Drawn from Clay by Atelier NL is a fascinating delve into the process of converting soil into usable pottery. As students Nadine Sterk & Lonny van Rijswijck, the pair behind Atelier NL, visited traditional workshops in Peru and Brazil where they saw artisans create vases from the earth around them. Taking this idea back home, they travelled around the Netherlands collecting natural clay and producing cups in  a variety of different colours and textures unique to the deposits. This work led the pair to being invited to continue their study by Jurgen Bey and Rianne Makkink on their farm in Noordoostpolder.

Working with local farmers they collected stories and buckets of clay from the parcels of land. “A bucket of soil is anonymous, but stories told by the farmer who works the soil gives the ground identity” 

The result of their work is a range of tableware, a homage to the vegetables that were once cultivated in the earth from which they were produced. 

Further work with Royal Tichelaar Makkum  has produced a  range of plates and bowls are available in six different types of local clay. Again the colour variations of the product are result of the chemical components of the clays used.

Baked by Formafantasma – Andrea Trimarchi, Simone Farresin. The collection is not strictly speaking from the earth, but the materials used certainly are. Commissioned for an exhibition during Dutch Design Week  on the theme “Getting Lost” the duo went back to their Italian roots for inspiration.

“To get lost during a design process is a beautiful luxury – it means you can follow your intuition and curiosity without aiming for a clear result. For this project we looked back at our design “memorabilia”: ideas, pictures and techniques we left behind.”

The Sicilian folk festival Salemi features architectural decorations created from flour based material. Baked expands on this, using  natural ingredients; flour, coffee, cocoa and spinach combined with salt, shellac and spices. A complex mix they experimented with to create durable pieces. 

 On a more commercial tip JIA international have produced a range which also seeks to connect the the clay with the end use of the products. The range has been named after the clay that has been used. ”Zisha”, also known as purple clay, is natural clay unique to China, found around Taihu in Jiangsu during the Northern Song Dynasty (1000-1200 A.D.). When fired, the purple clay assumes a fine and sandy texture that retains the temperature of the tea held inside longer than ordinary ceramics. Microscopic pores of Zisha absorb the fragrance of tea, keeping the tea’s freshness from spoiling. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, tea connoisseurs have considered Zisha teapots indispensable.

For all things ceramics Slipcast -The Ceramics Blog is an excellent read.

Do we have too much….stuff? Are our wardrobes bursting at the seams, all manner of clothing bits and bobs tumbling out? I have to confess, I would love to say I have everything neat and ordered, shoes boxed and labelled, but … no, in my dreams! 

Muscle by Giorgio Biscaro is a storage unit that shamelessly flaunts your happiness with organised chaos. The metal top and bottom are joined by elastic threads that you stretch to push your belongings in. There are no doors or sides to hide and contain your mess.   

 ”You can fill the inner part of the container as you like it, even more than what the bases can accept, because even if protruding, objects won’t fall thanks to the elastic wall, recalling a bulging biceps.” For more of Giorgio’s work  www.seemantic.com

 Soft Wardrobe by Katharina Ludwig

Katharina wardrobe does at least allow you to hide the extent of your untidiness  

“The soft wardrobe is supported and shaped by the strength and volume of the things put inside.
Its walls are not hard and supporting, but  soft like the clothes and flexible. They react in a certain way to the content and the way you fill the wardrobe.. Like this it changes its character according to the filling and becomes more alive.” For more of Kathy’s work http://www.kathyludwig.com/

Zak n2 Shelving by Casimir Meubelen.

Ahh the plastic bag…it can be stuffed with a whole host of things and they conveniently expand as we cram more and more in. With this everyday object in mind Casimir have built on the concept – literally. The bags have a sturdy oak frame and the plastic has been replaced with leather, which is perhaps not quite as stretchy but at least it won’t suddenly split and spill the contents across the floor.

