Reflections on
The Settles Family Pattern
In the Fall of 2020 Brandon identified several patterns within our collections that spoke to him. He reached out to us to have something made for his house that could resemble the passion that he felt in his heritage and in the history lessons he was teaching his growing family.
He was certain that any of the patterns would be appropriate to display he was ready to demonstrate his pride in a unique way.
The Family Pattern Project had just launched and after discussing the concept with Brandon and his wife Adrienne they found that our solution was so much in alignment with their needs that they described it as “cosmic.”
The three of us sat down for the initial conversation, or the Harmonize step of the Family Pattern Project. Very quickly they became delightfully engaged with the thought-provoking questions, prompting Brandon to say, “This is fun! This is like brain pushups!”
Next our work at The Pattern House began. It was a joy to transform the statements of The Settles on life, love, family, and marriage into vibrant color using our LiteWork process. As we selected three key moments that became the seed of their patterns, certain details influenced the growth habit of their final patterns.
For example, The Settles unknowingly described themselves as two separate phenomenon that are one phenomenal process! Adrienne sees Brandon as a stabilizing cyclical force that is very regular and predictable, like the Moon. Brandon sees Adrienne as very free, with a radicalizing turbidity that engenders deep confidence within him. Her dynamism must be unconstrained, like the ocean. What a marvel, and honor it was to watch their eyes as they realized together that they separately described each half of the Tides!
The patterns required a steady freedom, repetition with outbursts of color and emotion that can be channeled to harness energy and power. These requirements were fulfilled, as we can read in their testimonial:
This experience with Mason has been a journey through culture, history, imagination, and self-discovery. The project helped us discover new ways to honor our past, understand our present, and intentionally shape our future. Mason gave us a new approach to express ourselves as a family, more diversely than how we normally walk, talk, dress, and create.
We were given the opportunity to visualize our values beyond words and actions, and have that vision transferred into a design. Projects to capture ideas, identity, branding, legacy and then bring it to life visually, are coming for business. We believe this practice is very valuable for a family as well. Portions of the discovery process were and exciting challenge for us to dig deeper and try to “see” our thoughts. Mason masterfully guided us on a venture that helped us learn and teach more about ourselves, while creatively connecting with each other. The fruit of this effort gave us our pattern expressed in fabric, to keep for years to come. We now have a family symbol specific only to us, informed by our own speech and stories…that is a treasure beyond words.
-Brandon & Adrienne S.
The Settles journeyed from seeing patterns that spoke to them, to seeing their words woven speaking back to them! I’m certain that if you are still reading this you have an excellent idea of what the Family Pattern Project can do for you. Share it with us at mason@olona.de so that together we can realize what is in your imagination