People
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Adelman. “We had to develop our own language, and the audience had to come along with it and invest in what Americans who are alive are making. Not to downplay the design heritage of the Nelson and Eames era – that was a really important time. But a lot of things are aligning right now. Finally, we have people buying design and it encourages a lot of independent thinking.” This freedom, combined with an
entrepreneurial spirit, is perhaps why the American design movement feels so momentous. Unlike many well-known European creatives who made their start collaborating with brands or institutions, the majority of prominent US studios have pulled together resources – following a debilitating financial crisis, no less – and taken control of the production and distribution of their own work. “Our political climate is such a mess – we’re like, why wait? We don’t know what happens tomorrow,” says Adelman. “The designers I know – they were going to make it happen no matter what. You don’t wait for it to happen to you. If you go to a welder to build a chair and he says, ‘I only do kitchens’, you can either teach him or go find the next person. You figure it out, and that’s also very American. That’s the common spirit. We wanted to be independent and not answer to anybody, but still make our work relevant.” That is not to say there are no American
designers taking a more traditional route to market, or at least combining it with the self-starter approach. Jason Miller, founder of Jason Miller Studio and high- end lighting brand Roll & Hill, has been steadily producing interesting work with US and European brands for over a decade. His latest pieces for De La Espada – a dining table and chair, sideboard, chest of drawers, and sofa – combine a distincly American aesthetic with Portuguese woodworking and craftsmanship. “I was thinking about Brooklyn townhouses – locally they’re called
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