5 things I learnt about Tom Dixon

Last week I went down to Tom Dixon’s Coal Drops Yard showroom during London Design Festival.

Tom Dixon needs little introduction as a designer. I was more interested in getting to know the person behind the name. So we talked about disco, welding, change, what makes somewhere feel like home, neighbourhoods, North London and a little bit of design too.

Here are five things I learnt.

I got something wrong pretty much straight away.

Tom had been in a disco band, not a punk band.

“One correction. I was not in a punk band, I was in a disco band.”

And yes, there’s a difference. Disco says: get on the dancefloor. Punk is more: something needs to be said, and we’re saying it.

Tom didn’t learn to weld because he had a grand plan to become a designer. He just wanted to repair a vintage car.

The car never actually got fixed.

Instead, he became fascinated by welding itself: the fire, the molten metal and the fact that he could turn bits of scrap into strong structures.

Then something unexpected happened. People started buying the things he made.

“Suddenly I was making things and people were buying them, so it was like a miracle.”

There was no neat career plan behind it.

When I asked Tom what advice he’d give someone moving into a new home, I expected him to mention chairs or lighting.

Instead, he talked about texture, colour, sound and smell.

“What I’m interested in is how smell… affects your feeling of being at home, or how sound affects it.”

And there’s science behind that instinct. Research into autobiographical memory has found that smells can be especially powerful triggers for personal memories, often bringing back experiences that feel vivid and emotional.

It makes sense when you think about home. Sometimes it’s not the sofa or the colour of the walls you remember. It’s someone’s perfume, food cooking, the sound of the front door, or whatever else was happening quietly in the background of everyday life.

Smell seemed to interest Tom especially. He talked about using oils, smoke or scent to shift the feeling left behind by whoever lived somewhere before you.

Or, in his words:

“You can put a spell on a place. A positive spell.”

And once you step outside the front door, his advice for getting to know the neighbourhood was just as practical: walk it, go to the street market, cycle a little further out and, if you can, borrow somebody’s dog.

Tom has more North London history than I realised.

He’s lived in Kentish Town, and when I asked about his favourite parts of North London, Hampstead Heath, Kenwood House, Highgate and Primrose Hill all came up.

But it was the landscape he kept coming back to.

“I like North London for its hills.”

He likes getting up high enough to look back across the rest of the city.

Walking around the new collection with Tom, one thing became pretty clear: he likes an object to be useful, but he also likes it to have a bit of personality.

He showed me a heavy cast iron piece that works as a vase, bookend and doorstop.

Tom’s description was slightly less formal:

“This murder weapon.”

Then there was a sculptural hand. Tom called it a “rude object”, but it turns out to be surprisingly practical too: it can hold your phone for video calls, work as a bedside clock and even become a selfie stick.

“It’s functional, but it’s also… an object for a lot of humour.”

That probably tells you quite a lot about Tom’s approach. The function matters, but that doesn’t mean the object has to take itself too seriously.

What I liked most was that Tom never made design feel overly serious. He talked about instinct, smell, neighbourhoods, humour and making things useful. Even the clever stuff still felt human.

And if you’re curious to see that for yourself, London Design Festival finishes this weekend. Tom Dixon’s Have You Seen the Light? is still at Coal Drops Yard until 20 September, with the new collection and a first look at pieces that won’t be released until next year. It’s free to visit.