In 1974, when Dakota Jackson was 25 years old, Yoko Ono called him to commission a desk for her husband, John Lennon. “It was a defining moment,” says Jackson, who had been living a double life since moving to New York in 1970. Born into a family of magicians and vaudeville performers, he had immersed himself in the downtown art scene. He was stopping bullets in his mouth and performing standard dove-and-handkerchief magic tricks in galleries while also studying and performing with minimalist dance groups. Simultaneously, he discovered a love for building things and was earning money by making such items as beds for artists’ lofts, apparatus for other magicians and unusual objects like birdcages large enough to hold a human. He became renowned for his ability to build anything at all.

Ono’s commission, a compact wooden desk borrowing curved lines from the Art Deco movement, was meant to be something of a Chinese puzzle. “It was the first time I merged thoughts of magic with solutions for furniture,” Jackson says. “I began thinking formally about design.” He now considered himself a designer instead of a builder. Unlike traditional furniture makers, however, he approached design much as he had approached magic. “I was intrigued with spontaneous transformation,” he says. “Magic is all about the moment of suspended belief. I took that sensibility and applied it to making objects.”

From that point forward, commissions came quickly from the well-known and wealthy: a bar for singer-songwriter Peter Allen, an executive desk for producer Lorne Michaels, a bed (“Eclipse Bed”) for fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, a media console/library for Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner, a vanity for soap opera star Christine Jones.

In 1979, Jackson moved his workshop from Chelsea to Long Island City, and launched two new businesses. Still making one-of-a-kind commissions, he added antique furniture restoration and a piano factory to his repertoire. Jackson, who considers himself an accomplished pianist, bought several old instruments to restore and was developing a new prototype grand piano when his house of cards fell. With approximately 70 employees and three unique businesses to run, Jackson slipped into financial trouble. In restructuring, he had to let go of the piano and restoration ventures.

Refocusing on furniture design, Jackson took his first steps toward creating a brand name. In 1981 and 1982, he released his first line of limited-edition furniture, the New Classics Collection. Along with architects Robert Venturi and Michael Graves, Jackson was instrumental in defining and popularizing the postmodernist movement that was taking hold. The pieces, made of exotic woods, anodized aluminum, stone, glass and metals, played on illusion, tension and surprise: the glass top of a coffee table and side table that appeared to float and the wood sleeves of a dining table that could mysteriously spread out.