Tom Dixon, Zinc Pander, 2009
Tom Dixon, Zinc Pander, detail, 2009
Tom Dixon, Zinc Pander, 2009
Tom Dixon
Further images
Tom Dixon was born in Tunisia in 1959. He attended Chelsea School of Art in 1980, dropping out after a year to become the bass guitarist with the band Funkapolitan. Following a motorcycle accident, he went on to become a self-taught welder and started making highly original welded ‘salvage’ furniture. By the end of the 1980s he was making chairs for the famous Italian designer Cappellini. Early pieces such as the S Chair and the Pylon Chair are now part of the permanent collection of MoMa, New York.
In 1998 Dixon was appointed head of design at Habitat, and later became creative director, remaining there until 2008. In 2002, with David Begg he established Tom Dixon – a British design and manufacturing company; in 2004 they teamed up with the Swedish- based investment company Proventus to create Tom Dixon Design Research Ltd. This holding company also includes Artek, the Finnish modernist furniture company set up by architect Alvar Alto in 1935. Tom Dixon was awarded an OBE in 2001 and won Designer of the Year from Architektur and Wohnen magazine in 2008.
“I was keen to be involved in this project…I didn’t want to make anything complex and so I have used alchemy to turn a plastic object into semi-precious metal. The panda logo and form is so instantly recognisable that simplifying it and making it more precious is all that I felt it would need. This very literal transformation is a metaphor for how these endangered species are becoming more and more precious to us. This is about what WWF represents for living organisms worldwide. The quality of our lives is dependent on maintaining the integrity of the animal, vegetable and marine worlds around us. We all depend upon them to survive.” - Tom Dixon