After graduating from Skidmore College, teaching pottery at Millbrook School in New York, and renting his first studio space in Long Island City, Jono gets a phone call from an old bandmate: Will Guidara, future restaurateur and owner of Make It Nice hospitality group.

Guidara, then working for Danny Meyer, commissions Jono to design and produce bud vases, chocolate dishes, and chopstick holders for the reopening of MoMA’s Terrace 5 Café and Café 2. These pieces end up being sold at the museum’s gift shop, too.

We are, as they say, in business.

Eleven Madison Park—another Guidara spot—renovates and commissions a porcelain pillow plate (and, later, even more new shapes).

New York magazine features Jono as a burgeoning dinnerware designer.

Jono moves his studio space from the historic 5 Pointz building in LIC to another historic building: the Yardley in Union City, New Jersey. One is known for graffiti, the other for soap.

Calvin Klein Collection, Crate & Barrel, and Anthropologie place orders for exclusive ceramic accessory designs, all of which are produced in NJ. Jono learns about the challenges of running a wholesale business for retailers and refocuses on restaurants.

Atera, a two Michelin-star restaurant, places an order of 50 hand-thrown plates.

The opening of the NoMad hotel marks Jono’s first dinnerware project at a major scale — 6,000-plus pieces. Jono, still a one-man operation, designs what will become known as the Coupe collection.

Jono shares the production load with a plant in Ohio to meet the NoMad’s opening deadline.

Eleven Madison Park goes all-in on Jono Pandolfi Designs dinnerware, making them the first full-fledged Michelin-starred client. This marks a huge turning point for the company and leads to new buzzy hospitality clients, including WD-50, Osteria Morini, and Aquavit.

The NoMad project inspires Jono to expand his knowledge of jiggering, a process of forming pottery that uses a spinning mold and a template. This way, he’ll be able to serve the hospitality industry at the quality, speed, and quantities he’s learning they’ll require.

Jono exhibits at his first restaurant industry trade show at the Javits center in NYC. A buyer from Four Seasons notices his booth, then commissions dinnerware for the Four Seasons Orlando. Ten years later, the Four Seasons is still one of Jono's biggest clients.

This marks Jono’s first time using colored glaze: shiny green, still produced today.

Things start to pick up, with 57 individual jobs, nearly twice as many as the year prior. More hotels take notice, like the 1 Hotel in South Beach, the Faena, and the Four Seasons in Seattle.

It becomes clear that it’s time to order a bigger kiln.

We host a New York City pop-up shop at Haven’s Kitchen in Manhattan. From there, the New York pop-up becomes an annual event.

Chef Missy Robbins opens Lilia, an Italian restaurant in Williamsburg where we still can barely get a reservation.

Our first gas kiln, “Butt-Head,” made by Blaauw in the Netherlands, arrives, dramatically increasing our production capacity. Suddenly, we’re able to say yes to bigger jobs and tighter timelines.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten places his first orders — for JoJo and Nougatine

The production team reaches 10 people. We also start to offer health insurance. Things are feeling very legitimate!

It’s a challenging time for the company, but also an opportunity to grow beyond hospitality as we begin selling dinnerware to home cooks.

With much of America cooking at home, Jono introduces something to brighten up their meals: a new ombre glaze. It quickly becomes a company signature. Shortly after, he teams up with Brad Leone of Bon Appetit to design a fermentation crock. Another hit!

As new restaurants open and longtime clients refresh post-pandemic, a flurry of orders come through for projects including March in Houston, TX, Puesto locations in CA, and the Montage in Big Sky, MT.

Missy Robbins and Jono collaborate to create the Union Bowl, specifically designed for serving pasta and keeping it warm.

The team behind iconic Denmark-based restaurant Noma commission dinnerware for their first US pop-up.

We publish our first Restaurant Guide, a 100-plus page compendium of reviews, recommendations, and more, featuring our clients across the world.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten opens The Tin Building, a 53,000-square-foot dining destination at Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. Jono creates the dinnerware for Seeds & Weeds (now ABCv), and later makes the restaurant’s serving set available as a Special Edition for home cooks.

Our dinnerware enjoys multiple moments in the limelight, with appearances on TV series including “The Bear” and “CBS Saturday Morning” and an inclusion on the New York Times’ Wirecutter’s list of best dinnerware sets.

Today, Jono Pandolfi Designs employs 31 people, 20 of whom are artisans who produce as many as 1,200 pieces per day at our 22,000 sq-ft studio in Union City, NJ.

The plan? Keep on making the world a better plate.