Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary-Moore Cathcart.
Mary-Moore, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am an Interior Designer with a full-service Interior Design Studio based in Amherst, MA– marymoore DESIGN. I see clients all over the US and help with making their homes more beautiful, efficient– and creating spaces that are well loved. I am also a shopkeeper– my husband, Dean Brown, and I sell antiques and vintage furniture, local art, handmade and fair trade useful and beautiful objects of all kinds in our Amherst shop Home and Homme.
I came to being an Interior Designer by a circuitous route. I have a master’s degree in Africana Studies and spent my 20s and most of my 30s teaching college level courses about the history of race and ethnicity in this country. At the same time I was interested in design, architecture, and beauty– so I got a part time job working for a builder doing the design and estimating for his clients– a great training period that ultimately lead to my opening my own design studio. I have now been working as an Interior Designer for more than 20 years– and occasionally still teach at our local community college.
I think of myself as an anthropologist of material culture– I study people and how we think of ourselves, our homes, each other– and the things that we live with. I am aware of the ways in which the production of the things we put in our homes often comes at a human and environmental cost– cotton, for example, uses 25% of the world’s pesticides each year– making it toxic for those tending and harvesting the crops, for the consumer who takes home their new throw blanket, and for the water systems that all of those pesticides eventually enter. Rugs are often hand knotted by small children whose labor is used to keep the production costs down so the manufacturer makes a bigger profit. And companies like IKEA are producing their furniture by cutting down hectares of Chinese rainforests– again, increasing their profits by using cheap materials to build their products– at enormous cost to our planet.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
My career has been shaped by many choices along the way– and some external factors. When I went to graduate school, I chose to get a master’s degree in an academic subject because I wanted to focus on my scholarly research and writing and assumed I would teach high school or some other related career. By the time I was teaching, I found I had a great love for designing spaces– and was lucky enough to have a job land in my lap that allowed me to learn on the job. 10 years into my design career I started the shop in order to source the fair trade and eco-friendly products that were most interesting to me– but three years later the economy crashed and, though I was able to keep the shop open, I needed to keep building the design business through those years in order to continue to make a living. I believe strongly in doing my best to open doors– but when they are locked or boarded up I look for a window– so I have re-created my business several times in order to best meet the financial realities presented to me.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with marymoore DESIGN – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
As an Interior Designer I have an extremely collaborative process. I work with clients to bring into material reality their vision for their home/ work space. Therefore photos of my design work can be quite diverse in style, color, etc. because each project is truly the vision of my client rather than my own. There are themes, however– things I do over and over– translating a version of the same idea into a new space each time for a new client. I did not notice this for years– and then noticed images of windows in several houses I had designed over a number of years and realized that I routinely gang windows up in corners– and though the windows may be different styles in very different spaces, there are a bunch on each side of a corner post in each picture!
I am known for my accessibility, my openness to my clients’ needs, and how hard I work. I am a great person to work with on a construction project because I worked for a contractor for years– so I know the realities of living through construction. I am the person who gets the panicked calls from the client who doesn’t know if the contractor has built the right thing that day, and I may be the person telling the tile guy to rip out the tile if it has not been correctly installed. I am an advocate for my clients at every point in the process.
As a company I am most proud of our ethical choices. I work with clients at every budget level– sometimes simply re-arranging a living room, sometimes ordering a few pieces of upholstered furniture or designing a kitchen, and sometimes working for two years on a whole house design and build– but each client gets the same treatment. We are transparent, honest, and straight forward with clients about everything from budget, to timeframe, to exactly where the materials they are using came from.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
This year we have two main directions of growth–
1) In the design studio we will be collaborating with a builder who is working on a program to retro-fit older homes to be zero-energy/ Passive House. I find this project very exciting– there are so many beautiful old homes– but the idea of making them into 21st century-level environmentally efficient (and healthy) homes is the best!
2) in the shop we are implementing a zero waste line– products to help our customers use less plastic, less packaging– which will include glass jars for food storage, linen produce bags, heavy organic cotton market bags, and workshops to help people to understand how to live “Zero Waste”.
Contact Info:
- Address: 534 Main Street, Amherst, MA 01002
- Website: marymooreDESIGN.com
- Phone: 4132653707
- Email: mm@marymooreDESIGN.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marymooreDESIGN/
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/marymooreDESIGN/boards/
Image Credit:
Mary-Moore Cathcart
Dean Brown
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