Japanese Inspired Housewares with Southern Roots
Though each of us has traveled extensively, it took “ME finding her” and “ME finding him” before we were able to confidently realize a design style. Together, we work with a strong sense of place as we seek and celebrate the inherent beauty of native and found materials. Combining our love of the rustic, rural South with our regard for the intrigue of the Japanese aesthetic, we build Japanese Inspired Housewares with Southern Roots. We live in North High Shoals, Georgia with our three children, Claire, Julia, and Maximilian who play an instrumental role in family-testing every ME Speak piece.
Lori Wright grew up on fifty-three acres in Conyers, Georgia. Her design inspiration comes from both her father, who is a carpenter and her mother's Japanese, Hawaiian roots. Growing up, if she wasn’t outdoors spending time in the countryside, Lori was beside her father in his workshop, absorbing his craft. She later studied marketing at the University of Georgia, working her way through school by selling t-shirts at colleges and universities all throughout the United States. On the strength of this experience, she later pursued a career building college housing. Lori’s Japanese heritage and her life experiences growing up in the South continue to influence her design aesthetic. Hers is the eye.
Eric Wright is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up surrounded by his mother’s art, and following an apprenticeship as a carpenter in Athens, he went to school in Oregon, where he built titanium bicycle frames and learned both TIG welding and machining. His travels took him from there to the Indian state of Maharashtra, outside of Mumbai, where he studied practical, sustainable architecture and the art of furniture-making. He continued these studies in Vermont and then in Costa Rica, where he developed an appreciation for indigenous building techniques and tropical hardwoods. Later, Eric taught a beginning blacksmithing course and further developed his own skills at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina. His are the hands.
