Artist Ayers gets retail giant to pull copycat design

May 22, 2021  |  By Cheryl Casey

Pottery artist Jeremy Ayers with one of his trademark mugs featuring a bold geometric pattern and accordion shape. He claims his work was closely replicated in designs offered for sale by national retailer Anthropologie. Photo by Gordon Miller.

Chalk up another small victory for the independent artist in the stand against corporate retail giants.

Waterbury ceramicist Jeremy Ayers and his Instagram followers recently shamed fashion and home goods retailer Anthropologie into removing from their website a mug that looked remarkably like one of Ayers’s signature designs. 

The mug, accordion-shaped with vertical striped glaze, has long been “an anchor of my work,” said Ayers. He designed the mug a decade ago and currently sells it for $35-$40. Anthropologie’s version was listed at $14.99.

When an Instagram follower alerted Ayers to the copycat mug, he took to his own Instagram account and called out Anthropologie for knocking-off his design. His social network immediately jumped into action, sharing--and even adding examples to--the story. Less than a day later, the mug disappeared from the retailer’s online store. 

Anthropologie seems to have been at this copycat thing for a while, and they aren’t the only corporate retailers to be accused of the practice. 

Clothing retailers like Old Navy, Forever 21, Zara, and Urban Outfitters (which is under the same ownership as Anthropologie) and celebrity entrepreneurs such as Kylie Jenner and Emily Ratajkowski all have their own laundry lists of copied designs. Luxury brands including Gucci and Chanel aren’t above copying others’ work, either.

All of these sins of greed, including Anthropologie’s multitude, are easy to find online. For example, in 2018, BBC reported on the case of ceramicist Tara Burke, based in Sydney, Australia, whose vase designs turned up on Anthropologie’s website two years after she turned down an offer to work for them.  

According to the BBC report, Anthropologie’s statement declared “tremendous respect for the artist community” and expressed deep regret that in this instance, “our safeguards did not hold up to our standards.” Burke told the BBC reporter that the retailer “scum” had offered to have a conversation about her concerns, but did not indicate that compensation would be part of that discussion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, Anthropologie had just come from dealing with a different accusation of stealing when Ayers’s followers took them to task for the copied mug.

In early March, Indigenous women-owned brand Orenda Tribe found a remarkable look-alike of one of their rainbow blouses on Anthropologie’s website. Instead of shaming the corporate giant, Orenda Tribe invited the retailer to take action by using the profits from the sale of its version of the blouse to support the Diné Skate Garden Project in the Navajo Nation. Although Anthropologie removed the blouse from its online store, at the time of this writing it has not acknowledged Orenda Tribe’s call to action.

For many independent designers, with a livable wage, years of practicing their craft, pride, and community orientation all on the line, imitation is definitely not the highest form of flattery. Imitation, however, is not the same thing as influence. 

Ayers acknowledged that his own exploration of surface design on the “singular” accordion form is both his own and based in his study of art history. The stripes on his pieces are raw clay, Ayers explained. “Putting the clay under the glaze on display--most artists don’t show that.

Brancusi did it first,” he added, referring to notable early 20th-century Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. 

“I came to pottery from a desire to do it myself. Because I have art history in my brain, I don’t feel like I’m ripping off Brancusi,” said Ayers. However, Ayers asserted that “What Anthropologie did, take my bestselling amalgamation of ideas and make a blue-and-white version” for profit is a whole other jar of clay. 

And the retailer doesn’t have to reveal the profits it made off the mug unless Ayers takes the case all the way to litigation. Most independent artists can’t absorb the legal fees to take their cases that far, explained Ayers, so “they [Anthropologie] are actually preying on us.” 

Pottery artist Jeremy Ayers with one of his trademark mugs featuring a bold geometric pattern and accordion shape. He claims his work was closely replicated in designs offered for sale by national retailer Anthropologie. Photo by Gordon Miller

Fellow Waterbury ceramicist Tabbatha Henry agreed. She has had her designs copied twice that she knows of. Specializing in nature-inspired, translucent candle holders, Henry came across one of her designs applied to an aroma diffuser by Idaho-based company Scentsy. After her lawyer contacted the company, Henry was given “a really lowball offer” for the design, which she said she declined.

Henry again declined an offer of money from a garden supply store who she found selling an exact copy of one of her designs in store. In both cases, the copycat items were eventually removed from the inventory.

“These all happened many years ago before social media was around,” Henry explained. “Before the power of social media, the companies really had the upper hand.” Nevertheless, Henry said she wasn’t surprised at all to hear of Ayers’s situation. “I read about [such things] every day,” she said. 

In a 2018 article for Vox, journalist Chavie Lieber described the ease with which corporate fashion designers rip off small, independent designers because “outdated legal doctrines” make it so. American copyright law, last written in 1976, assumed that manufacturing would remain the business of the land. In the 1980s, American designers such as Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren “achieved international acclaim and became multi-billion dollar brands,” wrote Lieber. 

With the turn of the century and the rise of digital technology, makers and designers have become a defining part of our economy. Copyright laws, however, remain stuck in an industrial era. 

One of these things is not like the others: Mugs (left) and a vase (top right) designed and made by Waterbury artist Jeremy Ayers. Bottom right are mugs marketed by national retailer Anthropologie. Photo courtesy Jeremy Ayers.

To date, Ayers has received a statement from Anthropologie in an Instagram message, which noted “respect and appreciat[ion for] artists such as yourself and [we] understand you must be protective of your work...While they both feature accordion shapes and stripe patterns, these designs are reflective of a currently popular theme in pottery ware.”

It was a “generously worded” statement, scoffed Ayers, that “minimized my design and my ceramics in the marketplace.” 

Henry, who is planning a grand opening of her new shop location in the Stimson & Graves building on Stowe Street next week, admitted that while it’s tempting to feel like one “has really made it” when a big company covets your designs, “it’s a really freaky thing” to see your design offered for sale by someone else. “Your heart kind of sinks,” she said. “It’s a kick in the teeth.”

Legally, Ayers’s mug design is not copyrighted, although he can clearly document the design as a decade-long “benchmark.” When we spoke, he had just finished an hour-long conversation with his attorney, “trying to understand what makes sense to pursue versus what my rights are,” he said. 

In one small act of defiance, Ayers said he purchased the Anthropologie mug online before calling the retailer out. This small keepsake will serve as a reminder (and an inspiration?) of his experience in taking on corporate America.