A NEW CHAPTER

toad atelier living space

Dear friends and fellow collectors,

Once upon a time, a few years back, TOAD was founded with the idea of creating a home base for collectors and like-minded people, as well as serving as a link between institutions and museums. As time passed though, we realized that our initial idea of publishing private archives and digitizing all the knowledge and information we gathered over the years was too much.

Don't get us wrong, we very much love and stand for the idea of sharing knowledge and making it accessible that way, but it came with loads of commitment and stress that would soon eat up our minds. Our own passion for collecting faded little by little and we lost the plot.

If you follow our Instagram you might have noticed that it's been rather quiet in the last few months. Losing passion for the way things were handled led to pushing out posts without heart and soul. Content suddenly felt inauthentic and shallow.

Do you know what also snuffs out this flame of creativity? That internal force of humans thinking they need to compete with everyone or rude dealers / collectors with little care for people and their historical artifacts, even though the key to a healthy community should be our shared love for things and the knowledge that would otherwise be lost.

We get that all of us are trying to make a living out of the things we love, but isn't the "want-to-have-I-need-to-buy-buy-buy" mentality so toxic and counterproductive for the community? Wouldn't it be nice to give the capitalist aspect of the big players a bit of a pushback?

We recognize that there are plenty of wonderful and like-minded people in the collecting community and for them, and for us, we've decided to change things up quite a bit. We will still publish collections here and there but on a much smaller and much more raw scale. We want TOAD to be a place for creativity and actually be able to live and breathe with the things we love. This means we'll concentrate on making collaborations, visiting people and/or homes, and reviewing collections with amazing stories.

Vanessa and I have a deep passion for art, design, and lifestyle. So we are determined to make a change and focus solely on creating, writing, and publishing content that we love, regardless of what others may think. Please remember this: “Small-minded people keep you in place. Let them talk and move on"

“Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”

Charles Eames 

We want to share our life with TOAD Atelier, especially in terms of lifestyle. Although Mid-Century Design focusing on Eames and Knoll will continue to be prominent in our content, we also aim to introduce you to other topics and seamlessly integrate them into our regular content.

So the first thing we want to publish and share with you is a small glimpse of our collection we curated featured in an Artsy online exhibition by our dear friends Larissa Wild and Sarah Reeder. Please enjoy some amazing furniture, art, and graphic design. We are incredibly excited for the new chapter. Let's continue to collect, connect, and just enjoy what initially brought us happiness when we discovered Mid-Century Modern Design.

Cheers!

A + V

Toad Atelier on Midcentury Modern Collecting

Available on Spotify , Youtube , iTunes , Amazon Music

Join the new podcast episode of “The Art Elevator” hosted by Larissa Fine Arts and Sarah Reeder (Artifactual History Appraisal)

Selections from the toad atelier collection

Go check out the online catalog at Artsy