Light Years Ahead
What is it about light that we are drawn towards?
Editor-at-Large Harriet Quick puts the spotlight on Tom Dixon.
“The pendant light can be what the handbag is to an outfit. In an interior, a light is the finishing factor and that means as a designer you are affecting the whole,” says the British designer, Tom Dixon. Surveying his latest range of lights that pulse and glow and send incandescent light out through sculptural metallic forms, one has the urge to just sit back and wonder.
But Dixon’s missive is more expansive than starring up into an artificial cosmos of floating globes. Indeed, the latest collection called ‘Materiality,’ that debuted at this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, takes conviviality at its core. The line was displayed in a restaurant of his own making in the Rotonda della Besana, a sacred space in Milan and now a working children’s museum. The mise en scène pictured a multi functional workspace with kitchen, lounging and dining areas with conversation, intimacy and flirtation at its heart.
The pendant light can be what the handbag is to an outfit. In an interior, a light is the finishing factor and that means as a designer you are affecting the whole”
“I’ve always done my best business meetings over meals,” says Dixon. “The big trend is for multi functional spaces that can be used for all different types of entertaining or work or food.” Within those mutable spaces, significant well-placed lights will work wonders. His copper table lamps glow with the hues of a whiskey (and a well poised conversation) while the geometric silver forms seem to fly through space and would encourage dancing anytime. Dixon and his team glean a lot from the company’s commercial interior work with some of the world’s most tempting spots including restaurants, speakeasies and bars.
Dixon, who is trained metalworker, is well versed in the shimmering appeal of metals. This latest series spans copper, bronze and perforated silver in a range of shapes that range from the geometric to the curvy and ‘globular.’ On and beyond social, Dixon likes ‘real stuff.’ He plays guitar and his first big possession was a French police motorcycle that he picked up from Avignon and rode back home. Somehow, a few of those light forms resemble petrol tanks too.
“For a long time, the fashion was for cold, more masculine metals such as brushed aluminum or steel and I am personally bored of that. I discovered copper and brass as a metal worker– they are malleable and have superior warmth. These elements can make an exclamation mark in your room,” says Dixon.
As our living spaces and workspaces merge, light is the one transformative factor. And with LED carefully handled it will bring in lower energy consumption, more beautiful shapes and perhaps a touch warm sociability too.