Not on the storage theme but certainly a design that’s bursting out at you is Puff and Flock’s Spiky shower curtain. Rather than look at ways to contain the spoils of our over consumption, Elisabeth Buecher looked at how to discourages us from consuming too much. Her work explores the environmental issues of over consumption of water and is aimed at provoking debate rather than a serious product proposal.

The shower curtain allows the user 4 minutes to shower before gradually bursting out at you and leaving you no space left to shower in. So you stop.

Its interesting that since hearing about this design, each time I shower I’ve started to think “how long have I been in here?…. must stop…must stop…”   www.puffandflock.com

Studio Job Bavaria Range Indian Rose wood limited edition of 6 produced for Moss. Inspired by Bavarian furniture of 17th & 18th Centuries, this range of furniture uses marquetry techniques but instead of laborious hand cutting, the inlays have been laser cut.  

Fergana Sofa by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso. Uzbek weaving techniques are combined with industrial manufacturing to produce a pared down version of the complex traditional patterns, more suited to western tastes. Another Uzbek tradition maintained in this piece is the positioning of the furniture. We tend to push our seating up against the wall, whereas in the Uzbek tradition is to sit in the round. The Fergana range are island pieces meant be seen from all angles, it would be a shame to push them to one side.  

Cathrine Kullberg combines fine workmanship traditional material and precision laser cutting to produce her Norwegian Forest lights.  The classic Scandinavian tradition of using thin birch strips was first used for lighting in the 50s & 60s. Cathrine has further updated the tradition with her beautiful forest scenes. Norwegian Forest lights show a deep pine forest with animals in light and shade. When lit, the blonde birch veneer shines with a warm glow, and the delicately cut forest motif lets light to filter out between the trees.  The lights are cut by a company producing model kits and are then hand finished using seams of natural leather lace For more of her work : www.cathrinekullberg.com

Niki Jones is a designer who trained at both the Scottish College of  Textiles and the Royal College of Art. Having worked for various interior companies as a textile designer and style coordinator she has now created her own company.   Seen here is another design inspired by Uzbek textiles.  The range is designed entirely by her creative team mixing traditional and specialist techniques. www.niki-jones.co.uk

Here are some beautiful products that give the illusion of floating. Perhaps the weight of the worlds problems feel a little too much, we’d like to float off or at least rise above them.

Blown by Nendo

Looking like bubbles about to lift off into the air, these lanterns were inspired by the traditional Japanese chochin lanterns. Created for Tokyo Fibre 09 Senseware the material they used is ‘Smash’ a long-fiber non woven polyester.  The properties of Smash allowed Nendo to shape it like blown glass into a seamless lantern. This technique allowed them to use the imperfections and mutations of glassblowing to create a product that is far from the standardized forms created by mass production. The translucent quality of the fibre add to the feeling that these lanterns may gently float off at any moment. But they won’t. The base is weighted and contains an insulated chamber to prevent the fibre loosing its shape from the heat of the lamp.

http://www.nendo.jp/en/

The Ghost of a Chair by Valentina GonzalezWohlers

Valentina describes her chair as “An apparition from death revealed to the living as a nebulous image – no chair, only its memory, its disembodied spirit captured and frozen in time.”  Inspired by Starck’s Louis XV Ghost chair mixed with the old custom of draping furniture in a white sheet when it is not in use, Valentina has created a floating apparition of a chair.

www.valentinagw.com 

Floating Garden by Benjamin Graindorge & Duende Studio  

An ingenious idea that saves you a couple of jobs in one go. It’s a recycling system based on hydroponics and though the piece looks highly decorative its designed to help out with the mundane tasks of water changes and watering your plants.   The aquarium water is filtered through a natural process of sand and plants it mimics in miniature the symbiotic relationship that exists in nature.

