Marc Newson

Career

Newson was born in Sydney, Australia, and in 1984 he graduated at the Sydney College of the Arts in Sydney, Australia studying jewellery and sculpture. In 1986 he was awarded a grant from the Australian Crafts Council and staged a first exhibition featuring the Lockheed Lounge. The following year he moved to Tokyo, where he lived and worked until he moved to Paris in 1991 where he set up a studio. He describes his 1988 Embryo Chair as "one of the first pieces where I hit upon a discernible style".

He co-founded the Ikepod watch company with Oliver Ike in 1994, leaving the company in 2012. In 1997 he moved to London, where he and business partner Benjamin de Haan set up Marc Newson Ltd though he still has a house in Paris. He is currently adjunct professor in design at Sydney College of the Arts (where he first studied sculpture and jewellery) and is the creative director for Qantas. In 2005, he was selected as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the year.

His work has become amongst the highest selling in auctions. One of his three Lockheed Lounge chairs sold for $968,000 at Sotheby's in 2006, and £1,100,000 at a 2009 auction at Phillips de Pury & Company. At the 2006 Design Miami fair he produced 12 Chop Top tables, all of which sold out in 20 minutes at an estimated $170,000. In April 2015 his Lockheed Lounge chair sold at auction for £UK2.4 million ($AU4.69 million), making it the most expensive object ever sold by a living designer.

Every year he races one of his four vintage sports cars – an Aston Martin, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and a Cisitalia, in the Italian Mille Miglia and was quoted as saying: "I'm not a motor head, I don't like the new versions of any of those cars."

Newson was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to design.

He joined Apple Inc. in September 2014.

Works

Objects he has designed include:

Transportation

Consumer goods

Restaurants and events

Newson designed the Lever House Restaurant & Bar in New York in 2002 and the Canteen, also in New York, in 1999. In 2005 he designed the reception, meeting rooms, and the 6th floor of the Hotel Puerta America in Madrid, where each floor is designed by a world-renowned architect or designer.

He was selected as the artistic director for the 2011 Sydney New Year's Eve fire work display.

Books

Marc Newson. Design tra organicità e fantascienza by Cinzia Ferrara, Milano, Lupetti, 2005. ISBN 88-8391-127-X

Personal life

Newson was born in Sydney, Australia on 20 October 1963 to Paul Newson, an electrician and Carol. Carol was 19 years old when she was pregnant with Marc. She married Paul during the pregnancy, however Paul left the family soon after Marc was born. Carol moved back into her parent's house to raise Marc. Marc's father figure came in the form of his grandfather, Andrew Rolfe, and his uncle, Stephen. Newson is of Greek origins on his mother's side. His grandfather, Andrew Rolfe, is a Greek immigrant, who came to Australia in 1923 as a 16-year-old.

Newson married Charlotte Stockdale, a fashion stylist, in 2008 and they have two children.

One of Newson's best friends is Jonathan Ive of Apple Inc., whom he met in Japan. In a 2012 article in The New York Times, Ive described Newson's work.

I think Marc is fairly peerless now. Marc's forms are often imitated, but what other designers seldom imitate is his preoccupation with materials and processes. You have to start with an understanding of the material. Often your innovation is just coming up with a new way to use material.

In 2013, Ive and Newson collaborated in an auction at Sotheby's for Bono's Product Red. Over forty objects – "each of which we both like ... functional and capable of being made in volume", per Ive; "deeply personal" per Newson – were selected over two years for the auction and show to benefit The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.