Industrial designer Tom Dixon wants to still be excited by things and to remain 'juvenile'

CNA

27-04-2025

I first met Tom Dixon in 2018. The British furniture and industrial designer was in Singapore to promote his eponymous brand. During an event at the Xtra store, I became enamoured with his Peg lounge chair and purchased a copy that he signed. The seat is now out of production, but it has survived more than a decade of children climbing over it. Every time I sit on it, my hands naturally gravitate towards the joints clearly expressed as combined timber rods.
Dixon has a knack for injecting quirk and surprise to familiar forms shaped by his intrigue with industrial processes. One will surely remember his Beat collection. The trio of brass lamps with hand-beaten, golden internal surfaces became so widely copied that Dixon created a more affordable aluminium range called Unbeaten.
'I think my design language is very simplistic. I get obsessed with these really basic shapes like the sphere and the cube – geometric elements that form the basis of design,' explained Dixon. His early childhood, though, was far from the world of objects. Born in North Africa where his parents were based, his first four years were spent in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Suez.
'It was mainly memories of animals. I remember camels at the water wheel going around in circles. I was fascinated with flying fish I saw during a trip to Egypt. And the locust swarms – we would drive up to the plague of locusts and they'd be crushed right onto the windscreen,' recalled the 66-year-old, who founded the Tom Dixon brand with David Beg in 2002.
In February 2025, I spoke with Dixon again in the Xtra showroom, seven years after our first interview. He was at the tail end of an Asian tour to launch his latest furniture designs ahead of the annual Milan Design Week, held from Apr 7 to Apr 13 this year. He now prefers this strategy, meeting his distributors and supporters up close in their home countries rather than putting up displays in the world's biggest design event.
Those displays were really grand. For example, in 2012, to showcase the possibilities of accessible high-tech manufacturing, he brought a Trumpf sheet-steel machine into Milan's Museum of Science and Technology, houses in a 16th century monastery. I recall the brilliant juxtaposition of historic machines – a train and antique flying contraptions were some of them – against the modern one stamping steel lamps that Dixon gave away to visitors.
Thirteen years on, this experiment with metal has materialised the Groove aluminium chair and table, which is his first outdoor collection. Another recent design is the Fat sofa. The modular version of the loveseat adapts to modern-day use of the sofa where apart from watching television, one also lounges on the seat to use the mobile phone or work on the laptop.
'People still want to be together, but they don't need to sit in a row, looking at the television,' Dixon explained. The chair had Kim Kardashian's approval – she modelled her Skims collection on two Fat lounge chairs positioned in opposite directions like a loveseat, he said. This year, Dixon introduced the task chair variation called Fat Work. It was birthed during the pandemic when Dixon was confined to working from home and decided the conventional office chair was 'too ugly' for a home environment.
'I adapted one of our Fat chairs to have a swivel base and the bare minimum of mechanism for an office chair,' said Dixon. 'At home, you're doing some of your work on the sofa then getting up to walk the dog or make a call; you're never sitting eight hours straight in front of the computer where you need all those levers, lumber supports and [adjustable] armrests.'
Like many others, the pandemic had allowed him to reset from a hectic work life where more time was spent on meetings than making things in the workshop. 'During Covid, I went a bit feral. We were not supposed to go into the office, so I pretended I was horticulture and inhabited my friend's orchid farm in Sussex. There, I played with materials. It was really good fun,' shared Dixon.
He even bought a kiln. 'It's in the southern part of England that sits on a massive block of clay, so the buildings are made of brick. I dug up a load of clay and made mainly flowerpots and vases,' said Dixon.
From a young age, he already loved working with his hands. Attending Holland Park School gave him some formal training. 'It was really poor at academics but had an amazing art department. I thought I had a lot of luck with that. Quite early on, I found refuge in those spaces,' shared Dixon, who earned a pottery certification at the end of his schooling years.
The self-described introverted child also sought refuge in books. 'My sister used to beat me because I was very bookish and wouldn't play with her,' chuckled Dixon. This changed when he 'discovered girls and music.' Dixon enrolled in Chelsea Collage of Arts but left after half a year when a motorcycle accident confined him in hospital for three months.
