Andy Thornton founded LaDiff in Charlottesville in 1980. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Andy Thornton, founder and president emeritus of LaDiff, first entered the furniture business as a high-end woodworker and furniture designer in the early 1970s, selling his work from Florida to New England. After taking a year off to travel in the late ’70s, he settled in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he exported art and handcrafts to the U.S.
He returned to the mainland in 1980, launching La Différence in Charlottesville. The store, now based in Richmond, today carries the East Coast’s largest selection of modern and contemporary furniture and accessories. In 2014, the store shortened its name to LaDiff, its longtime nickname. Last year, Thornton “retired,” handing over the reins to his wife, Sarah Paxton, who first joined LaDiff in Charlottesville 25 years ago.
In October, Thornton served as keynote speaker during the American Society of Furniture Designers’ annual Pinnacle Awards ceremony at the High Point Market in High Point, North Carolina.
R•Home recently caught up with Thornton as he was busy building a new high-end Italian gallery in his Shockoe Bottom store. Later that week, he and Paxton were heading to the West Coast to meet with business colleagues and friends.
“Ostensibly, I’m supposed to be semi-retired, but I’m failing miserably at that,” Thornton says. “I have no title and no income, but I’m still working.”
R•Home: The American Society of Furniture Designers had you deliver the keynote address at their Pinnacle Awards last fall. Why did you title your remarks ‘Happiness by Design?’
Andy Thornton: I’m a big believer in good design. It was a play on words, in that you can purposely choose to be happy in your life, or you can choose to be unhappy. Good design has the potential to make a person happy. We’ve surrounded ourselves with so much material stuff, but that doesn’t bring happiness. If you look at the Scandinavian people, they are much more intentional in what they surround themselves with. And they are consistently shown to be the happiest people in the world.
R•Home: Do you often build galleries in the store?
Thornton: I like building things; I’m a frustrated architect, and I’ve always been handy as a woodworker. But I’m not very good at putting it all on paper, even though I know where I want to go with it. If I build it myself, then it allows me to design as I go. I enjoy it about 75 percent of the way, and then I step back and wonder why it’s not finished.
R•Home: How did you develop your furniture aesthetic?
Thornton: Being European [Thornton was born in Kent, England, and has lived around the world] I grew up with a different background. [There,] you were surrounded by good design and history of design. You developed a strong sense of how it plays into your life. [When shopping,] you can look at something and intellectualize a response, but if it really gets you, you feel it in your heart.
R•Home: What’s the appeal of modern furniture?
Thornton: I think it’s a reaction to how rapid our life has become; we are bombarded with so much information. Surrounding ourselves with simpler lines and space in general can be calming to the soul. People got very ornate over the centuries — the more you had, the more you proved you were a person of means — and ornamentation and ostentation were important. Also, modern furniture connects us to nature, which is calming. [Modern] designs are more natural forms and are more likely to use natural materials like wool, cotton, linen. There’s just an honesty to it.
R•Home: How has internet furniture shopping affected brick-and-mortar stores?
Thornton: That’s a head-scratcher on a lot of levels. The media are prone to asserting that everything is online, but our business is up 20 percent this year. And we’re a brick-and-mortar store with a website that doesn’t support click-and-shop. We’re very intentional about that; the website is just a way of cataloging for insight and ideas. We want people to come in and talk with us. I understand why, for convenience, the internet is good, but I also think it’s really sad because we’re cutting back on the experiential part of life. E-commerce is transactional. Brick-and-mortar, if done properly, is relational. People are coming in [to LaDiff] with more information, but they still want to feel and touch and have someone explain.
R•Home: What do you see for the future?
Thornton: Honestly, I’m 65; I’m not looking 25 to 30 years out. I would like to think that the furniture business would be like the food industry. In the 1970s, when fast-food arrived, everyone was excited. But now people are discovering good cooking again and real cuisine. The internet will play a part in the industry, but it would be a really sad statement on humanity if we all just locked ourselves in our electronic boxes and never talked to others.
