This holiday season we have so much to be grateful for here at Bond & Grace. In October, we released our Frankenstein Art Novel, and spent the next few weeks on the road sharing it with all of you!
We loved meeting inspiring individuals from Charleston, South Carolina to NYC. Not to toot our own horn, but the Bond & Grace community are some of the most fascinating and elegant people we’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
We began our tour at the Ned NoMad, celebrating the Frankenstein Art Collection. The space was exquisite and we got to show off our phenomenal artists, including Holly Lowen and Mekia Machine who came to our event to share their experience reading Frankenstein, and what in the novel inspired their collection. “I really identified with Victor Frankenstein in terms of my process and how I create,” Mekia said during our panel. “This project taught me a lot about the responsibility I have towards what I create.”
The original artwork is an essential part of the Art Novel, and getting to see it displayed in such a spectacular setting gave us so much joy.
Next, we escaped the cold and traveled to balmy Charleston, South Carolina where we had a pop-up with our fellow small businesses Elysian and Ibu Movement. We loved collaborating with these other women-owned businesses and getting to meet the many wonderful people who stopped by to say hello, ask questions, and peruse our Art Novels.
While in Charleston we also hosted a gorgeous dinner with Molly Fienning and our friends at In Kind Magazine. In Kind is a fantastic biannual magazine that focuses on career, motherhood, personal style, and more. It was a warm evening so we set up a sublime tablescape outside.
Our friends at Reverie Social provided us with beautiful luxury linens, we lit some candles, and conversed for hours. It was truly a special experience.
We returned to the Big Apple for a stunning evening at the incomparable Maxwell Social, co-hosted by our dear friend Samantha Varvel in honor of Mary Shelley.
Our founders gave an enlightening talk on Frankenstein and the Art Novel creation process and we had a delicious meal together.
The tablescape was the stuff of dreams with gorgeous, high-quality linens from Reverie Social, who printed our Women of Frankenstein Toile pattern in perfect detail. You can expect to see much more from Reverie Social in the coming year.
Maxwell Social’s event space was nearly as iconic as the author herself, with a gorgeous library (that included a hidden door!) and a stone-walled basement where we drank Mary Shelley-themed cocktails and danced late into the night.
We closed out a busy month by hosting a lecture for our fellow bibliophiles at the historic Grolier Club. It was an honor to get to inhabit such a storied institution with a rich literary legacy.
Our wonderful panel was moderated by Bond & Grace co-founder Ayana Christie and we heard from Artists, Kay Douglas and Holly Lowen, along with Frankenstein scholar, Caroline Gilpin, and our Lead Writer and Frankenstein aficionado Nesha Ruther (who, much like Victor Frankenstein spends most of her time in a dark room writing these blog posts!)
Creating each Art Novel is an intensive year-long process involving the collaboration of Artists, Scholars, and the Bond & Grace team. Many people spanning multiple time zones work very hard to bring you this exquisite story, and it means the world to us to have it received in such an enthusiastic, celebratory way. Thank you to our sponsors, Dart Collective, Reverie Social, and BiblioBooze as well as Barrell Bourbon, Starward Whisky, and Whispering Angel. Last but certainly not least, thank you to all our friends and family who joined us in celebrating. The best part of Bond & Grace is you!
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for a phenomenal launch season, and an amazing year. We can’t wait for all that’s coming in the next one.
