Jonah Takagi

Born in Tokyo and raised in New England, industrial designer Jonah Takagi received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002.

For several years, Jonah designed furniture that he built in a friend’s studio while he played bass guitar, touring and recording with several indie rock bands. Needing to develop and showcase a growing body of work that was filling his house but few had seen, Jonah founded Atelier Takagi in 2005.

Jonah has designed a growing collection of tables, chairs, lamps, and shelves, “mostly inspired by the mundane (Tinkertoys, wooden brooms), all elegant yet somehow tough at the same time — basically the kind of of pieces that don’t go unnoticed for long, ” writes Jill Singer for Sight Unseen.

One of Jonah’s notable designs is the remarkable Bluff City pendant, by Roll & Hill. Bluff City merges a traditional pendant shade and a wire cage into an industrially inspired but refined pendant. A variety of finish combinations gives the light a vaguely postmodern feel that echoes the Memphis movement. However, the Tennessee town, known as Bluff City, was the inspiration for the series.

Perhaps surprisingly, one of Jonah’s inspirations is Howard Roark, the fictional character from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead:

“He’s a super-modern architect who has to deal with people who are very traditional and want all the fluted columns and the trappings of traditional stuff. He was fiercely independent about what he wanted, and I’ve always admired that. ”