History
The first Placewares opened in Concord, MA in 1978, specializing (as it does today) in 'Wares for Your Place'. It grew to a chain of intimate neighborhood stores around New England and the Mid-Atlantic before its founders' retirement to California in 2004. In 2005, a single Placewares was opened in the groundbreaking California coastal town of The Sea Ranch operating from Gualala's, Cypress Village. In its 38th year, 2016, Placewares entered its latest chapter under the ownership of design enthusiasts and entrepreneurs Shev Rush and Kevin Lane with a full-service online store, vibrant social media, and new store plans for 2017 and beyond. We continue to carry iconic designs from the store's four-decade history. At the same time, we spend time each year searching at home and abroad for the very best new products.
Specialties
Placewares carries iconic, timeless designs from our four-decade history, including products from iittala, Marimekko, Heller, Chemex, Alessi, Normann Copenhagen, Bodum and Chilewich. Launching in 2016, Placewares now offers exclusive Placeware-designed products done in collaboration with leading artists and designers from the US and abroad like our debut Jim Isermann @ Placewares product line for home now featured by leading stockists like Trina Turk stores, Cooper Hewitt's SHOP, the Brooklyn Museum and LA Eyeworks. We also source exciting new designs that will stand the test of time like Japanese, Hasami Porcelain. Each year, we search at home and abroad for the very best new products available. Placewares is also host to a gallery space showing an exciting, unusual and rotating mix of local California artists as well as internationally celebrated artists with works housed in the permanent collections of MOMA, Tate Modern, Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, MOCA, SFMOMA, and The Menil Collection, among others.