The New York-based designer’s ripple cups and wave pitchers are meant for display.
By Annie Dahl with Claire Butwinick
Photographed by Coming Soon NY, Sophie Lou Jacobsen, and Sean Santiago
STILL LIFE is a recurring feature that spotlights the Instagram of an emerging designer on our radar. In their own words, creatives from around the world go beyond the grid to uncover the meaning behind their most compelling posts.
Spray bottles, cups, and pitchers tend to be tucked away, but New York-based multidisciplinary designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen finds joy in turning these items into statement pieces.
Since 2019, Jacobsen has transformed ordinary, mundane household objects into effortlessly cool eye candy. Using multicolored borosilicate glass, she plays with texture, shape, and color adding ripples and waves to amber, lavender, or baby pink handles, enhancing the aesthetics and admiration of everyday objects.
In addition to her solo practice, Jacobsen also cofounded Studio Sayso with New York-based interior designer Sarita Posada in 2018. Inspired by the duo’s multicultural backgrounds (Jacobsen was born in Seattle, raised in Paris, and educated at Central Saint Martins in London, while Posada was born in Medellín, raised in Portland, and now resides in New York), their first line of tables and chairs, Collection 01 was inspired by the bright colors of Colombia along with the forms and materials of 1930s French and 1970s Italian design, and handcrafted in Posada’s hometown. Showcased through noteworthy Instagram posts, read more about Studio Sayso and Jacobsen’s design ethos below.
“Taking everyday objects and making them playful and exciting is at the core of my design ethos. I think that if you can design a piece in such a way that it enhances its enjoyment of use, then its owner will create an attachment with that object, and in return treat it with care and respect and hopefully hold on to it for a long time. I also believe in the power of objects to bring joy and brighten one’s day or mood through these small affordances. I’m constantly sketching random objects, drawing them over and over again in different ways, and thinking about what I could change to make its elements either more functional, surprising, or just aesthetically pleasing. That’s how I came up with the Wave Pitcher, along with the Arch Pitcher. It was an exercise in pitcher handles, of sorts!”
“The color palette of this particular collection was dictated by the slightly restricted choices of colors available in borosilicate glass. There are only around twenty or so colors to choose from, however, I knew that I wanted the color to be very intentional and one of the main focuses of the collection (there’s not a lot of color out there that isn’t plastic!). So I worked within that to come up with a selective palette of a few colors that work well together and create a cohesive collection. It’s mostly personal preference—I decided to make combinations that I would want to have rather than try to fit within a seasonal or trend-based color palette, though there is probably some crossover there.”
“Sarita and I have been working together on various projects since I moved to New York four years ago, and in 2018 we founded Studio Sayso in order to launch a collection of furniture we were working on. It’s a very fun project for both of us to be working in a space where we can come up with new designs that wouldn’t necessarily have an immediate place to live in our own practices. Our complementary skills and backgrounds make for a fruitful collaboration. After our first launch in 2018, we took a little break to concentrate on solo endeavors, but we will be hopefully releasing some new work this year! Stay tuned for that.”