pinks and yellows in the flowers pop off the jade green vines and navy border. We designed our own floral pattern with chrysanthemums and butterflies, loved it on a wasabi ground color, then tried it on pewter, and loved it just as much!”
Valerie Surprenant, Brand Design Manager
We DARE you. Go ahead, defy the social norm. Dare to live colorfully. Here at Company C, we challenge ourselves every day. It’s easy to get caught up in mundane day-to-day activities. It’s hard to put down your Blackberry. Time eludes us all. We know. That’s why we dare you to unearth and truly embrace Colorful Living.
Sara Joncas - Create Your Own Adventure
In January, we announced a Facebook contest asking you, our fans, to post a photo and short description illustrating what Colorful Living means to you. What a refreshing few weeks we’ve had here at Company C! Through reading your posts, we reaffirmed that we all share the same vision–to be inspired by the joys of Colorful Living every chance we can. Thank you for being so bold!
All that said, it was very difficult to choose a winner because there were so many uplifting responses. Not to mention that Colorful Living is meant to be personal; each one of us sees the world through a different lens and has a different outlook on life. Our focus was on the posts that embodied Colorful Living as a lifestyle. So, drum roll please…
Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly - Go out on a Limb
The winner of the 6′ x 9′ rug of choice is Sara Joncas, who believes “Colorful living is… Creating your own adventure.”
And drum roll again…so many posts were so inspiring that we couldn’t help but choose runners up, who will receive a 2′ x 3′ accent rug of choice:
Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly “Living colorfully entails going out on a limb every once in a while.”
Brenda - Energy for Creativity
Brenda “Every day, I have authentic color in my life. I am an art teacher of young children. Through their artwork and their energy for creativity, I am happily surrounded by color!”
Make Colorful Living your standard. We dare you.
Have ideas for future Facebook contests? Post your ideas on our wall at www.facebook.com/colorfulliving.
Our tag line at Company C is “designs for Colorful Living.” We’re often asked how did we come up with this statement?
Just before starting Company C, Walter and I listened to a cassette tape —Live Your Dreams by Les Brown. We both love design, love business and love to travel… so how could we live our dreams—and create a business out of them?
I can remember listening to the tape as if it were yesterday. Our son Alex was 6 months old (he’ll be 17 next month!) and we were traveling in our white Isuzu Trooper on our way to our family cottage in western Massachusetts with our golden retriever, Major, happily catching air out the window. We listened intently to the tape and were very inspired…that trip set in motion our dream to create our business—Company C!
Walter and I both love adventure. Traveling. Living in the great outdoors. Skiing in the Rockies. Kayaking on Frenchman’s Bay in Maine. Cooking fabulously colorful meals (Walter). 
Mixing paints by the ocean (me—and trying to make a painting out of them!). 
And we share these adventures with our two teenage sons, friends and family. So living colorfully needed to be an important part of our business.
We love color and it’s our signature at Company C. Our design team experiments with many color combinations every day. We add adventure to the combinations, always keeping them fresh.
Colorful Living has a double entendre for us! So…Dream…with your mind soaring to the sky, imagine what you can create.
What’s Colorful Living mean to you?
Chris & Walter Chapin
We announced a Facebook contest a couple of weeks ago, challenging our customers and fans to share their colorful New Years resolutions with us. We had an outpouring of wonderful responses! It was extremely difficult to select a winner so we decided to have one grand prize winner with three additional runners up. So here goes…
The 4’6 x 6’6 rug of choice goes to Heather Hilton who resolves to… “look around my life and find positive things in everything I do. I will remember to be amazed at the love around me and not dwell on the negative.”
Runners up who will receive a 2′ x 3′ accent rug include these inspiring individuals….
Pamela Talbot Syverson
I resolve not to make any resolutions whatsoever. Because every day is a new beginning – to discover, explore, learn something new, let go of yesterday, rearrange my life. And I won’t be disappointed if I don’t keep a resolution because I just start all over again tomorrow.
Mary Martin Keller
I resolve to not fear color, but to use it with abandon!
Debra Prescott
I resolve to lighten up and have more fun this year.
And we would like to give a honorable mention to Vicki Ginsburg. We all felt her poem needed to be published for all to read because it is amazingly creative! Thank you, Vicki!
I have a “prototype” by Company C,
That truly makes my room,
My wish this year is to be rich enough,
To have my whole house bloom!
I dream and plan that Tuileries
Will grace my parlor floor;
But Maison and Brittany Blue had been on my mind
For a very long time before….
I delight in all the florals…
the petal, the leaf, the plume.
To be surrounded with such beauty
Is more than I can presume.
Rise and Shine each morning
Will greet me by my door;
And the garden of colorful Giverny
always makes my spirits soar~
So now, my Dear Company C,
Please bring me this visual perfume.
And please do not ever tell me
That it will require me having a groom!
My pocketbook is meager
(Oh, I hate to be a bore);
Show kindness to this faithful Fan
And send Love straight from your Store!
Check out our Facebook page for more colorful resolutions! www.facebook.com/colorfulliving
We’re a fan of Facebook contests so any ideas, please throw them our way! We have some ideas for Mother’s Day, Birthdays, etc….but we need more fun contests so let’s hear it.
I can’t believe another design season is quickly coming to an end. We’re shooting our Fall 2010 collection this week and yet it feels as though we just started our design concept boards days ago.
What I find most satisfying is pulling the look together at the photo shoot. I love how our initial design concepts of the collections come to fruition in our room shots. The process can sometimes feel like giving birth—one forgets about the agonizing pain after we see a beautiful baby! At photo shoot, I forget about some of the frustrations–design prototypes being approved and the photo sample coming in a few shades lighter, prototypes arriving later than promised and furniture made the wrong way. But when it all comes together at the shoot, it’s fabulous and the fun begins—playing with rugs, pillows, throws, colorful chairs and beautiful flowers. What could be more exciting!
I’m so lucky to shoot with a such great team—Joe Lamere our photographer and his assistant Nancy Belluscio, Paul Newman our stylist and Frank Higham, owner of a landscape business in season, but filling in as our trusted prop supervisor and furniture relocation specialist…and all at Company C. We have a lot of fun despite the amount of ironing, dusting, vacuuming and moving, and not to mention the occasional rust blop from the iron on a delicate silk pillow that shows up right in front of the lens!
All in all, we took a lot of great shots of our Fall 2010 collection from the 150 year old Historic Holt-Chase house. 
We lost daylight early since we’re close to the shortest day of the year, but what we did get was nice perspectives–great built-ins and architectural details as backdrops for our living, dining and bed rooms.
Can’t wait to share these with you soon. In the meantime, Happy Holidays!
Chris Chapin
Design & Creative Director