Ovangkol by Reiko Kaneko

Made from Ovangkol a tropical African hardwood the weighty tabletop appears to be floating in the air. Reiko has cast crystal clear resin onto the table legs to create the illusion. I would love to see further developments on this idea.  

http://www.reikokaneko.co.uk/table.php

 Shown above Paper Collection  by Studio Job for Mooi. Created with a wooden core and cardboard the pieces are then lacquered to make a very durable and practical material. They initially created a chandelier and dining table and this year added a screen and side table to the range. 

Packaging Lamp David Gardner. Cleverly using the packaging as the components for the light, once assembled there’s nothing to throw away.

The use of pulped paper gives a wonderful texture, best seen when the light is on!

www.davidgardener.co.uk                                                                    

Above Papier bags by Saskia Diez Made using paper modeling techniques combined with a bit of gluing and sewing Saskia has been playing with the idea of traditional luxury. The paper used is Tyvek synthetic paper, its waterproof, tear proof and over time will crease and crumple. The shine of the paper has been removed by screen printing to give it back that feel of paper. It seems an elaborate process for a paper bag but then this isn’t a  traditional paper bag and this isn’t traditional luxury. http://www.saskia-diez.de/

Paper Table by Bas Van der Veer shows the strength of paper in combination with mathmatical models.

There is always something fascinating about the use of geometric construction in design. The extrapolation of a simple pattern into a more complex one tweaks the senses into looking more closely, trying to understand where the pattern begins and ends. As Karim Rashid said “It’s a way to move the eye and break up surfaces to bring illusion or entropy , to embellish and give richness to surfaces materials and objects. It can add emotion and meaning to the flat dull world”Islamic design has employed the mathematics of geometry to dramatic effect for centuries.  Here’s a few examples of how designer and artists have stripped back the ornamentation and used colour and geometry.

Above is the work of Matt W Moore the painter designer and illustrator. His work is inspired by sacred geometry, asymmetry and optical illusions. His Vectorfunk series uses a vivid colour palette.  “its about adding and refining layers to the point where I’ve got a well balanced, unique, powerful composition.          

www.mattwmoore.com

Coming up for AW09  Basso & Brooke Collection features their signature digital prints but this time with a distinctly geometric feel.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

 Swatch by Hella Jongerius  Identical in shape, sections of coloured tiles are set in walnut marquetry on a simple low table. The coloured sections are made of individually cast polyurethane. Within each colour, different hues can be seen, orange within red, blue greys within white. Light can flow through some sections but not others. The piece holds with Hella’s vision of design offering options and possibilities.   www.jongeriuslab.com 

 Above is Pentagon by Thomas Tritsch   Inspired by medieval fortresses it demonstrates the innumerous possibilties of geometry. Each of the elements can be slotted together to suit the space or your mood! You can create curves, circles, straight lines.

http://www2.quinzeandmilan.tv/#/en/home/

Of course geometry isn’t just about the creation of flat tesselated patterns. Messing about with the angles and you suddenly have a chair – oh it sounds so simple! Thomas Feichtner’s FX10 Lounge chair pictured below is an example. Invert an angle or two and you have a chiseled chunk of a chair. The designer likens it to the angles cut to make igloos, and although it does look rather hard edged, the soft upholstery doesn’t make the sitter feel their on a block of ice! It does look really cool though…. yeah bad joke

Clouds by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec is a 3 dimensional installation that you construct yourself to create your own unique cloud. Using tiles that can be bent on the crease lines and elastic bands to join the tiles together the installation can either be hung from the wall or ceiling. You can rearrange your cloud or add to it create a multicoloured cloud. Its up to you how you use the pieces.

www.kvadratclouds.com

 And should you wish to have a play with geometry you can’t go wrong with David Sutton’s beautiful little book Islamic Design  A genius for Geometry. Available through Wooden Books  www.woodenbooks.com

At last years Salone Internazionale del Mobile Tord Boonje introduced his beautiful Fig Leaf Wardrobe. Perhaps more of an art piece than a functional wardrobe it still got me thinking about how designers have used trees as inspiration. So here’s a serise of products  on this woody leafy theme. 

