Jackson opened his first New York showroom in 1984, catering exclusively to interior designers and architects. Then, as now, he was in charge of design, production, sales, marketing and distribution. His business formula has served Dakota Jackson Inc. well. In 1997 Jackson opened an architecturally striking Los Angeles showroom designed in collaboration with world-class architect Peter Eisenman. Now Jackson’s line is represented by dozens of international showrooms. Over the past three decades, the company has become an industry leader in the American fine furniture market, noted for its use of exotic veneers, fine upholstery, impeccable joinery and contemporary lines that sometimes hint at other cultures or past time periods.

“Dakota is a designer who thinks architecturally, but brings a craftsman’s sensibility to his work,” says David McFadden, chief curator at New York’s Museum of Art & Design (MAD), which has Jackson’s stackable Vik-ter Chair in its permanent collection. The Library Chair, found by the thousands in university and public libraries across the country, and other iconic pieces are in collections world-wide including the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; the Design Museum in London; and the Deutsches Architektur-Museum, in Germany.

Beyond furniture, Jackson has tackled interior design projects, most notably the ark, chapel and seating for Temple Jeremiah in Winnetka, Illinois, with architect H. Gary Frank. The striking bimah (the raised platform in the synagogue from which the Torah is read) contains the ark or the symbolic cabinets that hold a Jewish congregation’s sacred scrolls. Jackson’s sanctuary, as a whole, sets the tone for both private contemplation and group prayer.

Despite his less-than-fortunate early attempt at building a piano factory, Jackson says he always felt that the piano was “unfinished business” and that at some point he would return to it. “I’ve been an active pianist on a daily basis for 50 years,” he says. The instrument has continued to fire Jackson’s imagination. “I just knew better than to go into [a piano] venture alone again.” He didn’t have to. While he was working on furniture commissions and designing lines of furniture for his growing brand, he was invited to collaborate with Steinway & Sons, both in Hamburg, Germany, and the United States, on the Tricentennial Anniversary Piano, which was released in 2000 in an edition of 300 to commemorate the company’s construction of its first piano. Priced at $85,000 per instrument, the edition has since sold out. “I think Dakota had this piano designed in his mind before he ever put a line to paper,” says Frank Mazurco, executive vice president of Steinway & Sons.

This year, in collaboration with Steinway, Jackson released the Grand Concert Piano, created for a private collector and costing $350,000. Like a coach-built car, the Grand Concert is pure performance and styling. Comparable in design to the Tricentennial, there is the streamlined simplicity and dramatic forward lean of the high-luster macassar ebony body, the rolling counterbalanced brushed brass arched music desk, the upward rotation of the serpentine topstick to support the lid, the ergonomically shaped brass lyre pedals, the conical folding of the lid. “A musical instrument, like a chair, has a provocative relationship to the body,” says Jackson. “With a piano you come to it and it toward you. How the sound moves around you, and how the body moves around the pedals is a very active event. As you open it, it teaches you about itself in an unexpected and pleasurable way.”

For his next act? A new limited edition of 20 grand pianos under his own label. “I would be happy designing nothing but pianos for the rest of my days,” he says.

 

Hilary Jay is the executive director of The Design Center at Philadelphia University.