There is a place that dances through our imaginations, where flora and fauna take on peculiar forms and colors, unfamiliar insects flit through the air, creatures with unknown names dart among the underbrush, and objects that were once ordinary take on lives of their own.
Welcome to The Gilded Bog...
An ornamental home goods studio creating curious and collectible objects for the fanciful home. Drawing inspiration from natural history, folklore, ancient civilizations, and childlike wonder, The Gilded Bog brings warmth, intrigue, and enchantment into our everyday spaces.
Each piece is thoughtfully crafted to feel as though it has been brought back from somewhere not entirely unfamiliar something discovered rather than designed, carrying a story of its own and waiting to become part of yours.
Our Origins
The Gilded Bog grew from the imagination of Emma Powers, its founder and designer, and her fascination with insects, creatures, patterns, and the innate beauty in nature.
Long before there were objects, there was a fascination with making, and material discoveries that felt like magic. This lead to tiny houses built for fairies in the forest, imagined creatures sculpted with clay, and whole ecosystems invented simply from the curiosity of what might live there. Over time these fragments began to collect into something more concrete.
The Gilded Bog grew over years before there was a name for it, and slowly began to take the shape of a place of its own. It grew from a desire to make those imagined things tangible, and to introduce others to the magic Emma felt every time she journeyed to the creek in her backyard.
What started as a collection of drawings and dreams has become an ever-growing world of objects, ever evolving and growing fluidly with her experiences.
The Maker
At the center of The Gilded Bog is Emma Powers, an artist and designer with a background rooted in fine art, making, and a ceaseless curiosity for the world around her.
Emma grew up practicing fine art in Mansfield, Connecticut, where she developed a deep love for the forests surrounding her and the folklore that filled her childhood. She went on to study Product Design at Drexel University before transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied Industrial Design.
It was there that she began to understand objects as a language of their own; capable of carrying stories, creating atmosphere, and stirring something in the person who encounters them. She honed her making skills while developing an enduring interest in the relationship between imagination, materiality, and the quiet magic of creating something that did not exist before.
Since graduating, her work has continued to move between her early love of fine art and an ongoing fascination with materials and what they can become. The Gilded Bog brings these threads together: a practice devoted to making objects that create curiosity within the home and evoke a feeling in the people who live with them.
Working from her studio in Connecticut, Emma designs and produces each collection herself, moving between drawing, sculpting, casting, molding, and experimenting with materials. The process is deliberately hands-on; ideas are developed through making, and often change along the way.
For Emma, making is as much a way of discovering as it is of creating. Every new material presents another possibility, every sketch another creature waiting to be found.
From imagination to artifact
Each step of the process is done by hand in our small Connecticut studio.
Illustrations and Sketches
Our Specimens take route in watercolor and pencil illustration, and are heavily inspired by scientific illustration.
Clay Sculpture
Our specimens are fleshed out in clay, with metal armatures before being made into complex multi-part silicone molds.
The Casting Process
Wax or pewter is heated and poured into our complex silicone molds, revealing raw casts which are then cleaned and finished.
Field Cases
Each Specimen is packaged by hand into one of our Field Cases, which are made in house from recycled bi-cycle paper.
The Gilded Bog is always changing.
There are creatures still waiting to be named, plants yet to be discovered, and countless objects that have not quite made their way out of the studio. What exists today is only one small corner of a much larger world.
Follow along to see what emerges next; from new specimens to sketches, experiments, and glimpses into the studio.
The field guide is always growing and changing, follow along to see what new discoveries are made, as The Bog's ecosystem continues to evolve.
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