Across the Hill Country, and throughout the state, hairy tufts of Muhly grass wave in the summer wind. For Ann Edgerton and her business partner, Megan Carney, the lure of nature — and the phonetic playfulness of this native Texas grass — inspired the name of Muhly Studio, their growing design business, which sells a thoughtful collection of furniture, lighting, and home décor accessories.
Edgerton launched the business during the pandemic, while living in Fredericksburg with her husband and two young children. Long before that, however, the Midland native remembers flexing her creative muscles as a child growing up in West Texas. Later, she went to Westmont College in Santa Barbara, where she found her calling in the world of art and design. Alongside making jewelry, painting, and studying studio art, she also worked at the Santa Barbara Farmers Market, where she fell in love with the region’s rich, seasonal fare.
Upon returning to Texas and settling in Austin, Edgerton began working in restaurants and running a catering company, where she ultimately recognized it wasn’t the foodservice business itself, but rather, the atmosphere at its center, that brought her the most creative joy.
The epiphany spawned her entry into the interior design industry. As fate would have it, her first job came with her now-husband, Ben Edgerton, who hired her to design his restaurant. “I told him I was a restaurant designer, and I wasn’t,” she confessed, coyly. “He had just moved back from New York, and we met at a party.”
In the fifteen years since then, the entrepreneur has grown her namesake interior design practice, Edgerton Studio, working on projects across Central Texas including Oro Bianco, Ocotillo, and The Harvey in Fredericksburg.
Along the way, she was also noticing holes in the market, and conjuring ideas for her own furniture designs. In 2020, she began executing on those ideas after trading the city for a simpler life in Fredericksburg.
There, the family of four found a charming, historic home on Franklin Street. Instead of buying all new furniture for their country residence, however, the designer utilized the down days of the pandemic to conceive her own. She enlisted the help of Megan Carney, a childhood friend from camp, who had an impressive resume of industrial design experience for brands like Free People and Urban Outfitters.
Inspired by the 1930s bones and era of her Hill Country abode, they set to work on the collaboration. “Halfway through, we thought, we should photograph these pieces and sell them,” Edgerton recalled. “All we had were a few pictures, an Instagram account, and fingers crossed, but somehow, a few people and a big design firm in L.A. called Sight Unseen caught wind of it.”
In the early days, the collection consisted of several pieces of wooden furniture — a credenza, console, and coffee table to name a few — all which Carney made herself. Slowly, they began expanding into different categories.
“During the Polar Vortex, we didn’t have a fireplace, and I thought, I’m never living without one again,” Edgerton recalled. (Eventually, when the family moved to their second Fredericksburg home — a 1980s ranch-style residence — she went to town reimagining the dated hearth, imbuing it with a jazzy, asymmetrical shape and sleek plaster finish.)
The designer’s love of wood-burning fires sparked the product launch of firepits at Muhly Studio, alongside fireplace tools and andirons as well. “Many of the firepits you find are dark and heavy, so we designed ours thinking, how do we make the experience of fire more beautiful and tangible?” she explained.
The answer came in the form of a round, reflective pit made from spun stainless steel. The design, loosely inspired by 1930s jewelry, has become a central fixture for the brand, and for Edgerton and her husband, who enjoy hosting around the polished pits during good, old-fashioned gatherings under the stars.
The night sky, as it turns out, factored into more of Muhly’s product categories, such as their ‘Selene’ planters – made in partnership with the Los Angeles-based company, Plants & Spaces – which pay homage to the cosmos through their lunar-shape and name (‘Selene’ nods to the Goddess of the Moon.)
Meanwhile, Muhly’s popular lighting collection evokes the traditional Mexican punched tin lights that both founders remember from their Texas youth. Nostalgia aside, however, it’s the unexpected effect the punched metal has on the surrounding walls and surfaces – that of warm, twinkling starlight – that has captured the imaginations of customers far and wide. “I knew light would come through the holes, but I had no idea it was going to shoot so far; that was an accident,” Edgerton admitted of the starry, disco-ball affect her lighting has on a room. “It turned out even better than expected because it sparks curiosity and makes you feel something … not everything does that, but it’s the goal.”
Mother Nature is a constant muse at Muhly Studio, whose founders design with a grounding reverence for the environment. “The reason we moved out of Austin was for the change of pace, and to live in step with nature,” Edgerton revealed. “The reconnection with the outdoors that we experienced in Fredericksburg was a huge influence, and all the designs that came out of that were trying to draw the human body back to this connection.”
Though the family has since returned to life in Austin, the lessons learned from their time in the Hill Country still inspire the designer’s aesthetic. Ultimately, she hopes her products will motivate others to savor the small moments.
Muhly’s curvy wine table, for example, was specifically designed for those intimate instances when you want to pause and talk, not awkwardly on a sofa or from across a large table, but at a cozy space designed for two. Furthermore, their popular phone box — crafted by hand of African mahogany with cast iron feet — was simply conceived to conceal cellular devices, thereby encouraging folks to unwind and unplug. “It’s using furniture to create moments in your life to slow down, connect, and have a long conversation,” she said.
Today, Edgerton works as the brand’s Creative Director, while Carey oversees the fabrication and production management. All their products are made in America, except for the spun steel planter collection and fire pits, with many lines, including the lighting and the wooden furniture, made to order, and made by hand. A self-proclaimed minimalist, Edgerton’s ethos lies in creating substantial yet simplistic forms with a pared back spirit of ease. “I’m really into repetition, which you’ll see in a lot of Muhly, and order, balance, and graphic shapes because it makes me feel at peace,” she shared. “I like things feeling decorative and playful, but not gaudy.”
The design process generally begins with sketching ideas and drawing inspiration from a library of references, be it pictures of jewelry, a work of architecture, or concepts such as the paired back simplicity of 1930s modernism, or the Mexican influence on South Texas décor. “It all starts with little seeds of ideas that we’ve cataloged over time,” she said. “I think the most interesting designs and artists are speaking from memories, so we use memories to ground what we do.”
These days, Muhly’s memory-fueled magic is felt far beyond Texas. In fact, the brand can be found all over the world, from Saudi Arabia and Australia to Belgium, France, and countless high-end homes across the United States. In 2023, Edgerton and Carey were also named amongst the top twenty-four emerging designers in the world by Dwell Magazine.
Despite their prestigious accolades and worldwide presence, however, the duo remains humble and intentional with the future of their business. “Purposefully, we haven’t taken on any investors – it’s just us,” Edgerton said. “We don’t have to release anything that isn’t exactly how we want it to be. The upside of that is we have complete creative control, and there’s no outside pressure.”
It’s a business model that works for the co-founders, who find wells of inspiration in the countless creatives they’ve followed over the years. For their Lin Lighting Collection, for example, they named the pieces after the environmental artist, Maya Lin, whose 2001 work, Ecliptic, influenced their starry, light-filled designs. Others, such as the prolific Brazilian architect and designer, Lina Bo Bardi, along with Rose Uniacke, Giancarlo Valle, and Juniper Tedhams remain some of their personal heroes.
The latter is a customer too, as are other esteemed designers like Kelly Wearstler and Jeremiah Brent, who’ve helped pave Muhly Studio’s path to success. For Edgerton, their support is a badge of personal and professional validation. “To have people that inspire you who understand and respect what you’re doing …” she said, smiling, “That’s been really rewarding.”