“Classic chairs like the Egg, the Swan and the Womb should no longer be held up as symbols of great design,” says Tom Lloyd. It’s a provocative statement, and intentionally so. It’s not the products’ formal expression that the designer is knocking, however, but rather the way they are constructed. “These chairs are basically made of four materials — textiles glued onto foam that surrounds a mould with a steel structure inside — that can never be unbound.” That might not have been an issue in the 1940s and ’50s when they were first produced, but it is now.
Tom Lloyd and Luke Pearson founded Pearson Lloyd in 1997. Over the past 26 years, the London industrial design, branding and sustainability strategy firm has garnered a reputation for its robust portfolio of elegant products — healthcare, transportation and public realm projects for manufacturers including Walter Knoll, Joseph Joseph, Teknion and Arconas. Making the planet a co-beneficiary in
