Interview No. IV
Jared Blake
Interview + Photos by Sophie Abeles
Edited by Ginny Keenan
When I reached out to Jared Blake, I was interested in his journey leading up to co-founding Lichen, a furniture and design incubator and studio started by Blake and his business partner Ed Be in 2017. Sitting outside Sky Coffee and later, inside the Lichen showroom itself, we delved into this and other fascinating topics like the inexplicable origins of certain organisms and the best place to get Matcha in Brooklyn. Welcome to the curious and intelligent mind of Jared T. Blake.
Above: Jared’s daily Lichen to-do list.
When did you start in the interior design world? You don’t have a formal background in the field, right?
No. The company I worked for a while back was going out of business, and I lost my job there. They asked me if I wanted to have some of the stuff from the store, so I took anything that wasn’t bolted down. Just started selling that shit on Craigslist. Flat screens, office chairs, desks.
With the desk chairs, people on Craigslist would ask is this EAMES? Is this authentic? And I was like what are you talking about? It’s a computer chair. So I did some research and realized, oh, this is a thing. I went down the rabbit hole.
What’s on your to-do list?
Everything.. shoot all day.
Where did you meet your co-founder Ed?
Craigslist. I sold him a chair. It was a yellow Eames Herman Miller shell chair I purchased a while back and sold in hopes that the buyer could then sell it for a profit in a reverse-pyramid-scheme sorta way. The rest is history.
Above: Jared “shoot [ing] all day”
How do you approach selecting pieces for the showroom?
I usually ask Ed if he likes something. I would rather him tell me something is whack when I ask his or someone else's opinion, 'cause then I’ll probably be like, “you’re right, it is whack.”
Who was renting the space in Ridgewood before Lichen moved in?
It was a wrestling gym called “House of Glory” with bright orange walls. Each time we enter a new space we try to honor the previous tenant’s energy. Our first location was a deli, so we tried to honor that by pricing affordably and serving cheap – bad – but perfect coffee for $1. Now in Ridgewood, we try to honor the wrestling gym by being kickass in all of our offerings and body-slamming the competition.
Why the name Lichen?
You can go down a lot of rabbit holes with names. Lichen used to be called Compartment, but there’s a ceiling to that name. Compartment is more of a “what” and Lichen is a “how.” With Lichen, the well goes deep and there’s no concrete definition.
I’m also convinced Lichen — as an organism — is from space. What is its origin? Not everything that’s here on Earth came from Earth. There are asteroids hurdling from space that bring all kinds of stuff with them and that stuff finds a way to grow here. Where do asteroids even come from? And what are they made of? It’s either other-worldly or ancient, probably both.
Left: Jared
Right: Also Jared
Do you play video games?
I used to of course — I’m a person! I bought my dad a Wii a little while ago knowing he’d get tired of it …and that he’d then pass it off to me.
Do you like having your picture taken?
I’m indifferent.
What’s your sign?
Capricorn.
Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right-handed.
That all tracks. I imagine being a Capricorn makes you somewhat of a control freak…but I’m sure that helps when co-running a place this cool.
(laughing) I am one to a certain extent!! But not so much these days. Now I feel like I have to just go with it – like I’m a component of a whole. The whole operation becomes bigger than you at some point.
Above: Jared in his Been There, Done That cap
Below: Jared sitting in the storage room at Lichen
What’s been the most valuable or rewarding part of Lichen for you so far?
The workshops. Selling things is surprisingly easy. It’s difficult, but we don’t approach people like in retail. We only put out the things we’re excited about and if someone else is excited about it too, they buy it. That part is rewarding for sure, but the workshops scratch an itch. It’s education. Lichen has done embroidery and ceramics workshops and we did a whole class on Matcha. You should check into Matcha if you haven’t already. You gotta go to Brooklyn Ball Factory and get a Mentaiko Rice Ball and an iced matcha. It may not make sense now, but it will later.
Hey, I’ll try anything twice, even though I think Matcha tastes like grass. So no coffee for you?
It does the job, I still drink plenty of coffee.. but there are other natural things that kinda do taste like grass that won’t burn you out.
You mentioned you’re into martial arts.. what kind?
All kinds. I’ve taken Taekwondo, Kenpo and I used to study a discipline called Capoeira. There’s something special about where discipline meets form; I think that’s a basis for good design ethos.
What is Capoeira?
It’s Brazilian dance fighting. It’s cool. It works just like any of the other art forms. You could knock anyone’s ass out. I used to do it in middle school.
I can picture seventh-grade Jared being very jazzed by something like that.
You should check it out…Chess, martial arts, rock, paper, scissors – they’re all a mirror of one another. They represent a reflection of choices, not so much being “good” at something. Like, the only real difference is how much you commit. You play each of those games according to your personality.
Are you cynical or optimistic about the coming years?
Everything I read on the news as of late feels catastrophic. It feels like we’re headed towards something dark. Some of the news is sensationalized, so I don’t start stocking up on toilet paper, but I trust the numbers. I am optimistic about this next generation though. I think they're going to achieve real levels of forgiveness that our generation and those before us weren’t able to. We’re still so polarized. It’s like Game of Thrones and the White Walkers. All these families and legacies are at war and John Snow is trying to unify everyone behind fighting the White Walkers, but no one believed him until it became real. It’s the same for us right now, climate change is indiscriminate of race, where you came from, who you are.. and there are kids like Greta Thunberg out there doing their thing to combat it. I want more of her.
Above: Coffee table complements; Jared sits on a couch in Lichen
Yea, we all need a shift in our perspectives… more empathy could work too.
Yea, like in Monster’s Inc. when everyone realizes that laughter is more effective than fear.
We’re entering a new phase of existence where emotional intelligence is going to be just as important, if not more important, than other kinds of intelligence. We have to be able to navigate these new times of how people want to be identified and how they want to be treated. Everyone gets cards and everyone has a different deck. You don’t have to be every person or the captain of the planet; you just have to try to understand where people are coming from.
Above: Jared in the Lichen showroom in Ridgewood, Queens.
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