Shopping for Housewares in Brooklyn

Jun 07, 2023

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Critical Shopper

By Jon Caramanica

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was naughty, and then Jonathan Adler put it on a throw pillow.

Do you see how things went south from there? The Adler regime came to power on the backs of scads of slackers who had not previously given two whits about how their homes were designed but were now making enough money thanks to the hipster economy that to continue in ignorance would be an error, but to give in to shabby chic or even all-midcentury-modern-everything would be, you know, lame.

Enter cheek: the sort of home décor that’s both prim and also disruptive, thanks to the use of provocative colors or trims or language. But there’s nothing transcendent about this cheap kitsch, no visible hand of aesthetic agency.

And so a countermaneuver was destined, and it has arrived in the form of a revival of handcrafted home items: pottery and dishes and cutlery and so on. It’s also an extension of the yen for artisanal food, a yen for something artisanal (or at least unique) to eat it out of.

That leads to a store like Joinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which in addition to carrying men’s and women’s high-end utility clothing features a host of items for a well-ordered home. That includes hearty wide walnut display bowls by Tenebras ($90), a beautiful white enamel colander by Reiss ($68), and of course, a hexagonal teak candlestick ($35). (I mean, you can’t throw a Birkenstock without hitting a hexagonal candlestick these days.)

Of the recent crop of Williamsburg housewares entrants, Joinery is the most earnest. At the other end of the spectrum is Beam, part of the Shops at 240 Kent mini-mall, which embodies design in a post-Adler world, keeping elements of his fanciful approach but mostly without its blunt force.

There were surprisingly lovely silicone vessels with long, thin tops that ended in a point (as if they held a violent tagine) in chirpy colors ($140), and a smart Pablo lamp with a Lucite base (in bold fluorescent colors like pink and green) with a rectangular fabric shade ($125). Also by Pablo, the Pixo table lamp, a circular head like the U.F.O. in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” atop a slender arm, fully adjustable and in bright colors ($199). I also loved the multipiece desk organizer in the shape of a ship ($64).

Less interesting were the hybrid bone china plates by Seletti, gluing together halves of two styles to make a gauche whole. On the fence was a camouflage Chesterfield easy chair ($1,449). If it’s your one outré item of furniture, then great, but if it’s part of a loud chorus, maybe reconsider your vision.

There’s a fine line between cute and cutesy, and Beam isn’t scared of wobbling on it. You can certainly buy a stuffed doll of Picasso, or Biggie Smalls, or Coco Chanel ($42). On the wall, and for sale, were framed preserved butterflies in electric blue ($468), in case trad taxidermy is too hairy and artisanal for you. These aren’t items that will make your home, or that take a stand, but they may communicate to someone that you think that you have.

Once you have learned the distinction between those two things, you can go a few blocks away, to Abode New York, for a maturity upgrade and where, yes, I bought place mats. Beautiful place mats, made of multicolor basket-woven PVC yarn. And a beautiful white and aubergine salad bowl by ASA Selection, a German manufacturer that pairs dignity with panache.

Abode exists on the accessible end of the design-degree universe. A tubular pendant light in primary colors by Cilandro ($255), a rubber tissue dispenser by Tunell, a waterdrop trivet by Toma ($45): all items you can display proudly, and that wink casually, not face-transmogrifyingly.

Still, the charm of these pieces is largely digital. Almost certainly, they were designed on a computer, even if it was one with, like, an X-Girl sticker on it. If you want to see hands in action, you have to leave Williamsburg for Boerum Hill and the Primary Essentials, which is a shrine of the small batch. Surely you would like your morning muesli in one of the infinity bowls by Clam Lab ($120 for set of three), which look better cupped in your hand than on some dusty old table.

Chen Williams has porcelain bowls made from a cast of a cantaloupe ($98), Nicholas Newcomb has a range of rough-molded ceramic spoons, and Helen Levi has a multicolor paint-splattered pitcher ($136) — all striking. Excellently and hilariously, the store also sells, for $45, the brackets it uses to mount its shelves, in response to customer demand. Let no home go under-beautifully bracketed.

The Primary Essentials is in a calm white space on a thriving strip of Atlantic Avenue now in its second wave of commercial gentrification, and finally getting some polish. And just three doors down is the old Jonathan Adler store, windows papered over, phone line disconnected.

The Primary Essentials

372 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-522-1804; theprimaryessentials.com

Beam

240 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, 646-450-1469; beambk.com

Abode New York

179 Grand Street, Brooklyn, 718-388-5383; abode-newyork.com

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