it's not just car companies calling on unlikely
talent to catch the eye of consumer-overcultured buyers.
alessi had newson design such banal things as a drain
stopper, a toilet-roll holder and a bottle opener.
magis had him whip up a coat hanger and a tendriled
dish drainer.
'I'd love to be approached to do ordinary things more,'
says newson.
a dish drainer seems a long way from newson's first design:
a chaise longue made of hammered and riveted aluminum
on fiber glass.
but the chaise longue's shape became the most basic
utterance in newson's vocabulary.
he has thinned and thickened it over the years for different
other objects, but it's nearly always there.