MARC NEWSON (B. 1963)

Newson's Black Hole Table endures as a defining example of the designer's abilities to celebrate the properties of new, synthetic or extruded materials. Often these are associated with the aviation industry, and have included aluminium, neoprene rubber, Micarta, and in the case of the present example, carbon-fibre. The process for the production of carbon-fibre was originally patented by the Ministry of Defence in the early 1960s, with a concession to manufacture being granted to Rolls Royce Aviation, and to Courtauld's. Of extreme light weight and strength, the synthetically-woven DNA of carbon-fibre masquerades as the substance of Life itself - carbon - here engaged as an oblique, opaque, smooth polished sentinel of timelessness, redolent of science fiction, as befits the stylised black hole of Space.