With the vision and confidence to experiment and evolve, Lionel Jadot has made a practice of skirting tradition by mixing genres, inspirations, and materials to achieve his iconoclastic vision. Key to his work process is a strong belief in craftsmanship and integrity in terms of behavior and approach. His unique dining table “Prisma Flight” began with a brass dance floor discovered under layers of carpet at a former nightclub. Cut and polished, the usable parts of the brass floor were rebuilt into a puzzle, resembling a surfboard secured with flush rivets like an airplane wing. The table’s feet are built with heavy sheet metal formed into prism shapes. Varying colors play with the idea of light and shadow, further suggesting the prism’s refractory quality.

While not easily categorized by a singular style, Jadot’s work could most easily be recognized by his affinity for repurposed materials and his deft eye at creating harmony and balance out of the collision of disparate elements. The principle of reclamation has been relevant to Jadot from a young age. As a child in his father’s workshop, Jadot developed a keen attraction and respect for materials, coveting the bits of scrap wood and leather that would accumulate around the floor and had been deemed “fair game.” Today this manifests as both a philosophical and aesthetic tenet to his work. Manipulating materials that have been salvaged permeates the works with a sense of character, history, and humanity.

Working from a near photographic mental library of materials and influences, he is at once artist, tinkerer, and inventor. He explains, “What interests me is ideas passing though memory, and the influences mixing. Culture meeting subculture, mixing genre – from memory. I filled notebooks of ideas and with this approach I decided to achieve all that was in my notebooks. It is an exciting job; it’s more an expression, free of any constraints. But it is also a free reflection on design and art, and this fragile border that I love to cross in both directions.”