Well-designed furniture plus rust makes Lex Pott one to watch in Milan

Rust, we were taught by parents frantically retrieving bicycles left carelessly out in the rain, is to be avoided at all costs. It’s ugly, they told us, and damaging – a stark sign of dilapidation easily avoided.

To some though, including Amsterdam-based designer Lex Pott, natural degradation is an occurrence to be embraced, not averted. See Transience, a small sculptural series made with fellow designer David Derksen to reveal beauty in natural transition by exploring the oxidation (read: rusting) process. Or True Colours – which alongside Transience will be shown at the Milan Furniture Fair next week – an earlier exploration of the effects of oxidation. Or Fragments of Nature, a series of furniture as well as a study of the geometry of the trees from which it came.

Lex’s portfolio is filled with these small moments of natural triumph, of good-looking composites of contemporary design and raw materials. Would our childhood bikes have looked this good had they been left out in the rain? Under Pott’s watch, just maybe…