AD toured the couple’s 19th-century Brooklyn town house back in 2023.Courtesy of AnthropologieSave this storySave this storyJon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad created a name for their home-decor style: Tunisiana. It’s a portmanteau inspired by their fatherlands, Tunisia and Louisiana, and the French and African roots the two places share. Back in 2023, AD readers got a look at the couple’s then-newly renovated Brooklyn town house in a piece Jaouad wrote for the magazine. Much of the updated decor came directly from Jaouad, a writer and painter, who reupholstered furniture and taught herself how to do fresco painting and plasterwork. Now, the couple is bringing Tunisiana to homes everywhere with a new 46-piece collection for Anthropologie Home that spans furniture, tabletop, decor, and entertaining.
A broken glass teapot Jaouad found in Tunisia inspired the shape of the teapot in the collection, crafted in pale blue with a cobalt spout and handle and painted with diamond motifs.
The armchair's upholstery is based on a verdant watercolor painting by Suleika Jaouad.
“In designing this collection, I set out to create the pieces I’ve always wanted for our own home and could never find,” Jaouad says. For example, she's always been interested in a piano stool, given her longstanding distaste for the more typical piano benches, which are bulky and heavy. So, the couple designed something far more festive than a hulking bench: The dark wood base is octagonal, modeled after the Ottoman-style side tables common across North Africa, with pointed arches cut into each side. A mustard-colored velvet seat swivels and adjusts in height, and a deep skirt of twisted fringe moves with it. “It feels like a little whirling dervish,” Jaouad says. When it isn’t next to a piano, she adds, it can work as a side table, an ottoman, or a stylish last-minute seating addition.
The collection’s most expensive piece, a roomy armchair, takes inspiration from Jaouad’s own painting, specifically a watercolor print from a woodland scene she painted for a tray in the collection. Because the foliage was so fun to paint, she carried a second iteration to upholstery. The chair’s fabric maintains the blended look of watercolor with a loose blue-green print that toes the line between marbled paper and an old French verdure tapestry. Brass casters on the bottom allow the chair to move easily around the room.
Instruments appear in nearly every room across Batiste and Jaouad's Brooklyn townhouse, which was featured in AD in 2023.
The record player, made with Crosley, addresses a practical concern. Turntables take up space, and once they’re put away, people tend to stop using the machines. This one differs in that it demands to be shown off. It closes into a suitcase-style box covered in Jaouad’s painted foliage print, with a bird perched on a branch painted inside the lid. Needless to say, it earns its permanent place on the shelf. The record player also comes with a set of vinyls that are meaningful to the couple: one from Labi Siffre, which they listened to on their first date in London, along with three from Batiste, including Monk Meditations and Black Mozart, both recorded in a single day in their home, and We Are, for which Jaouad took the cover photo in Tunisia.
Here, the bar cart is filled with items from the collection: cocktail shakers, coupe glasses, and a carafe.