'Minimalism is a lifestyle choice': ten years of design and jewellery brand Arc Objects

Daniela Jacobs hops off her bike, which she recently repainted, and sits at an outdoor table at a café in the West Village to discuss her longterm project, ARC Objects, unfettered by rumbling garbage trucks. Even after a decade, she speaks about it with endearment and enthusiasm.

Jacobs celebrated the ten-year anniversary of her project in the fall. ARC is the ongoing evolution of Jacobs’ senior thesis project as a student in 2014 at Parsons, part of an interdisciplinary educational programme. Her studies focused on the ethics behind consumption: sustainability (before the term was in regular use) and mindfulness regarding both materials and the life cycle of a product. She posited her thesis as a 'fake business', mostly articulated in porcelain, plus some nickel silver and brass. She chose porcelain because it is lightweight, thus ideal for being worn on the body. At a student, she learned how to do slip casting, a means of making moulds for creating multiples. 'I was interested in making wearable and usable objects,' she says, adding: 'I still have that interest.'

Her mentor, the interior designer Lisa Mayock, attended the thesis show and put a photo of ARC pieces on Instagram – the platform was relatively new at the time. Two buyers reached out. Mere weeks after she graduated, Jacobs found herself at a meeting with Saks Fifth Avenue. The takeaway was there was legitimate interest, which made her feel ready to migrate her 'fake business' into a real one. After moving into her first studio, she began filling wholesale orders.

'I wanted it to have enough of a framework that it was really a functional business, but also a loose enough guideline or framework so that it could be actually sustainable for a long period of time,' she said. 'I wanted it to be open-ended enough that this could potentially be my work indefinitely.' From the beginning, she intentionally called her work seasonless. 'Now lots of designers do that, but back in 2014, I got a lot of weird looks when I would meet with buyers.' She has her core collection, some pieces stemming as far back as from her thesis: the Day and Night plate set, the Crescent Moon plates, and the Moonbeam necklace. She introduces one or two new pieces to her roster intermittently, but feels no pressure to reinvent with any constancy. 'I still see ARC as a project or an experiment. On my website, I call it a concept more than a product, and that still feels true'.

Presently, she has a studio in her downtown living space and, unsurprisingly, it is readily integrated into the fabric of her life. 'I wake up, I have coffee, I go for a swim, and then I'm just in the studio as my hair dries: mixing the porcelain and answering emails.' Her moodboard is a firm pillar that essentialises her work: 'it really does feel like the inside of my inspiration brain.' From time to time, she revisits what’s on there, allowing it to expand and contract. Of the ritual revisiting, she says: 'I would take everything off, and I would sit down, and I would spread out what I was inspired by, and then decide where I put it back'. Mostly, it includes visuals of the sea from the Mediterranean coast and natural textures that she finds interesting, be it a fractured piece of a seashell or a weathered branch. When she looks at an image and it no longer does anything for her, she'll leave the space blank until the next thing comes along.

Though a native New Yorker, she has annually spent summers in Majorca since childhood, where her family has a home. She has a full studio set-up on site. Often she’ll be prototyping and developing new designs while she’s there; when she returns to New York, she’s more likely in production mode. 'No matter how hard I try, I'm never not busy in New York… When I'm in Mallorca, I often have more time, especially if it happens to be summer, because the sun sets around almost 10pm.' It’s a territory that she doesn't tire of: she's drawn to the way that the mountains change color depending on the time of day, what the sea looks like whether it's calm or rough, the weeds that grow along the Mediterranean. 'There's something very majestic about being close to the sea', she remarks.

The latest item that she’s released: the Volta earrings. Volta means, in Mallorquin, a spin around the sun, and is used as an expression for ‘going for a short walk’. At the café, she’s wearing the prototype: half circles hollowed out on the inside, so they're not too heavy. 'They're just a fun, bold statement earring. I wear them almost every single day lately, and I think they look great on all face shapes.' (She doesn't have pierced ears: her version are clip-ons.)

She also has on a glass bangle and glass ring, part of the glass collection launched in October to celebrate 10 years of existence. Does sporting glass accessories make you move differently? It’s easy to imagine feeling very protective of the material’s delicacy. It’s a question she frequently gets from buyers. 'I don't feel that precious about them,' she shrugs. 'It's been over 10 years now that I'm wearing porcelain on a daily basis, and I see how sturdy it really is. What I usually say is: how often do you really break a plate at home? Porcelain is usually used for making tableware, and this type of glass is also normally used for home objects, cups, plates, pitchers, etc. So unless you really bang it into something, or you drop it from a high distance… in terms of daily use and wear, it’s fine.' Her Full Circle ring was on her hand when she had the misfortune of being hit by a truck a few years ago: 'it flew off my finger, and it was fine,' she marvels at the recollection. 'They're more sturdy than you would think.'

In terms of aesthetics, she gravitates towards rounded shapes, good contrast, mixing what's considered fancy with what's considered casual, bold shapes made from delicate materials ('or what we often see as a delicate material', she clarifies). 'I think an element of surprise is really important in a composition,' she notes. She also abides by Coco Chanel’s famous adage: take one element off of what you're wearing, then you're ready. Indeed, Jacobs adheres to simplicity and minimalism as a key to her approach (even though 'that’s such an overused way to talk about things'). In her household growing up, careful restraint and consideration was the modus operandi, which affected her immensely. 'My parents wanted to raise me with an awareness of you shouldn't own a lot of things if you're not using them or needing them, or if they're not bringing you something. Minimalism, for me, is – without sounding too cheesy – a lifestyle choice. Whether it's the clothes or the jewellery or the objects that I have, they should all feel cohesive with each other.'

Nowadays, Jacobs is overseeing the very courses that shaped her – integrated design and product design – and she’s teaching at her alma mater. Teaching forces her to constantly 'revisit things that otherwise would just become sort of baked into the way you think.' She enjoys orienting the students’ self-reflection and critical thinking about design. 'It's also just really interesting to see how everyone's process is different, and to try to help people grow to as best they can', she notes. 'That inevitably translates into my own experience in studio: it makes you question things more in a way that is really nice.'