Jonathan Adler on saucy new Amazon home collection: 'Live clean and decorate dirty'

Here is what was on view on Election Day in Jonathan Adler's company headquarters on Hudson Street in Manhattan: a bit of brutalism; lots of organic modernism (of the sort once seen in 1960s-era Reform synagogues); a dash of Egyptian revival (but the '70s version); scenes from the Memphis movement; references to pre-Columbian pottery, and to early '80s disco tropes and pop art; many, many objects emblazoned with marijuana leaves (including a stunning beaded and embroidered textile that reads "Weed" in a medley of greens); and an elderly and very grumpy Chihuahua atop a lavender towel on a shredded lime-colored chair.

Trained in semiotics and art history at Brown University, Adler has long been known for his exuberant style that is also a big tent of references. It was nearly 30 years ago that the designer, now 52, made a line of quilted pottery inspired by Chanel bags, and 20 years ago that he opened his first home store on Broome Street.

His company now has 17 stores worldwide, a wholesale and e-commerce business, and a residential and commercial design practice. (A Minneapolis store closed in Uptown in 2016; MartinPatrick3 in the Warehouse District opened an Adler section in its design studio the next year.)

Adler has introduced a collection for Amazon called Now House: whimsical objects and furniture in mod black and white and postmodern pastels. Delivery is free and speedy with an Amazon Prime membership.

A stoneware Wink Box, shaped like an eye, is $30 and can arrive to you the day after tomorrow; a Josef sideboard, honey-colored wood with a whorled pattern on its doors ($798), will take longer.

Adler answered some pressing questions:

Q: Before we get to that collection, what's this tray of ashtrays and vessels printed with red lips and joints and marijuana leaves?

Q: But you used to?

A: When I was a teen, I started making bongs. That was the great thing about being a potter. You could make bongs. I used to smoke a lot of pot and listen to a lot of Grateful Dead. Until I realized that I actually didn't really like either. I just thought I was supposed to.

Being a bong-making teenager gave me a shot at popularity. The shot missed, by the way. But bongs were and are and always will be a fun challenge, a tough marriage of form and function.

Q: How often do you work in clay these days?

A: All the time. The pottery studio is still where I work out my ideas. My design practice is craft-based: It's a digital world, but I'm an analog dude. Clay is my main medium and my forever love. Side note, I work in white stoneware, and I wear white jeans every day so you can't see the clay splatters on my pants. Pottery studio; funerals; brises: white jeans only.

A: When I was coming up in the '80s, postmodernism was primarily aesthetic, not theoretical: this visual mashup of "no new tale to tell," the whole mix that comes from pulling references from any and all eras and recontextualizing them.

I hope I have a vast and considered knowledge of the past, present and future, and I put it all in my visual blender and see what unfolds. So yeah, there are some '80s references and some futuristic references. Some [Wiener] Werkstatte-y references like this. [Adler held up a tall mint-green powder-coated metal vase with a grid of cutouts below the rim, $48.] This is a perfect example, very Josef ­Hoffmann-y but reinvented in a minty package.

Q: When I look at the Wink Box at home on my computer, Amazon suggests things that I might also like. These include a Dry Guy Boot Dryer, vacuum sealer rolls with a cutter box and an Alaska Bear natural silk pillowcase. I have no idea what these things are.

A: Sounds like you are into some freaky stuff that involves wet boots, long-term food storage and, as for the silk pillowcase, I don't even want to speculate.

Q: What was the brief for this collection?

I'm a huge Amazon customer, obvs, who isn't? But I go to Amazon for needs. I think my most recent purchase was like cereal and a madeleine pan and batteries. Amazon wants to become the source for wants, so they came to me to be their first home collection, which was very flattering and of course a chance to get back the money I've spent.

Q: Anything else you want to highlight?

A: I'm really into terrazzo. It's kind of a trendy material. The idea of terrazzo architectural objets is a kind of highfalutin shelfscape thing. I thought it would be fun to take something that's typically done in plaster but do it in affordable terrazzo.

Everything wends its way into myriad things.