British industrialist designer Jasper Morrison furnished the Switch House, Tate Modern’s Herzog & de Meuron-designed extension, which opened earlier this summer in London. To coincide with the opening, the museum is also showcasing Morrison’s product and furniture designs in an exhibition called "Thingness," an edit of a retrospective that first showed at Le Grand Harnu in Belgium.
Displayed in a small room on the basement level of the new structure, the show includes work from as far back as 1984 and features some of his most iconic designs, such as the curvy Thinking Man’s chair, which he designed for Cappellini in 1986, a set of stainless steel serving utensils created for Alessi, and the simple Ply-Chair he designed for Vitra in 1988.
Morrison opened a studio in London in 1986 after studying there and in Berlin, and his designs were unlike anything the postmodernists were creating at the time. According to a review of last year’s retrospective, Morrison admired the Modernists for the "economy, efficiency and restraint" of their designs, even as it was fashionable at the time to instead be "flamboyant" and "richly symbolic."
Indeed, simplicity and clean lines dominate all the works, from the plastic Magis Air Chair to the flat Punkt alarm clock to the Flos Superloon floor lamp. A selection of Morrison’s small goods are on sale in the museum gift shop like the wood and canvas December chair, ceramic dishes, and the alarm clock.