Design series: Jonathan Adler on making your home your own
Life and Art from FT Weekend
Forhecz Topher
4.6 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Designer Jonathan Adler is known for a style that is classic but eccentric. Think gold chairs shaped like hands, vases shaped like heads, and beautiful cookie jars labelled ”quaaludes”. He got his start as a potter, but he now designs everything from furniture to dinnerware to custom upholstery, which are sold by hundreds of retailers around the world. In the second instalment of our design series, Jonathan talks to Lilah about how he developed his style and how we can develop ours. And his biggest piece of advice is to “turn it up”.
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We love hearing from you. Lilah is on Instagram @lilahrap and we’re on X @lifeandartpod. You can email the show at lifeandart@ft.com.
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Notes:
–Jonathan Adler has retail stores across the US (from New York to Dallas to Miami to Chicago) and in London
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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. |
| 0:05.8 | I'm Lila Raptopolis, and this is the second episode of our special series on design. |
| 0:12.1 | How do we elevate the design of our homes to make them feel more like us? |
| 0:16.5 | How do we find our sense of style when it comes to the things we surround ourselves with? |
| 0:20.6 | These are questions that Potter and designer Jonathan Adler has been answering for a long time. |
| 0:25.7 | Jonathan's introduction to design was through pottery. |
| 0:28.2 | He was 12 years old at summer camp when he learned to work with clay, and since then he hasn't stopped. |
| 0:33.3 | He has developed a ceramics business, opened his first store in 1998, and it has grown into a home decor empire. |
| 0:40.4 | He now has stores all over the U.S. and London, and his designs span from furniture to rugs to pillows to accessories, and of course, always pottery. |
| 0:49.7 | He's with me today. Jonathan, hi, welcome to the show. |
| 0:53.5 | Hello, it is great to be here. |
| 0:56.4 | So before we get into your story, I would love to give people who've never been to your |
| 1:00.0 | store as a sense of your style. I've heard you describe your taste as modern American glamour. |
| 1:06.0 | You've also used happy chic. What do those descriptions mean to you? I hope that if somebody comes into my store, |
| 1:13.7 | they see an eccentric vision of an individual. As for my style, yeah, I would say modern American |
| 1:22.6 | glamour, if I were to put it into a pithy three-word phrase as one is supposed to do in these brand-obsessed days. |
| 1:29.9 | True. |
| 1:30.6 | Modern to me means that I strive to make design that is new and original. |
| 1:35.2 | And I'm definitely a modernist in my orientation in the sense that I'm kind of a minimalist in a funny way. |
| 1:41.8 | I am American, obviously. |
| 1:44.0 | And I think that the optimism of America |
| 1:46.8 | comes through in my ive, I hope, whether that's through color or through subject matter, |
... |
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