Live at Design Miami: Flame

We here at 3rings love it when we come across a designer we’ve previously written about exhibiting at the design show we’re currently covering—and so it is with Tom Dixon and his Flame Collection. On display at Kenny Schachter’s Rove gallery as part of Design Miami/Art Basel, the Flame Collection returns Dixon to his career roots: Dixon achieved design prominence when he unveiled his welded salvage furniture in the mid-1980s.

Since then, the British/Tunisian-born Dixon has become his own enterprise, partnering with Swedish investment firm Proventus to create a design and product development holding company that includes Tom Dixon, Design Research Ltd. and Artek, the Finnish modernist furniture company established by Alvar Aalto in 1935. Dixon’s come a long way since he dropped out of art school to play bass in Funkapolitan; he is now his own brand.

And Flame is a tribute to his origins: a series of limited-edition pieces made from flame-cut steel. Flame Chair and Flame Table form the basis of this collection, the more quotidian of the Flame furniture. The chair measures a respectable 71 x 72 x 48 cm, and the table a sturdy 50 x 60 x 60 cm. But it’s the more fanciful pieces that steal the attention. A lounge chair and swing make the Flame Collection into an art installation. The mammoth steel frame and joints of the swing make a statement about material—and perhaps even politics. The sheer size and weight loom large enough to make us question work and the role of the worker. The crib and high-chair, however, are my favorites, seemingly indicating the indestructibility that children require. Whether the progeny are themselves delicate or monstrous is for the viewer to decide. Dixon claims to be inspired by “the robust, no nonsense engineering” of the British Isles—and Flame is nothing if not robust. Like Dixon’s A Bit of Rough and Slab Collections, Flame reminds us of the grand-scale elements behind design—the stone and fire and organic materials that have dominated man’s attempt to control his environment.