Reviews
With its classy cloth half-binding and alternating pages of coated paper (for images) and delicate uncoated stock (for text), TOM DIXON: DIXONARY quickly defeats the initial impression that it's an overproduced product catalogue. The self-taught Dixon started out in the early '80s making what could only be called punk chairs, welded and wired together from scrap metal, before he evolved into Britain's most resourceful furnishings designers. The chronologically organized Dixonary juxtaposes each of Dixon's designs with an image, often fanciful, representing some aspect of what sparked the idea, from Roxy Paine to bicycle chain, hand grenade to Gene Krupa's drum it. His breakthrough success, the S chair, was inspired, he says, by a doodle of a chicken on the back of a napkin., Tom Dixon's lighthearted second monograph pairs colour illustrations and photos of his numerous products with anecdotes and musings printed on parchment paper. The 614-page hardcover (Violette Editions) gathers over three decades of work to chronicle the British designer's career, beginning in the late '70s, when he played in a rock band by night and learned to weld while rebuilding motocycles by day. As the book reaches the new millennium and the launch of his label, pictures of pythons chaises and spiky chandeliers. Among the copper wastebaskets and glass pendants, you'll find his thoughts on everything from milking stools to industrial reconstruction. Dixonary is not a catalogue; it's a diary., Which came first: the chicken or the chicken shaped S-chair? For Dixionary ( Violette Editions), Tom Dixon's first self-penned monograph, the British industrial designer came up with the ingenious idea of displaying each of his creation - not only the funky and inventive chairs for which he's famous, but also candelabras, rugs, doorstops, and even a water tower and a motorized espresso cart - opposite the image or object that inspired it., Dixonary is "a simple picture book with short 'stories' attached," according to author and British product designer Tom Dixon. Here, Dixon reveals the ideas and influences behind his creative genius., The masterstroke monograph is something of a designer rite of passage, with the only surprise being that it took Tom Dixon so long to chronicle his work in such fine style. Violette Editions is a worthy publishing partner for Dixon's oeuvre, and Dixonary takes the reader through a chronology of his work, from product to architecture to play and beyond, each with revealing insights from the designer. The evolution of his designs is made even more evident in the context of a book, where it's interesting to see the wrought iron Rococo of his earliest work resurface in some of the highly finished metal lighting and furniture of recent years., With a compact brick of a book called Dixonary, Dixon now ofers a greatst hits albums between two covers. Having dismissed request for a biography, catalogue raisonee, or jumbo monographs as " too pompous, too serious, and far too boring", the puckish designer has compiled 600 pages of juxtapositions that showcase his own designs next to images that helped inspire them. A photograph of a spacewalking astronaut with his mirrored, coppery pendant lamps that are Dixon's elegant 2005 Copper Shades. [...] Throughout, Dixon reveals the process and materials behind a three-decade design practice that is all about process and materials, one that evolved from provocation to mass production.
