We visited Lindsey Adelman at her Brooklyn ceramic studio as she put the finishing touches on pieces in the Ambrosia collection in advance of their debut at The Future Perfect.
In 2006, New York-based designer Lindsey Adelman founded her namesake studio in tandem with the release of her now-well-known Branching Bubble chandelier, a delicate fixture of glowing orbs and angular brass limbs. Its ethereal aesthetic has been a constant in her lighting designs. It’s there, too, in her new Ambrosia series, a collection of one-off glass vessels, cups, and oil lamps, which will be available exclusively at The Future Perfect this fall. All hand-blown, certain pieces incorporate assortments of leather, ceramic, rope, and porcelain, as well as varying lengths of brass chains, often fused within the molten glass. The latter, in particular, was inspired by the tale of Ambrosia, a classical myth that reconciles femininity and power—a concept that The Future Perfect’s founder David Alhadeff thought spoke to Adelman’s past work, describing it as a “rare balance of fierce and fragile.” As the story goes, after the Thracian King Lycurgus banned worship of Dionysus, he killed one of the wine god’s loyal followers, Ambrosia, by turning her into a grape vine. The vine then wraps around Lycurgus and strangles him to death. “She turned into a vine and brought him down to the underworld,” recounts Adelman. “I love that story.” She incorporated chainlink because of its visual resonance with vines, a connection that Adelman clearly has a personal fondness for: Displayed in her Brooklyn studio is a suspended installation of chains that hang like a web of rainforest liana.
