A haughty pottery professor somewhere is seething over the success of mod-cheerleader Jonathan Adler.
That Rhode Island School of Design instructor – the one with “a more pure pottery ethos” – told the fashion-loving New Jersey boy that his handbag and hip-hop pots simply stunk. That was in the 1980s. Now Adler has spun his eye for fun, funky and accessible art into a small home-furnishings empire.
And he’s taunted that naysaying professor along the way. “Everyone needs a (dark character) from his past” to spur perfectionism, Adler said last week from Palm Beach. He shares a retreat there with longtime partner Simon Doonan of Barneys New York window-dressing fame, and a Norwich Terrier named Liberace.
The pop-culture-obsessed designer also is the muse behind seven eponymous stores and a retail site (jonathanadler.com) where his “happy chic” aesthetic can be wrangled for as little as $24 (an hourglass/ gourd-looking sale vase called “Cactus.”)
This potter got design geeks grouping things in threes and re-evaluating needlepoint. He will visit Denver on Wednesday for a public meet-and-greet at HW Home in Cherry Creek North.
“My style is really an idiosyncratic mix of influences, ranging from Big Sur hippie-dippy to Palm Beach waspy glamour to pop-art iconography,” said Adler, who will sign copies of his book, “My Prescription for Anti-Depressive Living,” and launch Jonathan Adler Furniture in Colorado.
Adler’s book is an explosion of color. The cover photo features the designer frolicking in a brushed corduroy blazer paired with red-orange flip-flops – the same color combination as the cover itself. “We believe in the innate chic-ness of red with brown,” states the Jonathan Adler Manifesto.
Pages brim with mid-century-inspired décor done over in Las Vegas vibrance and all with Adler’s signature ceramics. This vase has a mustache. That one looks like body parts. A third is in a group of pots reminiscent of George Nelson’s Bubble Lamps.
“I exhort people to really go for it,” Adler said. “I have a true missionary zeal for spreading my happy chic philosophy.”
That explains why the book is also packed with tips, from the “cheeky” to the practical. Among them: Minimalism is a bummer. Your home should be like a good dose of Zoloft. Mix and match with panache.
“A well-designed home, one that really reflects its owner, has anti-depressive qualities,” Adler said. “It’s hard to be glum if your breakfast room is chartreuse!”
He recently worked that happiness-by-design magic on a frowny friend who lives in a tiny Manhattan apartment: “She’s a psychologist working with the homeless. She’s doing something really meaningful with her life, and not making a lot of money.”
His pal hadn’t touched her place in a decade. She always thought she would upgrade. Adler saw the opportunity for a mitzvah, or an act of kindness.
“We did very simple things,” he said. “We painted the walls in her bedroom sky blue. We changed out the hardware, gave her new sheets, some lamps and dinnerware.”
The bounty included an orange lacquer cocktail table. Soon after the apartment was Adler-ized, his friend served refreshments to a new romance – snagged, of course, by a mighty boost of confidence courtesy of her colorful pad. “It had a ripple effect,” Adler said of his friend’s happy-chic home.
The aesthetic was an easy-sell for HW Home’s owner Ron Werner: “The Jonathan Adler Collection gives a mountain modern interior an unexpected stroke of mid-20th century glamour.”
But selling the idea wasn’t always so easy. Like his teacher had a decade beforehand, the late 1990s design trendsetters initially turned their noses up at Adler. “I wanted to make things that were bold and graphic and mod, which was not what was happening,” he said.
Everything changed once Barneys placed its first order. And then its second.
“My mission in life is to infuse chic design with a spirit of playfulness,” he said. “And the key to any commercial artistic endeavor is to follow one’s heart with total conviction.”
Staff writer Elana Ashanti Jefferson can be reached at 303-820-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com.
