.

British “Designer of the Year” Tom Dixon, presented his latest range of gifts and accessories at the Maison & Objet, Paris trade fair last week.

The accolade “Designer of The Year” is a title that Tom Dixon most definitely deserves; his ability to distil an idea and draw inspiration from the most unlikely of sources and then articulate this vision into a highly collectable and desirable range of products is one that is not often seen.

Famed for his previous collection of furniture, lighting and accessories, Dixon’s new range shows his continued talent to produce innovative and interesting design that deals with every day objects and the pursuit to reinvent them in a truly beautifully resolved design.

Tom Dixon’s has been influencing and inspiring the direction of other creatives, not to mention the buyers of big retail chains.

Tom’s latest accessories collection appears to be heavily influenced by science fiction and the industrial Victorian era .

The collection includes a number of table-top utensils cast in solid brass or natural and semi-precious materials, and the objects reference forms found in nature and in the fields of engineering and physics.

Dixon‘s newest range is inspired by the industrial qualities of engineering with a beautiful play on industrial machine parts, with three range’s that feature accessories made from semi-precious materials like brass, copper and glass.

Within the series there are a mini-series of items: “Plum” (glass and copper bar artefacts), “Arc” (sand-casted solid brass table-top utensils) and “Cog” (brass-plated metal candle holders and containers)

NB These new Tom Dixon 2014 accessopry products will not be available until approx May 2014

COGS

‘Cog’ hows Tom’s intrigue with the ideas behind engineering.

The series features medium and large candle holders, conical and cylindrical tea light holders, small and large containers, a candelabra and a desk organizer.

.

Finished in brass-plated aluminium, Tom ‘s Cog collection lends a mechanical vibe to objects such as candlesticks and desk tidies, with each weighty object featuring knurling to allow a firm grip.

The Cog collection references industrial machine parts and tools. As the name implies, the pieces look to be separate-but-related pieces of a much bigger piece of machinery.

The industrial name and aesthetic of the range is, Dixon says, a reference to the energy of the UK’s industrial revolution and a time before everything became ‘big business or nothing’.

It also represents a personal passion for tools and industry, as well as allowing the designer to indulge his affection for working with metal.

“Metal made me a designer,” he summarises. “It’s my first love.”

According to Tom, the range heralds a return to his roots.

“I was always taking my motorbike apart when I was younger,” he explains, talking about the inspiration behind the collection. “It’s all bits and pieces, and it’s very much my thing. What was scrap metal becomes gold, it’s a sort of an alchemist attitude.”

“As we scour factories worldwide, we find ourselves constantly referring to great British engineering,” said Dixon. “Creating a sense of the tooled and the machined, these pieces are formed in brass-plated solid aluminium.”

Cog is plated entirely in brass, but Dixon, famous for his copper interiors, says he would like to experiment more with aluminium and titanium in the future.

“It’s only the beginning,” he says.

Arc

Brass is also the material of choice for Arc, a collection of sculptural tabletop objects.

Solid brass table-top utensils with expressive forms, Arc is a celebration of no-fuss materiality.

The Arc collection contains a two-piece trivet, a bottle opener and a corkscrew, all uniquely created in solid brass using a sand-casting process.

The sand cast brass pieces have a hefty hand feel for opening bottles of beer or wine

.

The collection comprises a two-piece trivet that can be combined to form a simple centre piece to protect a table top from heat or water damage, a bottle opener and a cork screw.

The bottle opener and corkscrew both have curved tops and embossed edges.

Dixon called them “science fiction-inspired futuristic simplicity combined with practical shapes that are easy to use.”

Plum Barware

Plum introduces functional bar accessories to a contemporary context, which is as much sculptural as it is function.

Plum is a full range of glass and copper-plated bar accessories that can hold their own on a bar cart or on display.

Formed from glass and copper, each mouth-blown and hand-cut piece from the ‘plum’ collection brings functional cocktail culture and drinking tradition into a contemporary context.

The Plum cocktail-serving range, was born organically from the designer’s restaurant projects.

.

The full set comprises tongs, vases (small and large), swizzle sticks, the striking cocktail shaker, a serving platter an ice bucket, a champagne bucket and a lemon squeezer.

‘The futuristic copper-plated cocktail shaker with large belly and tapered ends allows a firmer grip and more balanced shaking,’ explains dixon. ‘the slim end cap also functions as a spirit measure.’

Scents

Another new adventure for the company is the celebration of bare essentials presented in mouth-blown glass bottles.

The “Scent” candles take inspiration from medieval alchemy and eastern philosophy’s quest to reduce all matter to four simple elements.

“Our minimalist attitude has delivered four scents of extreme simplicity and individual character that reflect their elemental names of Fire, Air, Earth and Water”, said Tom.

.

All four scents were created in a bid to de-mystify the obscure complexities of the most misunderstood of the senses – smell.

Available in medium, large and in a special Scent Elements gift set of all four scents.

Etch

Metal precision manufacturing techniques combined with a wood-grain pattern inspired by nature.

Finely etched holes in the metallic sheet give the illusion of a textured wood surface by Tom Dixon.

When lit, the organic pattern etched onto the pentagon structure casts a web of complex shadows to the nearest surface.

Available in brass, copper and stainless steel.

Stripe

Tom continues his quest to explore floor covering amongst other uncharted territories with new textural geometric rugs.

The Stripe Round and Stripe Rectangle are pure wool rugs hand knotted in two directions and in two heights to give a simple graphic pattern that works well in minimal or decorative interiors.

Both products are available in 2 colour versions, black/white and black/yellow.

.