Brad Ascalon

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Brad Ascalon 2005

"Tivola Chair" (2004), Brad Ascalon

Brad Ascalon (b.March 7, 1977) is an American industrial designer. He was raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. A first-generation American, Ascalon was immersed in the world of art and design at an early age. His grandfather Maurice Ascalon (1913-2003), a Hungarian-born sculptor and industrial designer, together with his father, the Israeli-born artist David Ascalon (b.1945), founded Ascalon Studios, an art and design firm dedicated to the creation of site-specific artwork and furnishings for worship and public spaces. It is in this context that Brad became skilled at working with various materials and artistic media, including metal sculpture, stained glass and mosaics arts.

Ascalon’s first artistic expressions, though, came in the form of music. From an early age, he played both piano and guitar, and he eventually emerged as a songwriter and composer. In the latter half of the 1990s, while writing and performing music and pursuing a liberal arts degree at Rutgers University, Ascalon explored the visual arts as a self-taught abstract painter. He experimented by applying his large sphere of musical influence to the canvas, particularly modern jazz and classical, becoming captivated by the vast expressionistic similarities between writing music and creating art.

After graduating from Rutgers, Ascalon moved to Manhattan and while continuing to paint, he worked both in advertising and the music industry. Motivated by his desire to think more abstractly, he changed course and pursued a Masters’ degree in Industrial Design at New York's Pratt Institute. While pursuing his degree, Ascalon served as a design intern for a number of prominent designers, including the studio of the world-renowned Karim Rashid.

Today, Ascalon's emphasis is furniture design, but he delves into the areas of consumer goods and packaging design as well. His designs, often subtly whimsical, tend to ignore an object's traditional form. Rather, in his approach to design, he considers an objects function irrespective of traditional form, and builds it anew from the ground up. In 2005, the London-based international journal of design, Wallpaper*, included Ascalon on their annual list of the world's top ten young designers.