What is required to create Tom Dixon’s marvelous and mesmerizing Melt?

A precision recounting would require treatises and theorems, recapitulations and actuations, a careful explanation of the thermoplastic properties of polymers and vaporized copper foil.

So rather than going down that rabbit hole, let’s just say that Dixon and design firm Front achieved this asynchronous, dynamic, doubly distorted spherical revelation of a light through trial, error, God-given talent, and an endless refinement of technique.

“Over several years we have worked with some forerunners of German engineering and manufacturing to develop these techniques and produce lamps that create the latest in reflectivity and transparency.”

Melt is made of a polycarbonate shell injected with vaporized metal; thus, the piece’s signature mirrored aesthetic: a luminous lamp that appears to be the host of some extraterrestrial embryo; an air-borne specter that looks exceedingly fragile, as if a gust could take it away, or the merest pressure from a child’s finger pop it into vapor.

But not to worry, Melt is engineered to float up and out of reach.

Get yours at Tom Dixon.