Cold Picnic was formed in 2010 by partners Phoebe Sung and Peter Buer, both of whom have backgrounds in fine arts and worked in corporate fashion design - Sung as an apparel designer and Buer as a print designer. The pair met in Boston in 2006 while in school and have been living and working together ever since.

Deeply influenced by indigenous crafts, national parks, and the powdery yet vibrant palettes of 1970s films, the couple began working on various side projects together in an effort to explore traditional crafts filtered through modern sensibilities. Before long these projects coalesced into Cold Picnic, a line of textiles, macrame home goods, leather accessories, and handmade jewelry.  Cold Picnic’s work explores imagined and misremembered landscapes, and the effects of time and the elements upon their surfaces. In these landscapes, rugs function as maps, brass jewelry as treasures unearthed on long walks, and leather bags fit everything found or needed along the way.

Sung and Buer continue to make many Cold Picnic pieces from their Brooklyn studio, with a few exceptions; they work with two small family run factories in Manhattan to cast their jewelry and sew selected bag styles, and work with another family owned business in India to produce their line of handmade rugs.