🔒Portland design firm branches out with furniture, home goods brand
Meyette is a curated furniture and goods brand launched by Mey & co., a Portland-based interior architecture and design firm. PHOTO / NICOLE WOLF PHOTOGRAPHY
The new business, known as Meyette, recently wrapped up a trial run to introduce the brand with a bricks-and-mortar pop-up at 251 Congress St., at the foot of Munjoy Hill.
Mey & Co, the Portland-based interior architecture and design firm behind local eateries including Benny’s, Bread & Friends and Mr. Tuna, is starting a niche furniture and home goods venture.
The new business, known as Meyette, recently wrapped up a trial run to introduce the brand with a bricks-and-mortar pop-up at 251 Congress St., at the foot of Munjoy Hill.
The former Meyette pop-up space at 251 Congress St. in Portland. PHOTO / RENEE CORDES
Carrie Dessertine, founder of Mey & Co, said the new brand is a natural extension of the firm’s work for hotels in southern states.
“I apprenticed as a furniture maker years ago and have always loved that scale of work,” she told Mainebiz in a phone interview.
With the firm already designing furniture for hotel clients, the aim is to continue on that path “outside the constraints of hotel brands, for ourselves and hopefully for other people as well," she said.
Meyette aims to marry past and present, working with local restoration specialists and upholsterers to breathe new life into high-end vintage pieces while also introducing original designs through custom orders.
Dessertine describes the style approach as eclectic, with some pieces “a little bit more modern” and some “a little bit more sculptural” or sentimental.
“We are very loose in what we’re able to stylistically do,” she said.
While there are no immediate plans for a permanent brick-and-mortar space, Dessertine said she would be open to the right opportunity.
“I’m not going to say 'no' if a storefront becomes available that’s perfect for this, but for now we’re going to stick to appointments only,” she said.
'Team-focused'
Mey & Co’s six employees will also staff Meyette. The name “Mey” is Dessertine’s middle name and the name of her great-grandmother, “a really outspoken woman who lived in rural France,” she said.
Carrie Dessertine PHOTO / COURTESY OF MEYETTE
“The story goes that she was one of the few female French Resistance fighters,” Dessertine said.
Preferring the shared name for her studio to Carrie Dessertine Designs, she said, "We're pretty team-focused."
As part of a broader sustainability drive, Meyette will donate 1% of its profits to Furniture Friends, a Westbrook-based nonprofit furniture bank.
Dessertine said she likes the idea of giving directly to a local nonprofit without “weird administration fees.”
