Jonathan Saunders Brings Color and Pattern to His Furniture Launch
It might be the beginning of a new decade, but on and off the runway I’ve been observing many creative people returning to what they do best, or, as in the case of Jonathan Saunders, their first love. The Scot, a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and Central Saint Martins, debuted his namesake collection in 2003 and became known for his color sense and his textile designs. Now he’s launching Saunders, a line of art furniture that takes him full circle back to where he started his creative life.
“I was always kind of creating objects that had no real function, but I was working with materials and colors. This is from a very early age, but I really wanted to learn a skill set,” the designer tells Vogue. “The first thing I did before I even went to art school was a furniture making course.” At school Saunders drifted from product to textile design because,” he explains, “ in the back of my head I always loved how people interacted with whatever you were designing, and fashion was a natural kind of progression from that.”
Though he’s pivoted from making objects that relate to the body to ones that relate to space, there’s a clear aesthetic through line. Color and pattern remain the designer’s calling cards. The former one would imagine to be a harder sell in furniture than fashion design, but Saunders hasn’t met with resistance to the vibrancy of his work. “Often people are drawn to what I do that wouldn’t necessarily be drawn to color and pattern, but because of the simplicity, or maybe the graphic nature, they are able to envisage it within their world,” he says. Maybe particularly so, if they are attracted to the minimalism of form.
Saunders says the Bauhaus is a touchstone. He’s drawn both to the aesthetics and the multidisciplinary philosophy of the now 100-year-old German movement. Dig a bit, and the designer will go on about a closer-to-home inspiration: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish architect who designed the Glasgow School of Arts. To this editor’s eyes, there’s a soupçon of Memphis in Saunder’s work as well, both in its occasional playfulness and its palette.
Wood, tubular metal, and resin are Saunders’s materials of choice, but what distinguishes his work is his use of color. “What I think is wonderful about [it] is the emotions that it evokes, especially when not used in isolation,” the designer states, adding that “simplicity of form allows color to tell a story.” Asked if he’s ever analyzed his attraction to color, he replied, “I think you’re drawn to anything that you’re rebelling against; [or] it could be from living in dreary Glasgow as a child!”
They say you can’t go home again, but to some extent Saunders has, which is good news for all of us. Furniture, unlike ephemeral fashion, is for keeps. One commits to furniture of Saunders’s quality, and to create, or invest in, it is to implicitly register a vote of confidence in the future.
Photo: Image Group / Courtesy of Saunders1/10Saunders’s tubular stool.
Photo: Image Group / Courtesy of Saunders2/10Saunders’s tubular table.
