Walk down the streets of any city and you’ll see what an effect the glazed exteriors of building have on our perceptions of our surroundings. What was outside is suddenly in and people develop conjoined twins and loose them in an instant.

Kim Thome, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, has explored reflection and transparency in a series of furniture entitled the Reflection Range. The range consists of a number of “undefined” objects. The objects are all relatively simple planes, hoops, cubes and pyramids. They are all finished in a black or beige background, with other geometric patterns (circles, triangles, stripes, etc) rendered on them in bright florescent colors. The objects have been paired with two-way mirrors and it is these opaque and reflective surfaces that give this range its power. These two-way mirrors, since they are both partially reflective and transparent, allow different patterns to be overlaid on each other. The interaction between the patterns already present and the ones reflected change the face of the objects completely. A disc with a small ledge jutting out becomes a smiley face. The plain green circles on the rim of a mirror interact with the pink ones behind it to create a kaleidoscopic pattern. And on a cabinet-like block, two-tone triangles are doubled.

As mentioned before, the objects in the range are undefined, which is quite apt considering the nature of their surfaces. They rely on the viewer to define their uses, much as the movement of the viewer in relation to the object defines how they look.

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