One of Nom Kinnear King’s gorgeous oil paintings, The Assistant, hangs at the entrance to our precision product development lab. Growing up, my folks took me to the Renaissance Festival every year for my birthday—that’s where I first met Dr. Sparrow. In Nom’s The Assistant, the figure’s festive epaulettes bring me back to those wonderful years. And, seriously, the resemblance is uncanny.
Guilty Pleasure: Natural Leather
Favorite Color: Burnt Sienna
You may not know:
My name is shared with a National Award-winning documentary narrator, whose voice you may have heard before—or may hear in just a moment. Certain labs of La Voliera occupy a small building downtown, improbably tucked within others. The only visible passage is a narrow alleyway that leads to a solitary door.
This door—finished in a thick ceramic coating and mounted on tungsten hardware—looks like any typical commercial backdoor. You can ring the bell, but no one will ever open it for you. It’s not meant for your ingress—your invitation would include proper directions.
The USPS required that we have a physical mailbox, so we installed a narrow slot at the bottom of this door. Please don’t drop anything important into this slot—it leads directly to the incinerator. Instead, when you ring the bell, you’ll hear Shobha’s voice crackling through the intercom.
