Brooklyn, New York · Est. 2007 · Founded by Gabriel Cohen & Giovi Signorile
Gabriel Cohen and Giovi Signorile met as seniors at Oberlin, landed in design studios next to each other by accident, and started making things together -- first recomposed parrot feather wings, then arrows made from a firework stick and seagull feathers, then a confetti-colored recycled plastic cutting board that became the most-coveted on the internet. Fredericks & Mae has been a design studio and gifting emporium in Brooklyn since 2007, committed to making objects that prompt wide eyes, inexplicable delight, and full-body chills. Every mantle is an altar, they say. Every shelf a shrine.
Gabriel Cohen and Giovi Signorile graduated from Oberlin in 2008 and moved to New York, bringing with them a shared obsession with materials and a community silkscreen studio they helped build in the basement of a Queens art collective. Their first product was recomposed wings made from molted parrot feathers, sold to less than ten stores. One of them was Maryam Nassir Zadeh -- and from the leftover feathers and a firework stick, they made their first arrow. Something clicked. They made more.
Arrows led to kites, kites to masks, masks to games -- a sustained obsession with objects that appeared independently across cultures and centuries, from Native American communities to medieval Europe to sub-Saharan Africa, because they were too useful or too beautiful not to exist everywhere. That obsession became the engine of Fredericks & Mae: a design studio devoted to objects with ambiguous origins and universal resonance, made with enough specificity that the right person opens one and their jaw drops.
The confetti cutting board -- crafted from recycled food-grade plastic in a color palette that somehow works on every kitchen counter -- became a cultural object. It has appeared on more Instagram feeds and in more design publications than Gabe and Giovi could have anticipated when they started. Their Lower East Side store, which they call a "casual museum" and "objét emporium," is the physical manifestation of the whole thing: arrows, kites, taper candles hand-dipped in the USA, ceramic cutting boards, towers of beautiful towels, things you didn't know existed until you saw them and then couldn't imagine not having.
Stocked at the Cooper Hewitt Museum. On a registry, Fredericks & Mae is the brand for the couple who gives better gifts than anyone they know -- and who wants their registry to make guests feel something.
