When longtime friends Julia Ransom and Johanna Dunn met for lunch six years ago, they soon learned both were hungry for new beginnings. The former studied finance before pivoting to interior design; the latter was making a name for herself in fashion with stints at Saks Fifth Avenue and Fabrizio Viti’s footwear brand. Similar tastes in interiors and furniture sparked the idea to collaborate, especially when they realized the furniture and accessories they wanted to make weren’t on the market. “We would spend hours each night after work looking at furniture,” Ransom says. “We both felt that the simple, strong pieces we wanted to buy just weren’t available outside the gallery space.”
Inspiration struck when the duo visited the windswept beaches of the Cyclades and Dodecanese Islands, where they conceived their first collection. That led to the launch of Ransom & Dunn, the duo’s design brand that launched in April with 29 made-to-order furnishings and accessories whose simple lines and sensual curves draw subtle influence from the grandeur, scale, and proportion of the region’s Neoclassical architecture. Sculptural shapes, simple lines, and sensual curves define the inaugural collection, called Foundations, a series of living room–ready pieces spanning statement furniture and attention-grabbing accessories that the duo refer to as “cornerstones of a home.”
The collection indeed feels chameleonic, imbued with the shapes of midcentury French design and the sex appeal of the ‘70s. Each handmade piece is named after Greco-Roman mythology and lovingly honors the region. To wit: the statuesque, oblong-shaped Petra Table’s deep green Verde Levanto marble, the plinth-like Roman bar’s overt nod to Neoclassical columns, an arched floor mirror named after Andrea Palladio, and a set of bouclé Pebble poufs. The collection “can move amongst different spaces and transcend periods or styles of design,” Ransom says. “The pieces hold a similar purpose to the much-loved essentials of a wardrobe, tying and anchoring all the other layers together.”
