In their short careers, Patrik Fredrikson and Ian Stallard have created furniture and decorative objects that have been snapped up by style arbiters and art world cognoscenti alike: a computer-controlled chandelier for Swarovski, a rubber table acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art and a Rorschach-test-shaped felt-and-rubber rug sold by the edgy San Francisco design outfit Citizen: Citizen.

But FredriksonStallard, as the dynamic duo is known, isn’t just coasting on its growing reputation for clever historical references and visually compelling objects. This year, the pair will introduce both a new line of chairs and a collection of ceramics with their London gallerist, David Gill; create a roomful of crystal-covered furniture for Swarovski at the Milan Furniture Fair; and contribute designs (they’re not sure what yet) to London’s Design Week festival in the fall.

There’s every indication that Fredrikson, 39, and Stallard, 34, will manage to extend their reach without risking overexposure—a peril that has felled hot young design prodigies before. “It’s a very exciting year for us,” says Stallard. “A lot of people imagine that we’re going to start some sort of FredriksonStallard empire—some production house—which we have no intention of doing. What we’re aiming to do is to work with a few producers and develop things with them. It’s enough for us, and it’s what we do best.”

Although they didn’t formally establish their London practice until a decade afterward, the duo (a personal and professional team) started collaborating in 1995, when they met at London’s Central St. Martins College of Art and Design. At first, Fredrikson concentrated on furniture and interiors, while Stallard did ceramics. But by the time of London’s 100% Design Fair in 2003, they were jointly sharing credit for everything—including a notorious cross-shaped scrubbing brush—and creating a coherent collection in the process. Within two years, the pair’s stylized Gothic candles and twisted bentwire coat hooks were being sold internationally by design-savvy outfits like Thorsten van Elten, of London, and Matter, in New York.

Furniture came next. FredriksonStallard’s first line, introduced in 2006, was produced in collaboration with Gill and featured a hot-pink Pyrenees sofa—with peaks resembling a mini mountain range—and an ethereal carvedaluminum sheet table, as thin as structurally feasible. The line was a hit, but what keeps everyone watching heir work is the intelligence it manifests, like the early series of vases that riffed on thousands of years of design history, with a threedimensional dragon popping out of the top, say, or visible structural bolts that most ceramics keep hidden.

“Their thinking was beyond clever,” retailer extraordinaire Murray Moss says of their ceramics. “It was revisionist.” This ability, demonstrated early on and still evident in their work, to stay one step ahead but with an eye ever on the past will keep these two in play over the long haul.

"Dream Team: Patrik Fredrikson and Ian Stallard" originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2008 Table of Contents.