Meet the Maker: Eny Lee Parker

It's hard to believe that New York designer Eny Lee Parker has only been making furniture for 8 years — and only founded her own studio in 2017. In that short time, she's amassed 60,000 followers on Instagram, been featured in T Magazine, designed an "it" lamp that's been spotted in the homes of celebs and tastemakers, and helped launch a trend for furniture and lighting made in the medium she's best-known for: ceramics. In my other role as co-founder of Sight Unseen, I scouted her on social media and helped her launch her studio before her meteoric rise, so it was particularly gratifying for me to collaborate with her again, on a new limited-edition keychain for Tetra.

During quarantine, Parker started trying to utilize her kiln to make products in materials other than clay. She began experimenting with glass beads, melting them together into small objects as tests for a future collection of lighting. So when I approached her to make something for Tetra, she created these fun multi-color Blobs that are connected to our Valise keychain by way of a classic carabiner in a complementary color. She only created a few per color, so they might be sold out by the time you read this, but we wanted to celebrate the collaboration regardless by sharing our favorite examples of Parker's other work. Check them out below!

1. The OO Lamp
This is the piece Parker is best-known for — a lamp that combines an organically shaped two-arm clay base with two large globe bulbs in two different sizes. "I’m drawn to curves and more organic shapes because I think a lot of our homes are so boxy," she told Domino magazine recently. "You see the floors and you see ceilings, and it’s all very geometric. We live in boxes, basically. I love the idea of softening that up with furniture and lighting."

2. The Ballard Cocktail Table
Part of Parker's debut collection in 2017, the Ballard table pairs a glass top with four hand-thrown terra cotta legs that look like ancient vessels. Parker soon became known for her unexpected use of ceramics in large-scale furniture, even making entire tables and stools out of it.

3. The Puffy Sconce
We chose Parker's recent Puffy Sconce because its floral shape is both on-trend and reminiscent of our Blob keychains — even if you aren't able to invest in Parker's larger work just yet, we love that you can still get a small piece of it on Tetra!