“When I was 8, my mom told me I could be poor in life, but I should never be poor in experiences,” San Francisco-based creative Jiun Ho recalls. “It’s why I travel the way I do, and why I’d rather design something I’ve actually lived than something I saw in a magazine.”
Ho grew up in a lower-middle-class family in rural Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in the 1970s, with little exposure to art or architecture. That changed at age 9, when he visited Japan, marking his first trip outside Malaysia.
“I didn’t know interior design was a job,” Ho recalls, “but I knew I’d seen something I couldn’t forget: the buildings, the craft, the care in everything, the sense of history.”
That trip sparked a lifelong love of architecture and design, along with a thirst for travel. Having visited 135 countries and counting, Ho finds inspiration in every trip. “I come home, and I want to make something,” he says.
His first major project brought him full circle: designing the interiors of architect César Pelli’s Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. “Suddenly I was helping design the interiors of a building my whole country was watching go up,” explains Ho, who still counts it among his best projects. “And it was home. A Malaysian kid working on the building that put Kuala Lumpur on the map. You don’t forget that.”
A residential project in Taipei 26 years ago opened another door. After Ho completed the apartment’s interiors, the client asked him to design original furniture, lighting, and rugs. Though he’d never designed furniture before, Ho presented 35 watercolor sketches, and the client wanted every piece produced. “One piece led to the next, then a whole collection,” he says.
Jiun Ho’s sketch of the YuanYang side table. Photography courtesy of Ho.
Since then, Ho’s studio has grown into a global lifestyle brand, designing high-end residential, hospitality, and restaurant interiors while producing furniture, lighting, and textiles for the trade.
For today’s Friday Five, we spent five minutes with Jiun Ho. He shares the inspiration behind three pieces from Unbound, a limited-edition capsule collection released this fall in collaboration with four other designers.
The Whisper Pendant in the Unbound Collection by Jiun Ho. Photography courtesy of Ho.
Unbound: Visions, One Extraordinary Collection
Ho invited four designers he admires—Francis Nicdao of Pembrooke & Ives, James Hunter of The Wiseman Group, Jamie Drake, and Nicole Fuller—to collaborate on Unbound, with a simple brief: “Nothing bigger than 36 by 36 by 36 inches.” Each designer was asked to create a one-of-a-kind object incorporating their specialty, whether furniture, lighting, or textiles, and one of two crafts: hand-painted wallpaper or cloisonné by Lala Curio, one of Jiun Ho’s creative partners. The collection debuted in September 2026.
On his vision behind the project, Ho says: “The point was to show what we can really do. Our craft. How far we can take customization. And what happens when you put creative people together and say yes to their ideas instead of no.”
Sketches by Jiun Ho
Ever the overachiever, Ho designed three objects rather than one, each inspired in some way by his global travels and what he’s learned along the way. Below, Ho shares his inspirations in his own words.
What Inspired Unbound: Visions, One Extraordinary Collection?
The Yuanyang Hani Rice Terraces in China inspired Jiun Ho. Photography by Ho.
Yuanyang Rice Terraces
“Yuanyang County is in the Yunnan province of China, where generations of farmers have carved whole mountainsides into rice terraces. Thousands of steps of water and earth, all shaped by hand. To me, it’s one of the most beautiful examples of people and nature working together.”
The YuanYang Side Table by Jiun Ho. Photography courtesy of Ho.
“That’s where the YuanYang side table came from. It’s clad in metal with a cinnamon bronze finish, and the steps down each side are covered in intricate cloisonné. The steps on each echo the terraces, and the cloisonné captures the pattern of the fields catching light.”
The silkworm cocoon also inspired Jiun Ho’s work. Photography by Ho.
The silkworm cocoon and kintsugi
“A cocoon is one of nature’s perfect forms. It’s soft and strong, protecting something while it changes. That’s the shape of the Whisper pendant. The surface comes from kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, where the crack becomes the most beautiful part.”
“We tore handmade Japanese washi paper into pieces, glued them back together, and traced the seams in gold leaf to create a kintsugi-inspired pattern. When it’s lit, it glows like light through silk.”
Whisper Pendant by Jiun Ho. Photography courtesy of Ho.
The number 8
“In Chinese culture, 8 is the luckiest number. It means good fortune and prosperity. Turn it on its side, and it becomes the symbol for infinity. The Forma pendant comes from that double meaning: good fortune and infinity; luck that never ends. Its shade is painted in gold and silver leaf; the fortune is falling from heaven.
The Forma pendant in the Unbound collection by Jiun Ho. Photography courtesy of Ho.
