Country Living for the Creative Couple

Sometimes we like some good old-fashioned fun at the Weekly Hate Read. And the Real Estate section exists, as the late Triumph the Insult Comic Dog used to say, "...for me to poop on." It is a a master class in...CLASS. Class outta the ass, as Papa Karl Marx used to say.

But let me level with you. Mostly I chose this article because one of these two beauties--the canines in the picture--is named Brooklyn. We have a policy at this blog of leaning into any story when anything is named "Brooklyn," whether it's a baby, a dog, a particular chapter of your life you're wistful for, a mole on the underside of your thigh you've tattooed over with the shape of Brooklyn, or that tubal ligation procedure you got done last summer that guaranteed you the spoils of singledom into your late 70s. Brooklyn.

At any rate. Enter Dana Brandwein Oates and Daniel Oates stage right, the co-owners of dbo Home, purveyors of $97 plates who moved to Connecticut after living in the West Village and Mr. Oates maintaining a studio in Williamsburg. But the wages of ceramics are not paid by ceramics alone, as we learn. Ms. Oates traded in her career as a music executive for the "rural business" of pottery:

Ms. Oates, 53, had not imagined herself running a rural business. For years, she lived in the West Village and worked at Elektra Records, where she served as vice president of marketing and artistic development, promoting the likes of AC/DC, Björk and Metallica. “It was an office where if you left at 6, people would look at you and say, ‘Half day?’ ” she recalled.

No wonder no one has bought a Metallica record since 1999 with all those half-days. But how metal is working past 6:00pm? It would drive you to sell $97 plates from the countryside to this estate:

[T]he couple quickly fell in love with the bucolic landscape, and with a cowshed-turned-house on three acres with a big red barn. The house was a fixer-upper, but they were impressed with its size (around 4,000 square feet) and the living room’s conversation pit with its “1970s vibe,” said Mr. Oates, who did much of the renovation himself.

While Ms. Brandwein Oates set up the artisanal plate empire, Mr. Oates busied himself renovating "much of" the 4,000 square foot cowshed himself, probably digging up ancient layers of cow poo. Well, maybe he didn't do it all of it himself, but telling immigrant workers where to put up the wainscoting and iron filigree should count as doing the renovation yourself, shouldn't it?

Now the two collaborate on pieces for West Elm, the Ikea for Episcopalians or some shit. If you were worried that these $97 (EACH!) porcelain beauties couldn't be "throw[n]" in the dishwasher after you're done with another night of eating Kraft Easy Mac by yourself and watching Full House, rest assured:

The plates are stronger than they look,” she said. “I literally throw them in the dishwasher. But clearly, I can make more if they break.”

[...] 

This spring, Ms. Oates donated 100 or so to the Greenwich Village pop-up restaurant wastED, where the chef, Dan Barber, cooked with ingredients that would otherwise have been thrown out. “My plates didn’t get wasted either,” she said.

The generosity all around is baffling. Back in March the buffoons of wastED convinced some idealistic, green-washed bougies to pay $15 a plate for tapas of discarded food. Served on Ms. Brandwein Oates' plates! But the rural life, it isn't all giving:

It’s a life that many would consider idyllic: leaving the city for a more tranquil existence in the country. But what it is like in reality?

“You work all the time,” Ms. Oates said. “But we get to be with each other.”

Right-o. The difficulty of retiring to the country in your 40s and caring for two dogs. Fortunately, the Oateses have found much to give their life meaning, namely:

In the living room, there are paintings Mr. Oates made of the couple’s dogs, and the mudroom has prints of English, Irish and Gordon setters that Ms. Oates collected. “We had setters growing up,” she explained, as they led a visitor outside and into Mr. Oates’s studio in the barn.

Toward the back were two wooden boats he had made and a third under construction. The largest was a 19-foot faering, a traditional Norwegian boat with four oars and a sail. “We’ve taken it out a few times on the lake, and it’s quite a sight,” Ms. Oates said. “Danny sewed the sail this winter while we binge-watched Netflix.”

Paintings of their dogs! Building three wooden boats! Binge watching Netflix and sewing sails! The busyness of it all is quite exasperating, exasperating! It's a wonder either of these two gems get any sleep at all. Thank God these two get to be with each other. 

Our instructors for Class Resentment 101