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\u2019s 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 \u201cA\u201d, and above a brass buzzer, written in tiny letters, reads: \u201cANNA KARLIN\u201d.\u00a0I 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u00a0O\u2019Sullivan 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.\u00a0They are not for the casual collector \u2014 some of the pieces cost tens of thousands of dollars \u2014 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.\u00a0\u00a0Her work defies neat summation, perhaps because she is self-taught, but it all has a strong sculptural element. \u201cI see all furniture as a piece of sculpture in a room yet full of purpose,\u201d she says.\u201cThe way I design is not thematic,\u201d Karlin says, \u201cit\u2019s a rolling conversation. I only pause for breath when I think, \u2018we should launch this.\u2019\u201d 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 boucl\u00e9 ($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. \u201cThe way they respond to each other creates a world around the pieces,\u201d 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\u2019t lost her British accent: she drops T\u2019s like a Londoner and has retained a Brit\u2019s ability to swear profanely mid-sentence. And she believes that growing up in the capital was \u201ca privilege in that you\u2019re surrounded by amazing architecture that subtly trains your eye in balance, proportion and texture, without you even knowing it\u201d.\u00a0While her filmmaker father \u201chad no interest in objects; he was politically against ownership, so he barely owned anything\u201d, her grandparents were an early design inspiration. \u201cThey 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.\u201dShe hasn\u2019t lost her British accent: she drops T\u2019s like a Londoner and has retained a Brit\u2019s 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 \u201creally 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.\u201dShe started to think about how her creativity could be channelled if \u201cI started to look inwards, instead of just responding to a brief. I wanted to produce something that didn\u2019t get chucked away at the end of a campaign.\u201d\u00a0In thinking about \u201cwhat I wanted to say\u201d 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\u00a0and 10 sliding drawers. \u201cI knew nothing, so I had no limitations,\u201d she says. \u201cAll the pieces were one-offs, so my maximum risk was just one piece. It didn\u2019t feel like I was launching a business \u2014 even though that\u2019s exactly what happened.\u201dFive years ago, she moved into her current showroom. \u201cI always had a studio in this area, but I never thought I could afford a store front. Then I saw this place,\u201d she says, gesturing to the former print works. \u201cIt had fire \u2014 and then water \u2014 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.\u201dIn 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. \u201cThere is an incredible attention to detail with\u00a0her work, you can really feel the handcrafted nature and consideration with each piece,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan says.\u00a0He has used pieces from her Mulberry lighting collection (a small sconce costs $4,500), as well as the Handkerchief light \u2014 a long narrow basin above which three lights almost seem to hover ($18,500) \u2014 in multiple projects because \u201cthey feel both soft and strong, making a quiet and considered statement. There is always a real warmth too, which is so important.\u201d\u00a0He has also used the Wrought Iron counter stools, with swirly designs in their backs ($5,250), which he says he loves because of \u201cthe contrast of a more industrial material with free-flowing and fluid shapes.\u201dThe designer Sophie Ashby adds that she admires Karlin\u2019s attention to every possible sight line. \u201cI 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\u2019s exactly what you want from a bar stool that you, on the whole, see from the back.\u201dAll 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: \u201cwe\u2019re hand sewing into the wall,\u201d 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 \u2014 located just around the corner from the showroom \u2014 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 \u2014 her two sons, aged four and two, sleep in cribs in her former closet (\u201cit does have a window; their crib and bed fit just about either side of it\u201d), and she is expecting another baby in September, the same month as her 40th birthday.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Karlin doesn\u2019t struggle for ideas \u2014 her business has subsidiary arms for interior design as well as a jewellery business \u2014 but it is time that is her most precious commodity. \u201cI don\u2019t need a set of ingredients; I don\u2019t need a day at the Met soaking up inspiration. I can be anywhere \u2014 the subway even \u2014 I just need my sketchbook. I love the idea that I\u2019ve got a lifetime still ahead of me to keep coming up with more ideas.\u201dFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s Chinatown is an enigma of a showroom. At the base of a tall, handsome period building is a soft black-painted shop front,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-122630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122631,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122630\/revisions\/122631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}