BACKGROUND: Tom Dixon - a self-educated designer
By Hannu Pöppönen
Tom Dixon was born in 1959 in Tunisia, the son of a British father and a French-Lithuanian mother. The family moved to London when Dixon was four years old.
As a designer, Tom Dixon is self-taught. He studied for a while at the Chelsea Art School, but a motorcycle accident forced him to cut his studies short.
After art school he played the bass in a band called Funkapolitan, which once visited Finland as a warm-up band for Simple Minds. Another motorcycle accident put an end to his musical career.
Dixon has said that design is something that comes after materials and technique. Typical of his innovative design are crafting, materials, and new approaches.
At the end of the 1980s the Italian manufacturer Cappellini took Dixon’s famous S-Chair and his Bird lounge chair into production, and Dixon became one of the most pure avant-garde designers.
In the mid-1990s Dixon found plastic as a material, which led to the creation of his Jack lamp, which won the Millennium Mark prize of 1997.
Dixon’s newest products include coffee cups made of biodegradable plastic and bamboo fibre.
Dixon’s designs have been manufactured by design companies which target a small group of consumers. In 1998 Dixon was named head of design at the Habitat interiors chain, whose aim was to sell products with broader appeal. Dixon has been the creative director of Habitat since 2001.
As of this summer he has also worked as artistic director of Artek.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.8.2004
More on this subject:
 New age dawning at Artek
Tank chair to remain in Artek repertoire
HANNU PÖPPÖNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
hannu.popponen@hs.fi
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