International exhibitions followed and as a result Tom was courted by forward looking Italian luxury furnishing manufacturers. Several products were put into mass production and gained a broader recognition culminating in products attaining positions in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum, The Design Museum and many more.
A doodle of a chicken turned into an idea for a chair, that went through a series of mutations and resulted in the S-chair. An unusually sculptural seat that took Dixon from self-production into the Italian luxury goods industry, and from there into the permanent collection of the Museum Of Modern Art in NYC.
“I have often been asked what the inspiration was behind the S-Chair and, honestly, the only memory I have is of drawing a small doodle of a chicken […] and thinking that I could make a chair from it.”
“The secret of its success, I believe, was creating an unexpected and unconventional shape in an archetypical comforting material.” (about wicker S-Chair)
“My slightly more successful designs seem to be ones that can be read in different ways, often quite opposite to their original intent. If the original departure point for the S-Chair for me was a chicken, it has often been described by others as a female form, by some as a flame or frequently as a 1960s-influenced Pop object..”