Cork Round table - / Recycled cork - Ø 100 cm by Tom Dixon Brown

British designer Tom Dixon is launching a series of cork furniture that’s been burnt to give it a rich dark brown colour reminiscent of rosewood. The solid, round silhouettes really highlight the material. Tom Dixon explains: “When I was little, we had cork floors and they had this incredible warmth and tactility. Cork is also sound-absorbing, fire-retardant, water-resistant, and lighter than water, which is why it floats, so it’s easy to carry. In terms of dream materials, you really can't beat it! We’ve taken full advantage of the elasticity, sound absorption and waterproof nature of cork, which, combined with its natural beauty, makes for a unique set of highly sculptural furniture with expressive, minimalist attributes and superior functionality. '' Ecological, the Cork collection is made from recycled cork from pre-consumer waste (industrial waste). The collected cork offcuts are reduced to granules which are agglomerated and compressed into composite blocks. The material is mixed with a small amount of polyurethane resin to bind it at a ratio of 93% cork to 7% resin. The cork is then burned: it turns brown and expands. This makes the cork less sensitive to dirt, while avoiding an overly Scandinavian aesthetic. The cork thus obtained can then be recycled continuously, even with the resin. Combined with used tyres, it can be used to make flooring. The soft, rounded edges of the furniture are created by CNC milling machines, and the offcuts are reused to form new composite blocks. There is hardly any waste in the process - even the dust from production is used to feed the ovens in the factories. Rarely used in furniture making, cork is a natural, waterproof, flame-retardant material that has always been used in the production of footwear, floor and wall coverings. Today, it’s seeing a resurgence in the world of design and architecture due to the fact it’s also recyclable and, according to Dixon, carbon-negative because it can be harvested without harming the tree it grows on. "You don’t cut down a tree like you would for a wooden table or chair - all you do is take off its bark, which then regrows ", he explains. "You plant trees for the long term and harvest every nine years. All the while, the material effectively captures carbon as it grows. The tree continues to make more bark, that bark captures more carbon, and you plant more trees to make more cork. " The cork used to make the Cork collection comes from Portugal. To reduce transport as much as possible, the cork furniture is also made in Portugal. Tom Dixon on the round shapes of the Cork table: "I was very 'angular' before I became a dad! But once your child bangs into the corner of a sharp-edged table, you suddenly start to round everything off! It kind of happened without me realising it. But on a practical level, corners and sharp angles will deteriorate very quickly in a soft material like cork, so this was also done to make them less destructible. ".