A brief career as the bass guitarist for disco band Funktapolitan followed, where Dixon opened for bands like The Clash. 'The music business was interesting because it allowed you, without a lot of skill, to kind of output your creativity,' remarked Dixon on the parallels between music and making things.
A second motorcycle accident saw him being replaced in the band when it went on tour so Dixon started working in London's nightclub and warehouse party scene. Fortuitously, it left him time in the day to muck around with recycled and found materials. Dixon would make one-off objects and sell them. One of these would change the course of his life.
The S Chair, made of rubber inner tubes and with a steering wheel for a base, caught the attention of Cappellini. The Italian furniture manufacturer acquired the design and made several elevated versions, thrusting Dixon into the international design world proper.
While he did not have a degree in design, Dixon did gain plenty from the school of life. In the 1990s, Dixon joined Habitat as its head of design before rising the ranks to become creative director. It was owned by Ikea, which had acquired the furniture empire founded by Sir Terence Conan.
'There was something really fabulous about jumping from being a kind of naive, self-taught designer-maker to working for this organisation, which was and still is the largest furniture business on the planet,' said Dixon. 'If we wanted to sell a plant or soft toy, we'd sell millions.'
The rite of passage at Habitat was to work in the complaints department in the first week. 'What a nightmare! But I did learn a lot about what really happens in the furniture business, like deliveries not fitting in through the door, or people buying stuff and using it for a party before sending it back, claiming it was the wrong textile,' mused Dixon.
He was exposed to endless business opportunities, as well as had access to a global sourcing map. He also learnt about marketing brands and consumer behaviour. 'When we launched something, we could tell the following week who was buying,' said Dixon on the data accessibility.
This was indispensable groundwork for when he established his own company. In 2004, the Tom Dixon brand partnered with venture capital company Proventus to form Design Research. The entity owns and manages the Tom Dixon brand and Finnish modernist furniture manufacturer Artek.
In 2007, Dixon started Design Research Studio to design spaces – filled with Tom Dixon products, of course. These include the interior design of Jamie Oliver's London restaurant Barbacoa, boutique hotel Mondrian London and Virgin Voyage's first sea vessel. It also designed The Manzoni in Milan, which was Tom Dixon's inaugural European base comprising a restaurant, shop and offices.
Dixon now launches his designs at The Manzoni during Milan Design Week. At the recent edition, his new Whirl lights floated in the restaurants like shimmering jewels. They are his latest exploration of mirrored reflections, inspired by the op-art movement.
For a self-taught designer, Dixon has done excellently. His products are sold in over 90 countries, and he has hubs in London, Milan, Hong Kong, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Some designs are immortalised in the most reputable museums, such as London's Victoria and Albert Museum, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Early this year, Dixon was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) – a rank up from the OBE (Order of the British Empire) that he received in 2000. It is the highest order excluding a knighthood or damehood in the ranks established by Kind George V in 1917. Other personalities who have become CBE include director David Attenborough, architect John Pawson and artist Anish Kapoor.
I asked Dixon how things have changed for him. 'I don't think I'm that different actually; I'm still curious. Twenty years is the longest time I've spent doing anything, so my battle is not to be stale, really. I just want to remain interesting and excited by things, to remain 'juvenile',' he articulated. There are still many things that he has not explored, such as transportation vehicles ('electric cars are evolving so fast'), camping gear ('camping is trending, but I've never done any tents'), and electronics.
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Dixon pointed to his mobile phone. 'I swear, last week I took someone else's phone all the way to Leeds because it looked exactly like mine. There's no personality in electronics anymore; there must be a way of thinking differently about the thing you use most in your life.'
The great thing about a creative career is that it does not really have a retirement age. 'It's like being a journalist, allowing you to poke into other people's business,' said Dixon. 'Everyday is a fresh opportunity or challenge if you manage not to become cynical or bored with your own narrative. There are so many materials and typologies I'd like to work with that I haven't done so in the end if I get bored or stale, it's my own fault.'