This seems somewhat of an anti-slogan considering that Keith Melbourne’s new furniture range is anything but monochromatic with his champagne table and latte, cognac and crystal stools presenting a defiant tableux of colour at Zenith’s SID Showroom this year. Paying homage to four iconic glass forms, the abovementioned products that constitute Melbourne’s ‘Glass Collection’ are manufactured using UV stabilised and recyclable polyethylene, and their starburst colors, finely-cut-glass inspired contours, and magnified dimensions embody a bold disavowal of form=function. Meeting up with Keith Melbourne at Saturday In Design, I had the opportunity of speaking with him about the launch of his Glass Collection and gauging the response of the design community.

Video by Peter Wakelam

LW: Keith, your Glass Collection display here at Zenith is certainly one of the most eye-catching exhibits I have seen on the SID circuit today, the colour palette transfers a very fun boldness and energy to the sterility of classic glassware. What has the reception been like so far today? 
KM: Colour is my Nemesis! But that’s local manufacture for you, 49 colours on a short lead time. The reception has been great, people really love them. I like the fact that everybody sees something different in the products. Designers really like the edge and detail in the stools, and then other people like the reinvention aspect of their design.

LW: I understand the Palamont Group are the manufacturers of your new Glass Collection, what aspects of the rotational moulding process do you feel really compliment your design?
KM: To say nothing else, the detail in the product is really quite incredible; I don’t know where else I could have achieved that same level of resolve to be honest; it really comes down to the manufacturer having an inherent understanding of the process to get this level of detail. I really love the finish of the product, I wanted to achieve a textured rather than a shiny surface on the latte and crystal glasses and the etching really does give the polyethylene a soft consistency. I like that.

LW: Tell me a bit about your display in the Zenith Showroom, your products really do speak for themselves, but how about this rather eclectic collection of glassware projected onto the backdrop? Are these pieces which have inspired you?
KM: I started the collection with the latte glass and it did draw its inspiration from the iconic original; I was sitting in my favourite café in Melbourne looking at the glass form and realizing it was so beautiful but that I could never recreate anything equally as beautiful as it had already been done. So taking the iconic shape of the glassware, I basically developed upon that piece, creating a stool out of context that would fit into any interior. When I came to Melbourne I decided to do a collection as I felt a stand alone product would be a little too isolated. In this process, I developed a real love of glassware by looking at its many iconic glass forms and so these pieces pictured are actually glasses which I have collected from op shops; photographing them was about telling the story behind them all. I see a lot of people come and look at the range with a wry smile as they realise from where their inspiration was drawn and identify with them, magnified large scale, which is not typical with a lot of my design work.

Keith Melbourne worked with Palamont developing state of the art tooling, which is one of the key contributing factors to producing a rotationally moulded product with such complex detail. His passion for furniture design translates into a focused involvement in the engineering and manufacturing processes which see his schematic designs translated into their optimum functional and aesthetic form within the capabilities and constraints of the chosen process. “CAD is ideal for working with the intersection of geometric shapes but it’s rather dead”, Melbourne says, “I also need to work with my hands, to touch and feel.” This habitude of trans-disciplinary design stems from Melbourne’s fist career path in engineering before he diverged into creative design practice; working first in aeronautics and then the automotive industry, Melbourne developed for over a decade the analytic and rational disciplines of precision engineering which are now seamlessly proven through his furniture designs.

Keith Melbourne has exhibited in 8 national design exhibitions including EDGE, Launchpad, VIVID and Workshopped, he has received several awards for his designs and his work has been widely published. Melbourne’s new Glass Collection is being sold exclusively through Zenith Interiors:
www.zenithinteriors.com.au