Perhaps one of the most compelling products at 2004’s Canadian International Auto Show was not a vehicle, but a piece of furniture.

Tucked into a nook of the Auto Show’s exhibit about the ‘Art of the Automobile’ was an object called an AeroPod, designed by Toronto artist Dean Jackson.

AeroPod, Prototype Model, Dean Jackson, 2003-4

The first thing that struck me upon encountering the object was how much more polished the object was over the other works on display. By ‘polish’, I do not merely mean the object’s finish. Rather, the AeroPod struck me as more polished than anything else in the exhibit in terms of its conception, design, and execution. Clearly, a panel of judges associated with the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada agreed with me, for they awarded the AeroPod top prize in the exhibition’s sculpture contest.

Many things can be polished – the Lamborghini Gallardo, proudly on display on the central floor, for one. Polished, yes, but people also make no mistake that they are gazing at a world-class sports car. The AeroPod was both polished and intriguing. When I first encountered the AeroPod, I wasn’t quite sure what it was. The AeroPod looked slightly whimsical, sort of like a bulbous root glistened in fire engine Ferrari red.

Upon initial examination, I thought the AeroPod was a creative, automotive-inspired sculpture, a piece that combined contemporary retro-sleekness with a playful, Jetsons-like sensibility.

The sculpture is much more than that, however. It is also a fine, custom-built piece of furniture. The interior of the AeroPod can be customized to serve several distinct functions. Jackson currently has six interior versions. These include a humidor, made of an odiferous Spanish cedar lined with a luxurious Carpathian elm burl veneer, whose naturally mottled patterns accentuate the flowing lines of the sculpture. The rounded drawers are crisply crafted, surprisingly smooth to the touch. The whole piece beckons to be caressed and lingered over. The chrome-plated feet of the sculpture/furniture give lift to the piece, evoking the optimistic period of the 1950s when the promise of space travel embodied the forward-looking dreams of American society.

AeroPod, Humidor, Dean Jackson, 2004

Wine aficionados will be glad to hear that the AeroPod can be custom-designed as a wine rack. Other versions include a display or storage cabinet, a silk-velvet lined jewelry or curio cabinet, and a stereo cabinet.

Jackson describes the AeroPod as inspired by the blossom of design that characterized the 1950s. This period was in many ways a golden age for the continent, cocooned in space exploration’s highest ideals. In 1958, this mood was festooned in the National Aeronautics and Space Act’s heady statement that "activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind."

Jackson’s work, however, should be situated more broadly. There clearly are affinities with Jackson’s way of working and that of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish designer who commingled an Art Nouveau lyricism with his own personal idiom.

Domino Clock, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, circa 1917

What may not be so apparent by simply looking at pictures of Jackson’s work is the degree and quality of craftsmanship that defines Jackson’s oeuvre. The seams between the cabinet door and body, for example, are painstakingly aligned for an exacting fit; and as with the best automotive designs, solutions to functional problems are married with striking aesthetic accents. The marque that graces the top of the AeroPod serves as a visually unifying element that subtly endows the ovoid with symmetry, and also functions as a latch, carved into a precisely molded fit for the fingers, to open the cabinet.

Jackson’s AeroPod also develops upon a visual tradition that in ways is divergent to Mackintosh’s, and which reverberates with the work of sculptors like Constantin Brancusi or Isamu Noguchi. There is an elemental simplicity to Jackson’s AeroPod, evocative of the way that Brancusi’s sculptures distilled the object and form to what he experienced as the object’s essence.

The Muse, Constantin Brancusi, 1912

In this pursuit, the AeroPod exemplifies an honesty to materials and craft, a commitment to a strict economy of means. The resulting oval form abstracts automotive motifs into an object that invites a slower mood of consideration, which stands in counterpoint to the kinetic automotive and rocket references. The front presents the grille, the sides are edged with fins, the top of the cabinet is established with the marque, and the curves are everywhere throughout. The effort is polyphonous. It is impossible to identify the object with any specific make of vehicle, just as Brancusi’s The Muse does not explicitly designate any particular woman, but instead aspires to the realization of the object’s purity.

Although evocative of Brancusi, the purpose of Jackson’s AeroPod is intertwined with its functionality. In this vein, the AeroPod suggests Isamu Noguchi’s Radio Nurse and Guardian Ear, which served as a nursery intercom for a baby sleeping in a room apart from the parents.

Radio Nurse and Guardian Ear, Isamu Noguchi, 1937

By fusing the abstract with the functional, and, like Noguchi, the organic with the industrial, Jackson succeeds in getting us to pay closer attention to the quality of our own relationships with everyday products that we rely upon, may even covet, but do not attend to with the second-order awareness that amplifies the intensity of everyday experience.

The AeroPod hearkens to the designers and craftsmen at the best automobile saloons, like those of Bentley or Rolls-Royce. It certainly borrows automotive motifs in form, but less apparent and yet more fundamentally defining to the piece is the passion of excellence that infuses the project. Ultimately, the best automobiles carry this quality as their badge, a feature also redolent in the AeroPod.

The pieces are constructed with molded reinforced polyester resin, chrome-plated steel and bronze, PVC, aluminum, and a variety of woods. Almost every detail has necessitated a custom molding. The object stands to the height of a sedan’s door handle, about 3 feet tall. The width and depth are each about 2 feet. Compared with plain furniture, the price of an AeroPod is expensive, between $10,000 and $15,000. But comparing the AeroPod to merely utilitarian furniture would be askew. Every AeroPod is bespoke, unique and individually crafted. The spirit of Dean Jackson’s accomplishment with the AeroPod is in embodying the craftsmanship and vision of the most outstanding automobiles, and akin to that inspiration, in creating an object that is functionally sophisticated and quietly passionate in its originality and economy.