Two of a Kind

This young design duo is transforming the visual landscape

Written by Julie Taraska

Patrik Fredrikson and Ian Stallard are alchemists as much as product designers, stripping materials down to their bare essence and altering their very DNA. They work with metallurgists, engineers and textile experts to change the shape, color and composition of materials. The London-based duo also create unexpected juxtapositions—making a rubber-and-stainless-steel chair, for example, for their recent limited-edition furniture collection for England's prestigious David Gill Galleries, and a porcelain vase that is stuck together Frankenstein-like with sterling silver pegs.

Their items are witty and exquisitely crafted. But they also are visually sumptuous, so alive with texture that you can practically feel them with your eyes before you touch them with your hands. It's one of the many reasons FredriksonStallard's work has appeared in the hallowed halls of such retailers as the Conran Shop, the Museum of Modern Art and Paul Smith. Last year they created a chandelier for Swarovski (part of the company's vaunted Crystal Palace collection—a sure sign that they've arrived) dubbed Pandora, a kinetic sculpture whose crystal orbs dance and circle Fantasia-like in midair, endlessly destroy-ing and restoring the fixture's shape.

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