Here at Sight Unseen, we tend to pride ourselves on the timeless nature of so many of our features. But if you look back at the first time we covered Jamie Iacoli and Brian McAllister, way back in 2010, the article is almost laughably out-of-date. For one, we called Seattle a city that’s “not exactly famous for its flourishing industrial design scene” — which is, of course, the premise behind this entire week. And as for Iacoli & McAllister? Back then, they were better known for powder-coated shop tools and cake pedestals than for the beautifully lightweight and sophisticated furniture that has become their signature (and they hadn’t even begun to make jewelry!). They were so very green back then — only having recently found vendors and retailers to make and sell their work — whereas now they’re like the éminence grise of the Seattle design scene, so entrenched in its visual identity that you can’t remember a time when they weren’t there.
What hasn’t changed? When we interviewed them in 2010, the onetime couple had broken up but were still living together. Today, they’re still broken up and living together, though in the intervening years they spent three years living apart. “We were living separately but we had two different studio spaces,” Iacoli remembers. “A dirty production facility where we made everything and a clean inspirational studio where we would design stuff. We got to the point where Brian was always in the production studio and I was always in the clean studio and we never saw each other. It was hard for us to schedule being inspired and doing design work.”
So the two did something most exes would never dream of: They got a townhouse in Capitol Hill that’s big enough for the both of them (plus Iacoli’s dog, Sidney). “We thought if we lived together, we would pass each other in our free time — one of us would be working on something and the other would be going out the door and we could have a quick conversation about our design work,” says Iacoli. And while the arrangement may prove to be short-lived, so far it’s working, not least because the two filled the house (to shockingly un-matchy effect) with furniture of their own design. “A friend said to us, ‘That’s the greatest thing about you guys living together,’” Iacoli laughs. “‘You didn’t have to make any decisions about stuff.’”
A view of Iacoli’s dresser, with the books she’s currently reading, a brass sage burner by Iacoli & McAllister, pieces of coral from Miami, and a collage by Serrah Russell, a local artist.
“The coolest thing about the apartment is the views,” says Iacoli. “The living room and my bedroom look into downtown. It’s a bird’s eye view you could only have from our building; to me, it doesn’t even look like Seattle. Brian’s bedroom looks out over Lake Union. He has lakes and mountains and I have like a city/sound/mountain view. The neighborhood is nice because it’s quiet, but there’s also this weird bodega a block away from us called the Meat Market that’s a magnet for transient people. So I don’t feel like I’m living in a vanilla neighborhood. It’s quiet, but it’s still a little bit gritty, which I like.”
Though the kitchen looks impeccably modern, Iacoli says, “if you look closely, that is the smallest, shittiest dishwasher and stove on the market. That stove I’ve not seen since the kitchen in my dorm in 1997. But we were wooed by how clean the apartment is. It wasn’t until we got in that I was like, ‘Oh my God, dude. This is like a camping stove.’”
Mugs from Toiletpaper, NADA, and Iacoli & McAllister’s ICFF booth.
In the living room are two Frame Coffee Table prototypes in brass and copper. “I like this table because it displays things really nicely, both on the table and on the floor. But the arrangement is constantly changing. We have a cleaning lady now — that’s how fancy we are — and she really pays attention to how it all goes back together. Her boss came in to check out how she was doing, and she was like, ‘You need to take a mental image of how everything goes back.’ And I was shaking my head behind her.” On the left are coasters by Chen Chen and Kai Williams and on the right, the vintage hands are actually a towel-rod holder from the ’70s.
“That’s a cheap-ass couch, let’s not talk about,” Iacoli laughs. “Literally Brian and I were like, ‘We need someplace to lay down,’ so we went and bought a $500 couch. It had really awful big nasty cushions on the back so I pulled those off. Those cushions are just Ikea cushions that happened to match. We’re actually not going to be living together for much longer because I met someone and my someone is moving in, and Brian and I are arguing about who has to take the sofa.”
A book from a gallery show Iacoli saw LA’s Koreatown, by two artists who spent a yearlong residency in the Swiss Alps, using cranes and forklifts to construct monumental still lifes with “cars and I-beams,” as she puts it. “The scale of the sculptures is just insane.”
Just inside the front door is their workstation. “One day a week we spend time together, otherwise I’m leaving and he’s working or vice versa, and we just peer over each other’s shoulders,” Iacoli says. “It’s a good way to check in, because we found that we don’t do design work together. We definitely have a shared vision and we always agree, but we don’t sit down and sketch together and listen to jazz music and rap about design. One of us always has the initial loose concept and we work through it together in conversation. But we each have our own thing. We’re never on the same wavelength at the same time.”
