If you venture into The Society inc. imaginarium, you’ll discover our humble but mighty old brick warehouse is home to a number of towering shelves and bookcases, many of which live behind the sailcloth that divides our storefront from our studio space. They house a library of oddities & curiosities that turret atop boxes of haberdashery, hardware, botanical specimens, rows of buttons and historical books. Objects collected over a 30-year styling career from every corner of the globe: fleamarkets, antique shows, vintage stalls, junk shops, council pick ups and all the rest. This library has inspired The Society inc. hardware range. A collection of hardware & homeware goods, rooted in spirit, imagination and nostalgia.
As an historian, Sibella has always been fascinated by lost crafts and heritage trades from ropemaking to blacksmithing. These traditional occupations were often honed over generations and passed down through families of skilled artisans, resulting in handmade products with a special spark of authenticity that can be felt, even if it cannot be seen.
Despite the name, we believe that heritage trades are not just a thing of the past. They are a vibrant part of our present and have an important part to play in our future. Their age-old approaches to material recovery and resources have been a guiding light for the way we go about our work and our sustainability ethos. The farriers, forgers, coppersmiths & shipwrights who relied on steel, brass, durable canvas, leather & bronze for making sails and horseshoes, ship hulls and copper nails, inspire our products and have been our best teachers of construction knowledge. They have gifted us with a roadmap in the objects they left behind.
We seek to continue this lineage, creating beautiful and hardy yet humble products made from carefully sourced materials and employing production methods that have stood the test of time. We love that products from The Society inc. bear the mark of their maker in every sinuous curve, seam and line, and wear their age with pride by developing a rich patina over time that only adds to their charm, like stories collected over a long, eventful life.
The vintage-inspired hardware that we create at The Society inc harks back to a time when quality and craftsmanship were highly prized, and goods were made to last a lifetime. You can see the inspiration that sparked each piece in the nostalgic names Sibella has chosen for them. We hope you enjoy leafing through our wares, and that you find something you can treasure.