Over the years I have learned to live with and celebrate my inner engineer. More and more I am finding the beauty of an object lies in its engineering, how it's put together. I find both a purity in exposing this and at the same time a higher a level of detail being possible without the need for anything superflous.

 

The Flyover table illustrates this celebration, being purely constructed in a language consisting of metal working folds, flange's, machined faces and threaded fastenings. The graphic silhouette of an object is also important to me, as much as the details up close. I think this has come from years of drawing windsurfing sails, paying attention to them up close and simultaneously considering how they look from a distance. The Twig coat stand is so simple it really is all about the silhouette, and trying to achieve a kind of visual and mathematical balance.

 

This assemblage of pieces also contains some fragments from earlier in my professional career. The Spin Candelabra and the Cage Light were designed whilst working as Senior Designer for Tom Dixon in the UK. These pieces really completed my Tom Dixon 'Right Of Passage' and left me infused with a love of working in metals, not to mention they were produced in my favourite manufacturing destination to date - India. These pieces I consider to be the beginning of my fascination with structural beauty.

 

The cast iron Lean Light was also designed for Tom Dixon, but from my newly formed studio back in New Zealand. This was more about a cute silhouette utilising cast metal that had become popular within the office as a result of the Spin Candelabra.

 

The pieces on display really only show one part of my design practice, only one of my split personalities as a designer. Despite this, they nevertheless exhibit many of the qualities I try to infuse in anything I design from a bicycle to a piece of furniture.

 

- Jamie McLellan

Jamie McLellan, 2009.