Gabion: Jasper Morrison and the Prime Minister of Tamil Nadu 1/3

Jasper Morrison wonders if I'll think he's going just a bit post-modern. He gets up, rummages in a corner of his studio, and returns with a pre-production prototype of his hanging bird-table for Magis. It consists of two simple plates of plastic - one a feeding tray, the other a protective roof - fixed to a central metal rod. At the top the rod forms a hook, like a coat hanger. You could hang it on a tree. At the bottom it is just a spike. You could stick it in the ground. The plastic discs, he points out, have a woodgrain texture moulded into them.

Apparently he had to fight quite hard with the manufacturer to get this texture. He found the pattern on a packet of cheese and scanned it into a computer, played about with it. Subtle though it is when reduced to an almost imperceptible surface finish, it seems uncharacteristic, somehow. Morrison is Mr. Restraint. Morrison reduces things to essentials. Morrison designs things that are so quietly functional that, to an untutored eye, they can look as if nobody designed them at all. This is the role he has carved out for himself since he first emerged on the design scene in the mid 1980s. Morrison is an antidote to excess. He does not do decoration or ornament.

So, then, woodgrained plastic - is this the thin end of the wedge? He seems, in his quiet way, gleeful about it. What next from Morrison - overstuffed Chesterfield sofas upholstered in pink zebra stripes? Well, of course not. Get real. But there is still the little matter of the Prime Minister of Tamil Nadu to consider.