Loving What They Do

Jonathan says he has one overall intention behind everything he designs. "I feel your home should make you happy," he says. "The real intention is to make stuff that's very personal, very idiosyncratic, and very uplifting."

When Jonathan started making pottery for a living, he made every single piece. "It was very, like, 'time to make the doughnuts,' if you remember that. I had to just make pot after pot," he says. Today, Jonathan still designs every single piece in his collection and makes the prototypes, but he hires artisans in developing countries to bring his creations to life through an organization called Aid to Artisans.

So is pottery still a calming activity for Jonathan? "Not really," he says. "People always ask me if it's calming and I say, you know, maybe when you're sort of doing it as a hobbyist, but when you're a production potter, not so calming."