Journal — Studio · July 2026

Inside Our Hudson Valley Material Library

A converted barn upstate where we keep, test and age every material we specify.

By Elena Marlow

Lit candle, dark stone dish and linen-bound books on a textured sand-coloured surface

Two hours north of the Tribeca studio, on a gravel road outside Hudson, there is a timber barn with no heating and very good light. This is our material library. It holds around four thousand samples: stone offcuts, timber boards, plaster panels, textiles, metal finishes, leather hides and a growing collection of handmade tile.

We started the library in 2019 because showroom samples told us so little. A four-inch square of oak, freshly finished and kept in a drawer, looks nothing like the floor it will become. We wanted to see materials the way our clients will live with them — large, in natural light, and over time.

The weathering wall

The south wall of the barn is lined with panels that we deliberately age. Oak boards are finished with different oils and left in direct sun. Unlacquered brass sits beside a leaking gutter. Limestone and marble samples are dosed each month with lemon juice, red wine and olive oil. We photograph every panel on the first of the month, and the archive now covers six years.

The weathering wall has changed more of our specifications than any supplier presentation.

Light white-oak plank with soft cathedral grain — White oak after four summers of direct sun; a lime plaster panel mixed with local sand.

Close view of hand-trowelled grey lime plaster with soft tonal movement — White oak after four summers of direct sun; a lime plaster panel mixed with local sand.

Working with makers

The library is also a meeting place. Joiners, plasterers, weavers and metalworkers from across the valley bring work here, and we test new finishes together before they are proposed for a project. Several of our standard specifications — a smoked oak oil, a lime plaster mixed with Hudson River sand — were developed at the long table in the middle of the barn.

Clients are welcome to visit. Many do, usually during the concept stage, and it is often the afternoon that decides a project's palette. It is much easier to choose a stone when you can see how it looked six years ago, and how it looks now.

We do not think of the library as an archive so much as a working tool. Materials arrive, are tested, are specified or rejected, and occasionally return from a finished project as offcuts, so the collection keeps changing — much like the houses it serves.