From dark and brooding to boisterous and brazen, the designs of Patrik Fredrikson and Ian Stallard explore notions of opulence and sensual darkness to create furniture and products that are rich and conceptually challenging.

The Design Museum Tank showed the Bergère Chair, a much anticipated first preview from a forthcoming collection by Fredrikson Stallard, launched at the David Gill Galleries.

Part of a new breed of avant-garde designers for whom narrative is paramount, the London-based designers have been collaborating since 1995 and launched their design partnership in 2005. Both graduates of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Fredrikson Stallard have earned international renown for their idiosyncratic style and alchemist’s approach to materials.

In this work– an upscaled version of their Bergère chair – Fredrikson Stallard have wrapped sensual rubber with hand beaten polished stainless steel to create expressive forms, like “caramelised candy extracted from the discotheque, or as the desperate lap-dancer clinging to her polished stick.”

All layers of traditional upholstery and signifiers of domesticity have been ripped out and replaced with an industrial aesthetic and honesty of materials that is characteristic of Fredrikson Stallard’s work. This fusion contradicts perceived notions of homely comfort.

Indeed, contradiction is often at the heart of their work as they juxtapose seemingly incongruous materials and forms to create works that look both forward and backward in one glance.

For Fredrikson Stallard these objects evoke both historical mannerism and aspiring futurism. They are, as the designers say, “balancing on the ridge between the traditions of the past and the dreams of the future and with a healthy disregard for the conventions of both. They give us a glimpse of another, barely tangible reality – a reality where all things are deeper, darker and altogether more fantastic.”

From the Design Museum.