A photograph of the studio, empty.

I went to the studio last week to collect the last of the samples. The lease is up at the end of the month. The landlord has been patient; I've been paying rent on a room I don't use since September, which is not rational, but the studio was the last physical space where the shop existed, and I wasn't ready to let it go.

I am now ready. Or I am close enough to ready that the difference is academic.

The studio is a single room on the second floor of a converted mill in the Hudson Valley. One large window facing north. Concrete floor. A worktable I built from a reclaimed door and two sawhorses. When the shop was active, the room held samples, prototypes, shipping materials, a camera on a tripod, and a kettle. Now it holds the window.

I took a photograph before I left. I am including it below, or I will try to; I am not good at formatting these emails and I have been told that the image may not display correctly on all devices. If it doesn't, here is what you would see: a room, empty, with afternoon light across the floor, and the shadow of the window frame dividing the light into four rectangles. The rectangles are not even. The building is old, and the frame is slightly warped.

I looked at the photograph on the train home and realized that the empty room is more beautiful than the full one ever was. This is either a profound observation about space and absence, or it means that I am not very good at interior design. Both are probably true.

The studio is gone now. The shop remains closed. The newsletter remains open. Thank you for being in it.

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