We are a small machine shop and design studio in Camden, ME
Welcome to Daughter Manufacturing's monthly blog about the origins of our designs and our precision processes making modern lighting and other home decor in our machine shop and design studio. We moved our family and business to Maine in the summer of 2022 and extensively renovated a two story garage attached to our new old home, a 1940's Cape. Over the course of one very long year, we somehow aged and got younger doing it. Meaning, we're tired but very excited and energized about how well Daughter Mfg's new home in Maine is working out. We have a big space compared to our backyard greenhouse in San Jose, CA that was jammed with machines which spilled out into the yard depending on the project. It was a part time business while we worked full time Silicon Valley jobs at Apple and selling real estate - jobs we needed while we sent a daughter to college. Going full time now is the exciting challenge and terrifying leap away from steady paychecks and group health insurance. We have a lamp in process that will take a few months and our next few posts will be about that process.
Why Maine?! We came a long way, 3,300 miles approximately. Maine kept popping up on our radar (and our Zillow searches). It's a big food and adventure scene, so it gets a lot of social media attention and it's this big, photogenic place with a small population compared to its size. Silicon Valley is stuffed with people - nice people - but traffic is a not a term used for just the road; lines and waiting are a way of life. Maine has a strong magnetic pull for makers, a natural entrepreneurial spirit, and true rugged humility. It's real and hard and soft and buggy. It isn't anything but people making it work and loving it while and where they are doing it. So we couldn't resist the pull and were instantly met with kind, welcoming makers and doers that kept saying "there's room for everyone to do their thing". What's understood is you figure out how you will contribute. We're on the glorious mid-coast of Maine, on the Penobscot Bay. Supposedly, if you stretch the Maine coast into a straight line (with all of the inlets and bays) it measures 3,478 miles of coast. It's a summer place for many an East Coaster, but to live here through the winter is actually the best part. It's quiet and inspiring and efficient and dark, very dark. So, that takes you back to the work. People work a lot here and we're finally getting to work.
All Photos by Nina Costello
Photo by Nina Costello
For both of us, this is our sixth state to live in, but this is the last we will call home.
We're settled now in far away Maine with the probably the best work years ahead of us.
Thanks for following (or finding!) us here.
And, yes, all of our gorgeous photos are taken by one of our two talented daughters, Nina Costello.
Our company is named for them.
Kitty and Mario
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