A note from the inspiration board that hangs above their desks. “That wooden frame is from a prototype of the Hialeah table. It’s what the glass sits on because we didn’t want to put glass onto a metal frame. Wood kind of warms up that whole thing.”
“All of the art in our apartment we’ve traded for, and this is the first piece we got from someone we didn’t know personally. It’s by Stephen Eichhorn; I love his work. This piece is 5 feet tall by 3 feet wide, and it’s built up on a 4-inch thick piece of wood. It’s hand-cut pieces of magazines, collaged onto the wood. It’s really awesome. It’s the first thing people see when they walk in.”
When we say we actually edited out about five pictures of books, Iacoli laughs. “The day before this shoot we were trying to throw together a really Donald Judd–inspired three-quarter ply bookcase because my books are ev-ery-where, all over the apartment. The piece at the top of the stairs our friend CM Ruiz made for the wall of our booth at ICFF in 2012.”
Another ICFF wall piece, by local artist Stacey Rozich. “That’s me, Brian, and Mies, my dog, who’s no longer with us.”
“This just shows how much I love me some Nietzche,” Iacoli laughs. “I studied philosophy in college. I don’t read Western stuff anymore but I have a minor in religious studies and I meditate every day and I read about Buddhism and Taoism and stuff that monks have written. It calms me. But I don’t read about 19th century German philosophers anymore.”
“This is a view into Brian’s room. That’s our Frame Light. And then, Brian’s just super into hanging his Eames LCW on the wall. He’s been doing in every place he’s ever lived.”
A view of Iacoli’s bedroom desk, with an Iacoli & McAllister Panca. Above the desk hangs a photograph of the glaciers in Iceland by Amanda Ringstad (who we’re also featuring here).
“The big black egg-shaped image is another CM Ruiz. I don’t know what it is, he just made it for me. It’s a scroll, and he gave it to me all rolled up with a ribbon around it. He usually does band poster stuff and always shows during SXSW but he always shows up with stuff for me, he’s really prolific. It’s so small here, so the design and arts scenes totally overlap.”
Bedside table view.
“A great shot of how shitty the weather is in Seattle,” Iacoli says. “That’s actually the great thing about these windows, though. While it does look really awful out there, you kind of don’t feel it. I mean, I still take Vitamin D, I’m not gonna lie. But it really helps with bringing the outside in and inside out. It makes being in Seattle so much more tolerable.”
Brian’s room.
“That’s an old lamp we did that was in production for a tiny minute.”
Another Stephen Eichhorn original.
“And that’s my dog, Sid, she’s a Maltese. She’s sitting behind me at my desk right now. When we’re in the car, she will climb onto my shoulder and perch her head next to my head. That’s how we drive around.”
It’s hard enough to be a young American designer. The lack of government funding means that prototypes must often be self-financed, and the difficulty in working with most European manufacturers means that young design studios frequently end up handling their own production as well. Now try doing it all in Seattle, a city that’s not exactly famous for its flourishing industrial design scene.
People always ask us about the American design scene, and for the longest time, inquiring after American design was just shorthand for trying to figure out what was happening in New York. It’s not that design wasn’t happening in other places; it just wasn’t happening at a scale and with a voice that would make it cohere into something bigger than itself. But oh, how that’s changed in the last five years. Ask us about American design, and we’ll talk your ear off about the amazing ceramics coming out of Los Angeles, or the interesting material experiments happening in Chicago, or Jonah Takagi, who’s singlehandedly making “D.C. design” happen. But the city we’re really, really excited about right now? Seattle.
After Jean Lee met Dylan Davis while studying industrial design at the University of Washington, and after a string of successful school collaborations led them to start dating, the two of them did a semester abroad together in Rome. “Those were the good times,” laughs Lee. “We saw all these independent studios there, and designers working more as artists, and it was really inspiring for us. That wasn't happening at all in Seattle.” And so after they graduated in 2005, Lee went on to work for a messenger bag company based in Philadelphia, while Davis joined the team at Henrybuilt. They did a small trade selling vintage finds on Etsy for awhile, and eventually started repurposing those objects into new designs as a hobby. But what finally led them to join forces as Ladies & Gentlemen in 2009 were the first signs that they might be able to find in Seattle what they experienced in Rome after all: Not only had studios like Iacoli & Mcallister and Grain begun to flourish by making and selling their own work, their new coalition Join was gathering together local designers to collaborate and exhibit together. “Jamie Iacoli asked us to contribute to a show, and were like ‘What the hell? Let’s do it!’”