When you were a kid imagining your dream home, did you think of a house full of understatedly elegant furnishings? Probably not. You more likely imagined bold pop-art palettes and furniture inspired by your favorite things: toys and candy.
Jellio, a home-furnishings company from the design team of Kevin Champeny, Mario Marsicano, Chris Lenox, and Eric J. Winston, fulfills the wishes of your inner child. “We want to create unique environments based on childhood memories,” Marsicano says. And they do: Ice-cream sandwiches become ottomans and benches; a barrel of monkeys turns into the pedestal of a glass-topped coffee table; and spin-able viewfinder frames are transformed into wall art.
Many of these designs are manufactured out of Champeny’s home studio in Bronxville. Champeny also hand-makes Jellio’s famed Candeliers—chandeliers made of approximately 15,000 hand-strung acrylic gummi bears. Copyright infringement isn’t an issue, Champeny explains, as “the gummi bear design is in the public domain,” though he hand-sculpted his own anyway to make it unique to Jellio.
You, or your kids, may have seen a candelier—and a host of other Jellio designs—on the set of Nickelodeon’s iCarly. (You can also buy a scaled-down version—a lamp made of a single oversized silicone gummi bear—$60.) Champeny has also taken on custom projects in his Bronxville shop, such as an American flag for the US Army made of 50,000 hand-cast red, white, and blue toy army men.
So, how do they come up with ideas for their next project? “That’s easy,” Marsicano says. “We play with toys.” You can browse and buy Jellio’s designs through its website, jellio.com.
