But the truth is, this work started long before the shop opened its doors.
Our first real project as business owners was Local 11ten, under Rethink Design Studio. It was 2006 when we built, 2007 when we launched.
We had just come from advertising in New York. It was our first project out of graduate school. The first time designing and running a business as a husband and wife team. The first time putting everything we had learned into one space.
And we put it all on the line.
Local 11ten was a former bank building. Historic preservation. Commercial build-out. Multiple partners. Contractors who had been in business for decades. The kind of restaurant we'd known in New York, but Savannah had not quite seen yet.
Local 11Ten Savannah, GA
We researched obsessively. Stacks of books on hospitality and restaurants. Chairs sourced from Spain. Custom lighting we designed ourselves. We approached it like a brand, not just a room.
It was the first time everything converged. Design. Branding. Experience. Materials. Story.
It changed us.
There is a difference between knowing something academically and standing inside a room you built, watching people move through it. Feeling the energy shift. Hearing the hum of conversation under lighting you sketched on paper months before.
That project taught us what holds.
Strong materials.
Layered sense.
A clear point of view.
Design that feels considered from floor to ceiling.
Over the next two decades, we kept building on those lessons. Project by project. Room by room.
Eventually, that way of working needs its own home.
First the studio, then the shop, then the café. Each one an extension of the same belief that space should feel grounded, intentional, alive.
Asher + Rye Savannah, GA
For years, we were layering and learning. Refining what felt true. This March feels like clarity. Not a departure, but a refinement. A fuller expression of who we have always been.
This weekend, we sat at our table and traced the road map of where we've been and where we are. The shop at Jones and Whitaker is steps from our rowhouse. Less than a mile from our first Asher + Rye showroom. Only a few blocks from our design studio space just off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
We are a Savannah story through and through.
And this year, five feels significant. Five years of Asher + Rye rooted here.
The traditional gift for five is wood, which begins as a seedling.
It grows slowly, ring by ring. It becomes structure. Table. Beam. The wood accents that run through our shop. The shelves you see your favorite products on. The courtyard where the fire is always blazing. Wood holds history in its grain.
Wood also transforms. It burns, becomes ash. It returns to the soil and begins again.
Five feels like that to us. Not an ending. A strengthening. A deepening of roots.
And when something holds, when something grows the way you hoped it might, you mark it.
Sometimes you mark it with a high five.
Not the loud, stadium kind. The quiet one across the counter when a long day finally settles. The one after an install when everything clicks into place. The one you give yourself when you realize this idea, this risk, this leap, has become real.
Palm to palm. A sharp sound. A flash of energy.
A reminder that this life did not happen to you. You built it.
Asher + Rye Savannah, GA
On March 26, we will gather at the corner of Jones and Whitaker to mark this moment. The courtyard fires glowing. Music from behind the café bar. New fifth anniversary illustrations by Savannah artist NoNo Flores, like the one at the top of this letter, all over totes, hats, and other fun takeaways. Wood details everywhere you look.
Five years of Asher + Rye.
Two decades in the making.
If you are in Savannah, we hope you will join us and celebrate alongside us. But if not, we have some amazing things on the way for everyone to enjoy, so stay tuned.
Here's to what we choose to build next.
With love,
Erika + Joel