Why Max Lamb is in the Design 100

Max Lamb trained in three-dimensional design at Northumbria University before completing a master’s in Design Products at the Royal College of Art in 2006, where his tutors included Tom Dixon and Martino Gamper. Dixon hired him as a special projects designer on graduating, and the material-first habits formed there have defined his practice since: Lamb works directly with raw stone, metal and other unrefined materials rather than drawing a design and handing it to a workshop, letting the physical process of extraction, carving or casting dictate the final form.

That approach has produced work now held in major design collections and shown at international fairs, from pewter poured directly onto sand to seating carved from solid quarried stone. In London, his ceramic chairs for 1882 Ltd, developed with Gallery FUMI, extended the same material logic into a new medium, and the results have helped make him one of the most collected experimental furniture designers working in Britain today.