Q Collection Junior - Green Peace

Green Peace
By Julie V. Iovine

A young New York City couple forges a fresh look for sustainable design: in a word, chic.

The living room of Jesse and Mary Johnson's Tribeca home is a model of contemporary panache, where light flows in through floor-to-ceiling windows that line two walls and where glass doors lead to an expansive terrace with views of the Hudson River. Their furnishings- a blend of custom designs, 1970’s treasures and local finds- suggest youth, confidence and comfort. That every single piece has been scrutinized and selected according to the most stringent environmental standards would hardly occur to a visitor enjoying the view. But so they have been, right down to the soy-wax candles.

The Johnsons are living proof that it is possible for Manhattan apartment dwellers not only to go green but also to go there in sophisticated style. Luckily for this thirtysomething couple with a new born son, the challenge has been made a little easier since Jesse cofounded the Q Collection four years ago; the company is devoted to making a full range of home furnishings, from sofas and lamps to fabrics and baby blankets, that are both attractive and environmentally sound.

The Johnson’s 3,250-square-froot, three-bedroom loft is located in a redbrick building that has the look, the proportions and, most enviably, the huge windows of an old factory. The structure is actually new (and those windows are double paned, with ultraviolet coating to conserve energy), a fact that the couple took into account: choosing an older building would have meant making use of existing resources, but at what cost?

"We liked the idea that with new construction, we had more control over everything that was used, in terms of paints and pesticides," says Jesse, adding that he has also worked with the building’s management company on upgrading to healthier cleaning and pest-control products.

The living room’s cool palette of blue, dark gray and white enhances the urbanity of a setting where a James Mont sideboard, flea-market vases turned into lamps and a custom-designed sofa can mingle without looking contrived. But when Jesse starts to tick off all the toxic dyes, gas-producing foams, carcinogens and volatile organic compounds (VOCs, for short) that typically permeate the stuff of daily life but that he and Mary avoided- if not wholly eliminated – one realizes the huge effort that went into achieving the apartment’s look of easy grace.

The Johnson’s commitment to the environment is more than upholstery-deep. They try to consider all their home-related decisions from a holistic point of view, whether they’re buying cleaning products or organic food. And, being true New Yorkers, they also eat out a lot; Blue Hill, a Greenwich Village restaurant that uses ingredients from an upstate farm, is favorite.

Jesse thanks his parents for instilling in him a personal interest in the environment. His mother is an artist whose work was selected to hang in the White House during the Clinton administration. His father is a social activist involved in a wide array of issues, including land preservation. Jesse grew up in Washington, D.C., but spent his summers roughing it in a cabin with no electricity, on a lake near Woodstock, Vermont. "Nature in a really basic way was part of my life and what I loved best," he says. "But I never thought it was going to become a major part of my career, too." In fact, after studying political science at Princeton, he spent a year in banking in Hong Kong.

Soon realizing that finance was not going to sustain his interest, Jesse went back to school. In 2001 he graduated from Yale with an M.B.A. and a master’s degree in environmental management. "I knew I wanted to combine business and the environment," says the entrepreneur, whose auburn hair and ready smile are reminiscent of Michael J. Fox in his Back to the Future heyday. "But I was thinking renewable energy or maybe alternative sources- never home furnishings!"

Mary’s family moved frequently when she was growing up. She studied public health in graduate school at Columbia University but eventually decided to shift her focus to environmental health issues. She now works as a consultant for the Jenifer Altman Foundation, a charitable group, and also organizes conferences for the Collaborative on Health and the Environment. "I have always been acutely aware of the public-health issues surrounding exposure to chemicals," says the new mother, who switched to nontoxic biodynamic cosmetics last year after her research turned up some distressing ingredients common to ever expensive makeup brands.

Mary and Jesse met in 1999 and set up house together in 2000, moving into a loft not far from their current home. They were determined to create a healthy environment. "But it became clear very quickly that it was not going to be easy to find contemporary sustainable design," Jesse recalls. "In those days, all you could buy in that category were beanbags, hemp fabric and tables made of old barn sides. You know, all that crunchy stuff."

Through Jesse’s mother the couple net New York interior designer Anthony Cochran, and they approached him about working on their apartment with sustainable design in mind. "We didn’t know what we were really asking for," Jesse says in hindsight. The further they searched, the more dismayed they were by an appalling lack of choice in the market for furniture and accessories that are both elegant and environmentally friendly. Several companies had experimented with such product lines, but the list was very, very short. And so whatever they couldn’t find, the Johnsons had fabricated according to Cochran’s classically oriented designs and their own strict specifications. Soon they realized that they had a collection in the making: sofa, chairs, tables of several sizes, bookshelves and even upholstery materials. With the apartment complete and their research so convincing, they want on in 2003 to launch Q (from the Latin word for oak, quercus) Collection, a fully fledged eco-friendly furniture and textile company.

When they decided to move and settled on their current apartment, questioning the composition and the sources of everything that came through their doors was the couple’s very natural first step. Was the wood from a table harvested from a renewable source? Where the dyes used to color a rug nontoxic? The Johnsons insisted on furniture made only with water-based glues and polyurethane-free finishes. Natural fibers were a must, and even the tanning process used to make upholstery leather was examined (it often involves the kinds of heavy metals that Erin Brokovich made famous). They loved the look of shiny lacquer but became all too aware of the toxic chemicals that came with the manufacturing process. With the help of both Cochran and New York interior designer Amy Lilienfeld, the Johnsons slowly built up a network of reliable sources from everything in their apartment, from wood paneling to the stuffing for their mattress.

Through Q Collection, they found a textile company in Switzerland that uses manufacturing processes so pure that the water leaving the plant is cleaner than the city drinking water that enters it. Not only that, but the fabric scraps left over from the material production are used to mulch surrounding farm fields. It was that attention to the entire life cycle of the product that came to obsess the Johnsons in their search for furnishings that not only benefited them but also would not harm the planet. One of Jesse’s favorite pieces, created by his own young company, is an unusually deep armchair now in the living room. In fact, it’s big enough for him to share with two cats and wide enough for Mary to nurse baby Reeve, now four months old, at night.

For now, Q Collection, with twenty-six pieces of furniture and almost ninety textiles, is based in Manhattan and distributes through design trade showrooms in nine cities. For the future, Jesse and his business partner have set their sights much higher: they hope to become a leading resource for sustainable design. This month the company introduces baby furnishings and bedding, and plans are already afoot for a more moderately priced retail line of furniture and textiles (Q Collection pricing is competitive with high-end custom furniture). That said, the Johnsons still regard sustainable design as very much a personal affair. "It’s easy to have a beautiful home," Mary says, three years after moving in, her long nights of Internet research forgotten. "But for us, true beauty comes from knowing we are living in harmony with the environment."