Colorful Home Accents to Brighten Your Everyday From Object Lover

by Jackie Buddie

Jun 1, 2023

Create a welcoming space full of vibrant side tables, playful planters, and handy trays from this ultra-imaginative, trans-founded 3D-printing shop.

In our Featured Shop series, we shine a light on a standout shop from Etsy’s talented seller community, offering readers a behind-the-scenes look at their process and story.

Home, happy home. Picture it: A haven all your own where you’re free to be your fullest self. That’s basically the dream if you ask Asher Ford, the multi-talented and proudly trans founder of Object Lover—a feel-good furnishings shop that aims to make joyful, artful decor accessible to all. Filled with curvy, two-toned tables, prismatic rippled planters, and whimsical wavy catchalls, this vibrant collection of 3D-printed creations encourages us all to embrace our colorful side, whatever shape that may take. The best part? Whether you choose to layer a lush mix of pink and green flower pots throughout your living room or to style a single squiggly blue nightstand by your bed, you can feel extra good knowing the Object Lover line is making the world of interior design more inclusive, one playful piece at a time.

We sat down with Asher and her two trusty team members, Dizzy Ikard and Benjamin Violet, in their Austin studio to hear more about the collaborative process that makes this work so special. Read on to learn about their meaningful mission, then click play to see for yourself how 3D magic is made!

Your pieces are so vibrant and full of life. What effect do you hope they have on your customers?

The idea is that our pieces make peoples’ homes feel more their own. So much design is predicated on making your home look better and fancier to show to others; I want to make pieces people buy for themselves, to feel small sparks of comfort or joy, that remind them of their own style and their own happiness.

Any tips for decorating with your items?

Some designers who make maximalist pieces like to say that one piece can anchor a room and the rest of the room can be more neutral to let it stand out. I think our customers treat our pieces that way sometimes, but we also have lots of customers who feel best in full and loud spaces with lots of vibrant colorful pieces. Hopefully what we make can be used in all kinds of different ways to suit individual styles.

SHOP (clockwise from top left): "Saddle up" plant stand, $49; "Night sky" shelf, $55; "Saddle up" plant stand, $49; The Canyon Planter, from $37; The Hand Tray, $35 — all from Object Lover

Collaboration and inclusivity are two core tenets of your business. Can you tell us how that comes into play behind the scenes at Object Lover?

Queer and trans folks are often looking for other people to connect with, and I wanted to create a space for that. Here at Object Lover, it's all about creating an environment where people can feel safe and listened to, and everybody can feel like they can bring themselves to something. Right now, Object Lover is three people: me, my friend Dizzy, and my new friend Benjamin. We're working together, workshopping each little piece and finding the best ways to get it accomplished. It's a community, which is why it’s structured so that each of us gets paid equally for everything we do. It’s an unusual way to do business, but it gets everybody very personally invested and excited about what we're going to make together.

In what other ways does your identity inform your approach to design?

I'm very proud to be trans. I love being trans. But I think being a person who can't afford very many things affects way more about my dreams as a designer than my being trans does. Creating beautiful things that are out of reach wouldn’t be satisfying to me. Instead, I think great design should be accessible to everybody, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the everyday objects that people use and own, and I ask myself, what do people need? How can I make it for them? And how can I make it affordable?

SHOP (clockwise from top left): "Night sky" shelf, $55; "Squiggle" succulent planter, $42; The Jelly Table, $224; small "Wiggle" planter, $16 — all from Object Lover

What attracted you to 3D printing as a medium?

I love limitations in art. I think it's incredibly fun to take a technology, especially one that's still relatively new, and ask how you can break the rules in fun and interesting ways. There's a lot being 3D printed now, but what I didn't see much of was color, and things that looked more organic in shape and form, and had more curvatures. So when I started playing around with my own designs, my first goal was color, but I'm still really interested in how I can stretch the machine, and I love dreaming about the possibilities.

Of all the wonderful objects you’ve created, do you have a favorite?

The Jelly Table is unquestionably my proudest accomplishment. No one had ever made a fully 3D-printed table before that was available to the public; they had only been designed for collectors, showrooms, galleries and the like, and I wanted to make one that anyone could buy. It took months of prototyping, and hundreds of hours of testing and reworking before we got each detail to work together. Today, it takes 22 hours to make each table. It's an incredibly unique and standout piece of furniture that hundreds of people now enjoy in their homes, and I’m still playing with ideas for the design and learning from everything I did to bring it to life.