Jonathan Adler had a hard time holding down a job after graduating from college. Despite getting a degree in art history and semiotics — the study of signs — from Brown University, he struggled to find his way.
He worked in the mail room of a talent agency, and for a movie producer, but the jobs weren’t a fit — and he wasn’t successful.
“I had a bad attitude and work ethic,” he admitted. “I was fired for cause.” Not once, not twice, but three times, he said, and was forced to depend on his parents to keep him afloat.
“I was unemployed and unemployable,” he said. “I was 26 years old — the black sheep of the family.”
It was at that point that Adler made the life-changing decision to follow his passion for creating pottery, a hobby he’d discovered at summer camp when he was 12. “I’m not a spiritual person, but from the moment I first touched clay, there was a connection,” he said.