Shop the Showroom: Anyon Atelier

Author:Lindsey Shook

Raised by a mother who owned an antique store on San Francisco’s Polk street, designer Lindsay Anyon Brier was destined for design. Now she helms both her own firm Anyon Design—that curates classic yet contemporary designs throughout the Bay Area—as well as the Anyon Atelier on Sacramento street. Here, she shares more about her practice, her process and a few fabulous finds from her eloquent showroom.

(Photograph by Daryl Nicole Scott for Anyon Design)

–What inspired you to start Atelier Anyon? My mother had an antique store on Polk Street forty years ago. She plopped me in the window as a baby. It was always part of the master plan! It did happen at an unexpected time however. As a designer I was frustrated by the lack of home retail in San Francisco. I wanted to see pieces in person and wanted to provide a place for customers and other designers to shop and be able to memo pieces out for an install.

–How has your design business influenced the selection of pieces? We refer to the shop as Anyon Atelier. Atelier meaning a laboratory, a creative outlet. Here we can experiment, explore, discover new art and objects and play with the way we use them. I am passionate about finding these artists and artisans and tinkering with how to best display them. I love putting them out there and then seeing the dialogue that emerges as our customers and clients discover them. As a design firm and a shop, we are constantly evolving. We strive to keep our offering fresh and unique and we try to juxtapose items in different ways. Certainly the projects we are working for lead us to new discoveries for the store. I try to always have pieces that I think another designer or customer might want to incorporate.

–What one change did you make with your atelier processes during isolation that will remain after the pandemic is over? I was incredibly grateful that we had majorly overhauled our website in 2019 and our e-commerce was built out. Online retail wasn’t a major component of our shop but it really exploded during covid. Our online store has received more national attention and yes, we hope that remains and covid goes away!

–Can you share one major change in our industry that you hope will come out of the pandemic? A silver lining of covid has been the emphasis on home. It is such an exciting time for interior design. People are looking around their homes and re-imagining everything.

–What are you most excited about that is arriving soon at the atelier? We have so much new for fall. We will be launching a collaboration of accessories I designed with Kazi. These pieces are handwoven by artisans receiving fair wages in Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda. We have new contemporary furniture pieces arriving from Sublime Original, a boutique furniture line by the architect/designer Julia Starr Stanford.And our partnership with Louise Roe of Copenhagen continues to grow. We will be showing her latest hand-blown glass decor and table top pieces which evolve seasonally.