Dean Toepfer Studio
FURNITURE DESIGNER
This studio’s exquisitely proportioned furniture elicits emotional connections with our living environments.
With a background in the fashion industry, this Adelaide-based furniture and lighting designer shows a deep understanding of composition, visual balance and sound construction.
For someone who only graduated from Jam Factory’s Associate Program four years ago, Dean Toepfer has made quite an impact. The Adelaide-based furniture and lighting designer’s elegantly modern portfolio is nothing short of impressive in both functionality and form. “I like to create objects that are intriguing and tactile,” says Dean, who also holds an associate degree in design from Melbourne’s RMIT University. “And my main objective is to design pieces that elicit emotional connections with the environments in which we live and work.”
It was Dean’s background in the fashion industry, where he specialized in sales, range development and product management, that platformed his current practice, which is located out of the Jam Factory studios. This invaluable experience in fashion taught him the importance of good composition, sound construction and visual balance. Cases in point are the Jetsons-style Rebel Futurism side table, with its bold shapes and curious arrangement, and the robust yet exquisitely proportioned Sweep stools.
Hause stool, on the other hand, is a witty piece of minimalism that does a lot with very little, while the Apres drinks cart strikingly reinterprets old-world charm. Every piece is characterized by Dean’s strong material sensibilities and strict commitment to research and development.
As he explains, “With each new product, I’m always keen to explore new materials and processes because I like the challenges involved. Sometimes I approach a product’s design with certain expectations and things don’t always go to plan, but through these experiences, new and unexpected ideas are born.”
Dean’s most recent work, the Vase Versa range, is perhaps his most exciting to date, signifying his first object collection and becoming the first product he both designed and personally manufactured. Incidentally, the impetus to self-produce came about after he completed an internship with Dutch designer Lex Pott; Dean coupled his resulting inspiration with a desire to create something at an accessible price point for the current marketplace.
The vessels are made from the polymer-based hybrid solid-surface Marblo, which Dean selected because it was well suited to the machinery available to him in the Jam Factory workshop and because he wanted to work with a material offering rich colour options. Each vase’s simple form reads as delicious eye candy, popping in bold duotones, including red and teal and melon and pink. Anticipation for Dean’s new products, which comprise a lighting collection and an object almost two years in the making, is high. The promise of more outstanding design is guaranteed.