shop

You may notice that our shop looks a little different at the moment.

We are currently limiting our online store in observance of Shmita, the Sabbatical year.
 

What is the Sabbatical Year?

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Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but in the seventh year, you shall let it rest and lie fallow. Let the needy among your people eat of it, and what they leave, let the wild beasts eat of it. You shall do the same with your vineyards and olive groves. (Exodus 23:10-11)

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Every seventh year you shall practice release of debts. This shall be the nature of the release: every creditor shall release his authority over what he claims from his neighbor. He shall not force it from his neighbor or his brother, for God’s Shmita has been proclaimed. (Deuteronomy 15:1-2)

Great question! If you want to dig in in depth, we recommend visiting this website.

In the agrarian society of Biblical times, it’s clear that the Sabbatical year was largely about letting the land lie fallow for one year out of every seven, and that it also mandated periodic economic reform with the release of debts. While applying the letter of the law may not work terribly well for our own context, we’ve spent some time studying the source materials, and here are some takeaways that we’re working with:

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• In an agrarian society, if the land was resting, the the farmers were too — or so we presume. In the same way that a piece of land is the revenue-generating entity for a farmer, the glass studio is our “farm.” By taking a step back from our regular grind, we’re paying homage to an ancient practice.

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• The Sabbatical year is a reminder that it’s not all about growth all the time. We humans, especially those of us enmeshed in late Capitalism in the United States, tend to forget that. The imposition of an external system of pause helps us create space in our lives for the spontaneity and creative flow that can sometimes get lost with the pressure of life under capitalism.

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• The Sabbatical year is also a reminder that ultimately, humans aren’t in charge. We tend to think that everything we have comes from our own efforts. Letting go of our efforts and noticing how much we still have is a humbling reminder of how indebted we are to the myriad threads that compose the web of life all around us.

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• Stepping into the unknown is, well — unknown. We’ve never done this before, and we don’t know where it will lead. While it could certainly damage our young business, we hope to come out of this experience stronger and more resilient.

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• Part of the beauty of the Sabbatical year is that it’s just one component of a system for long-term planning. For us, the idea isn’t just to sit on the beach for a year, but to give ourselves the space to ask what we want our business, our community, and our world to look like in September 2028 — and then take the next six years getting there.

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With all of that said, we do still need to eat. To that end, we are still selling existing inventory from our physical location, selling wedding glass online, re-melting wedding shards, and working slowly on a few pre-arranged commissions.