Clicking over to JA's website revealed two big surprises this morning:
1. the website has been completely redesigned and it looks beautiful.
2. He's just put out a new book that riffs dangerously close to our hallowed Therapy & Prescription theme (and our own upcoming book): "Jonathan Adler: My Presciption for Anti-Despressive Living". We were among the first to be surprised when our name caught currency, but does EVERYONE have to copy it?
Regardless, JA's new book looks juicy. Here's the description:
[The book] explores Jonathan's own tongue-in-cheek design "manifesto," with each chapter devoted to a different "tenet," moving through the major incarnations of his interiors and products and ending with the story of his personal creative odyssey....
The book is incredible! I bought a copy at Strand yesterday....only $21!
Any book with a Norfolk terrier on the cover is okay by me.
And MGR, we trust YOU not to wear flip-flops on the cover of YOUR book.
For your amusement, it looks like this rather sedate cover was once the cover design or at least a placeholder...
http://www.overstock.com/?page=proframe&prod_id=1528081
And yes, anything with a Norfolk is better ('cause god loves a Terrier).
I love the Trousdale Floor Lamp in that photo. $1200 though. Ouch. Maybe next year...
As I've always said, cute animals are NOT design elements! They're just exploiting your sentimentality.
I'll look at this book... but begrudgingly! The title does smell of appropriation... If you know him I'd ask him to at least give you propa's in acknowledgements.
BTW, I often see Simon Doonan lunching in midtown... He's quite dandy, isn't he?
Thornhill Desk, $1,100.00
"Simple, Parsons style shapes covered in linen and then lacquered"
hmmm... I am intrigued. Didn't HOme to Go do a similar application on a coffee table or...? Maybe this would work for the tops of my IKEA nesting tables that got all scratched up in the last move? (Sorry, Adler - when I have the big bucks I'll buy instead of just copying.)
Jonathan Adler just opened a store here in Chicago last weekend. I'm planning to peek in there tommorrow.
Am I the only one who thinks Adler is just ripping off all the designs from the 50s? And his furniture looks like he cut and pasted the Room and Board website. I don't see anything original in his work.
(pay no attention to the crazy woman behind that laptop)
I wouldn't say the 50's. I think he takes some risks with some things and with other things he seems to "borrow" way too much.
Much of his new furniture that will be coming out by Rowe looks like very much like recycled Danish Modern. Not horrible. Just not all that original.
He also "borrows" heavily from the Hollywood Regency look.
To be honest, I don't care for his style at all when it comes to interiors.
I think some of his pottery is unique. Not sure that I like it all (the "breast" vase comes to mind). I do love that lamp. Way too pricey for me though. I also love some of his needlepoint pillows.
I just went the the book signing reception at the new Jonathan Adler book signing and was lucky enough to sit down and chat with Simon as well as meet Jonathan. The new store is beautiful however the prices dont entirely match his tongue and cheek "I dont take myself too seriously design approach". His manifesto seems to reject the idea of elitism however the price points dont exactly correspond to that ideology
Anne, I'm embarrassed to say that until recently, I just assumed that Jonathan Adler was some 1960s designer I hadn't heard of, but who'd recently been "rediscovered." It all looks like 1961 to me.
I went to an event here at the Storehouse in DC that featured Adler...it kind of cracked me up because people were flipping out over his pottery that would be "personally signed" there. The breast vase was particularly amusing. The appetizers and drinks were good, though. I agree about the linen-covered parsons table...I think they have it at Storehouse, and frankly, I don't think it's THAT much better than IKEA.
Oh my gosh! I love Simon Doonan! And that floor lamp! And the giraffe, too. We have Jonathan Adler's BB&B line in our bathroom and have been really happy with it. You know, it's interesting to see everyone's opinions about what he's copying, I've always thought his stuff was a funkier version of Pottery Barn... not original by any stretch of imagination, just more of the same prepackaged C&B, West Elm middle of the road stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with that. For a middle of the road gal like me, it works.
Um, for all you saying Adler "borrows" from the Hollywood Regency look, I think you are putting the fabulously embroidered cart before the hand-thrown, metallic glazed horse...
He pretty much resurrected and reinvented "Hollywood Regency", and put it back on the map (along with other West Coasters like Kelly Wearstler).
I do agree with Erika that the pricepoint and "design for all" mentality don't entirely match up, although his newer housewares lines for mass-retailers are definitely starting to change that. Or am I just getting numb to prices?!
---He pretty much resurrected and reinvented "Hollywood Regency", and put it back on the map (along with other West Coasters like Kelly Wearstler).---
Patrick, we call that "borrowing" where I come from ;-)
Well, nothing is new under the sun, basically. It's just about impossible to be "original".
Whatever you want to call it, looking at the past through the lazik-cut lens of the time one lives in, and filtered through one's own sensibilities will always have a slightly different twist than things that are actually period.
Fashion has to do with the zietgeist, and style (being related to "stylus" or writing instument), has to do with the way one's own hand renders something. I'd say that Mr. Adler's own style has succeeded in pointing out and shaping that particular chunk of fashion into his style that it has helped mutate the shape of that entire fashion.
That said ... no, I haven't bought any of his stuff at all, (partly because of the price) although I do kind of love it.
What a total copyist. No design integrity. Why would you be surprised he "was inspired by" your website? Wake up. Take a look at Marimekko, Alexander Girard, David Hicks, Danish potters, Rosenthal, Parzinger, Lenox etc. etc. He is awful. As Americans say, a hack. And the cover of the book is so gauche, I am sorry to say.
"Am I the only one who thinks Adler is just ripping off all the designs from the 50s? And his furniture looks like he cut and pasted the Room and Board website. I don't see anything original in his work."
Boy could not agree more. Poor David Hicks must be rolling in his grave from the abuse of his name and style that Adler has appropriated. This stuff is for young rich kids that could never see themselves entering or buying something from a thrift store. The more one knows about the origins of his stuff the more embarrassing this all is. Jon please invent something new for once!