Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Squeezed in between one shop selling Chinese seafood and another selling discounted backpacks, amid the graffiti-covered shutters of the Lower East Side’s Chinatown is an enigma of a showroom. At the base of a tall, handsome period building is a soft black-painted shop front, with small sculptures on plinths in the windows, yet no view through to the store behind. Linen curtains line panes of glass in the door panes, too. But inscribed in the concrete front step is an “A”, and above a brass buzzer, written in tiny letters, reads: “ANNA KARLIN”. I buzz for entry on 108 Eldridge Street and the furniture designer Anna Karlin comes to the door, welcoming me into her cavernous showroom-cum-workshop on a sweltering New York day. Inside, it’s dark and sumptuous, lit by the soft glow from her own lighting range, many with hand-upholstered silk globes softening the light. As befits her British heritage, she offers me a cup of tea.Karlin, delicate in frame with a selection of heavy chains layered around her neck, revels in the semi-anonymity that the location of her showroom provides; she likes being the insider’s secret. Because while she is not a household name, she is the byword for cool among elite interior designers; almost everyone I ask, from Kelly Wearstler and Bryan O’Sullivan to Sophie Ashby and Yabu Pushelberg, uses her designs in their projects; the singer John Legend has also bought pieces from her for several of his homes. They are not for the casual collector — some of the pieces cost tens of thousands of dollars — nor are they for those who love a cosy, cottage-core or overly feminine aesthetic. Like Karlin herself, these are pieces that have a tough underbelly. Her work defies neat summation, perhaps because she is self-taught, but it all has a strong sculptural element. “I see all furniture as a piece of sculpture in a room yet full of purpose,” she says.“The way I design is not thematic,” Karlin says, “it’s a rolling conversation. I only pause for breath when I think, ‘we should launch this.’” The collection, which she continues to add to periodically, ranges from her steel Chess stools ($4,750 each), which date back to her initial launch, to a landscape-embroidered headboard ($5,500-$8,250) via an inviting chaise longue made from maple burl and bouclé ($18,000). Most impressive of all is a cylindrical drinks cabinet, reminiscent of a Swedish stove, with individually sculpted tiles contoured to fit the shape ($42,000). They are all intended to work with each other, with contrasting shapes, patterns and edges working in dialogue. “The way they respond to each other creates a world around the pieces,” she says.Creating worlds is what Karlin excels in. Despite being New York-based for the past 14 years, her London upbringing remains important to her. She hasn’t lost her British accent: she drops T’s like a Londoner and has retained a Brit’s ability to swear profanely mid-sentence. And she believes that growing up in the capital was “a privilege in that you’re surrounded by amazing architecture that subtly trains your eye in balance, proportion and texture, without you even knowing it”. While her filmmaker father “had no interest in objects; he was politically against ownership, so he barely owned anything”, her grandparents were an early design inspiration. “They lived in a very simple, almost Quaker-like Arts and Crafts house that my great-grandfather had built, and my grandmother layered her very over-the-top aesthetic over that. I remember latching on to that and thinking that was how she communicated: through objects and decoration.”She hasn’t lost her British accent: she drops T’s like a Londoner and has retained a Brit’s ability to swear profanely mid-sentenceThe language of design is something that continues to fascinate Karlin. She studied for an art foundation course at Central Saint Martins and a degree in visual communication at Glasgow School of Art, before working in set design for fashion and music events, working for brands including Universal Records and EMI. In 2010, aged 25, she moved to New York and “really got my hustle on; I was doing everything from window displays for fashion brands, branding and graphics, events, set design for shoots. I did the interiors for a new Adidas store, and the fourth floor of a department store in Moscow, called Tsvetnoy, which had this incredible fantasy theme; it was magic.”She started to think about how her creativity could be channelled if “I started to look inwards, instead of just responding to a brief. I wanted to produce something that didn’t get chucked away at the end of a campaign.” In thinking about “what I wanted to say” at the end of 2012, she launched a range of handmade furniture, including the brass-plated Chess stools, ceramics, handblown glassware, lighting and a freestanding vanity cabinet that opened up in the manner of a storybook magician to reveal three bevelled-edge mirrors and 10 sliding drawers. “I knew nothing, so I had no limitations,” she says. “All the pieces were one-offs, so my maximum risk was just one piece. It didn’t feel like I was launching a business — even though that’s exactly what happened.”Five years ago, she moved into her current showroom. “I always had a studio in this area, but I never thought I could afford a store front. Then I saw this place,” she says, gesturing to the former print works. “It had fire — and then water — damage, so no floor, no ceiling, no electrics. Signing the lease was a huge leap of faith because we had to do a total renovation.”In a world where designs get copied quickly by fast fashion, luxury interior designers love to use her work in their schemes for its unique qualities. “There is an incredible attention to detail with her work, you can really feel the handcrafted nature and consideration with each piece,” O’Sullivan says. He has used pieces from her Mulberry lighting collection (a small sconce costs $4,500), as well as the Handkerchief light — a long narrow basin above which three lights almost seem to hover ($18,500) — in multiple projects because “they feel both soft and strong, making a quiet and considered statement. There is always a real warmth too, which is so important.” He has also used the Wrought Iron counter stools, with swirly designs in their backs ($5,250), which he says he loves because of “the contrast of a more industrial material with free-flowing and fluid shapes.”The designer Sophie Ashby adds that she admires Karlin’s attention to every possible sight line. “I feel she designs pieces that look beautiful from every angle of a room. For example, her bar stools with the sculptural form to the back are so clever because that’s exactly what you want from a bar stool that you, on the whole, see from the back.”All the pieces are handmade, and have lengthy lead times. She crafts some pieces in her workshop, others are commissioned out to artisans around the globe: textiles in the US, Japan and India; porcelain in Devon, England, glasswork in the Czech Republic, metalwork in Japan and the US. Karlin is also working on custom orders, such as a mantelpiece for one client that is modelled on the cylindrical cabinet and the Arts and Crafts-inspired headboard for an entire wall of a bedroom in an apartment on the West Side in New York: “we’re hand sewing into the wall,” she says. In the pipeline is the launch of her collection of outdoor wrought-iron furniture.As well as filling the homes of the wealthy elite, her own one-bedroom apartment — located just around the corner from the showroom — is filled to what sounds like bursting with her designs, from a custom-built liquor bar to an Arts and Crafts-inspired headboard, which hangs as a tapestry behind the bed, to a variety of lights that she has designed over the years. Her expanding family is adding to the squeeze — her two sons, aged four and two, sleep in cribs in her former closet (“it does have a window; their crib and bed fit just about either side of it”), and she is expecting another baby in September, the same month as her 40th birthday. Karlin doesn’t struggle for ideas — her business has subsidiary arms for interior design as well as a jewellery business — but it is time that is her most precious commodity. “I don’t need a set of ingredients; I don’t need a day at the Met soaking up inspiration. I can be anywhere — the subway even — I just need my sketchbook. I love the idea that I’ve got a lifetime still ahead of me to keep coming up with more ideas.”Find out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
