Ta-da! Our beans got new clothes! 

You all are buying so much coffee, we flat out cannot keep up with our hand-stamped bags. That’s how this whole project started. While we have loved making each bag that’s gone out of this place for the past 12 years, a change was needed. As we set out on our design process, we had three things we knew we wanted to accomplish— to retain the artfulness of our original bags, to uniquely design each bag to represent our coffee’s diverse origin countries, and to bring the feel of the inside of our shop to the outside of our bags. 

I’ve always loved different forms of art from all over the world. And while coffee is probably my favorite, I also love textile art. Growing up, my dad owned a design showroom filled with luxurious textiles. It was a wonderland of beauty for me as a kid. Like coffee, textiles were not historically acknowledged as a form of art because they’re so functional. The clothes we wear. The tablecloth we set out before a meal. The covering on a chair we rest in. Textiles are made for function, like coffee is made to consume. But textile making is a stunning art form— from intricate fiber weaving and pattern building to pigment dyeing and stamping with found materials.

Inspired by textiles native to the places from where we buy our beans, we created a new collection of patterns for our bags. Combing through books and personal photos from my travels, I pieced together a stack of inspiration that artist, Ellie Borromeo, brought to life with a uniquely crafted pattern for each of our 16 bags. At Swift, we value the artfulness in the details of what we do and desire to fill our ordinary days with beauty and delicious coffee. 

We drew inspiration from the colors found inside our shop— the forest and chartreuse of our checkered bar tile on the Brazil and Kenya bag, the dark teal of our ceiling on the Costa Rican, the blue of our walls on the Honduran, the red of our roaster on the Tanzanian, the orange from our three stripes original to the Texaco gas station on our House Finch bag. And 10 more you can search for around the shop! We kept our original stamps, hand-carved by Julia Rittenhouse ”JSR” and our very own Mark McLucas, on the back of our bags but in their new colors!

One thing that fascinates me about Swift & Finch is how it is particularly tied to place. We’re proud of our small town Rome, Georgia. Where the rivers meet and the mountains begin. I loved when a dear friend called Swift downtown Rome’s living room. And yet, inside our local shop we experience coffee from different communities all over the world. Though coffee is a daily ritual, ordinary, and commonplace, it is also a sip into a world of cultures and far flung farm lands. Worldwide, yet local. Our new bags celebrate these beauties within the culture of coffee and the places it comes from.

I love the new bags. I’m proud of them. I hope you enjoy them too!