Vegetal by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec for Vitra

The original source of inspiration for the chair came from the work created by aboursmith Axel Erlandson. Aboursmithing is an ancient form of tree manipulation, creating furniture and other structures by bending young tree branches and allowing time and growth to create a more stable structure. In the 4 years the chair has taken to develop I doubt they’d have had a usable tree chair in that time!

The challenge for Vitra was to retain the natural structure of the trunks and branches but still produce an item that is commercially viable. The use of injection moulded plastic in a product so linked to nature seems at odds with the concept but it works on a number for a number of reasons. Its affordable, the chair can be used outdoors as well as indoors and it challenges the idea of a plastic chair being a throw away item.  

Jakob Solgren – Wood You Like a Cup of Tea.  This is Jakob’s contribution to the tradition of bizarre teapots, although I don’t really think this is bizarre, its rather lovely. Delicately sculpted from black stoneware its the colour of the dried tea its meant to brew. 

jakob.solgren@konstfack.se

Snowdon Flood produced these stunning silhouette tree glasses.

http://www.snowdenflood.com/

Leaf -it Post it note by Sangwoo Nam. Beautifully packaged post-it notes. You can have your desk scattered with leaves rather than those horrible fluorescent things. Heres a link but I think the product is too new to show up yet!

http://www.designfountain.com

Tree by Katrin Olina Petursdottir and Michael Young for Swedese.  Since its introduction in 2005 the coat hanger has become a classic for Swedese. Freestanding or wall mounted the branches form the hangers.  www.swedese.se

Twig Bench by Pinch. Originally designed for Neals Yard Remedies the bench went into production after a so much interest in the design. Made of hazel twigs stacked the bench is intended for indoor use only.

Wooden Usb by Oooms Theres something rather nice about sticking a stick in your computer, and it is a real stick. Collected from the woods and carefully crafted into a USB they’re all uniquely beautiful.  http://www.oooms.nl/wooden-usb-stick/

There have been so many images of the over sized cast iron dinner service and the stained glass windows I thought I’d post some images of the porcelain dinner service also shown here.

The Last Supper is truly a remarkable achievement. The production of this 12 piece dinner service marks technical development in the traditional Delftware technique where only a small amount of colours can be used. The collaboration between Studio Job and Royal Tichelaar Makkum led to the development of numerous new colours allowing a bright re-interpretation of traditional technique of Faience.

This mixing of old and new was continued into decoration of the pieces, mixing religious iconography with images of the modern day.  Each piece is hand painted and edged with 24c gold lustre

Piet has spent his career working with reclaimed materials. A graduate of the Design School in Eindhoven, in 1990 he produced his first work made entirely from recycled wood and has built his career around the concept of reusing, adapting and recycling. Its not just his desire to be ecological its more a thought process beginning with the material around him.

Pictured above is detail from a lamp he produced for Spazio Rossana Orlandi.  Formally a tie factory the store had rolls of unused tie fabric in the loft. Piet has used the fabric to create lampshades over a simple wire frame.  Shown here are the two sizes of lamp base and a large pendant shade.

 Also displayed were the 99% cabinets. Continuing on a philosophy of the most efficient use of material and labour, the production of the cabinets leaves less than 1% wastage from the original sheet of metal. The cabinet is available in white coated aluminium, copper or the brass version pictured below.

The plank chair was a personal favourite of mine. Born out of an irritation at mediocre design sold at a ridiculous price, Piet decided at Salone 2008 to create an inexpensive high quality product. Not only that, you can actually produce this chair yourself, plans and instructions were provided.  I nabbed a copy but my photo of them is a little too small to be of use – the plans will be available from his website in the future.

It does look incredibly simple to do (certainly compared to a dress pattern!) but unfortunately the instructions are in Dutch so I’m getting a friend of mine to translate before I attempt it.

Also shown was a collection based on his work with scrap pieces of wood. The Dark coffee table, bench and chairs were all made using doors and wood panelling found in an old watermill. The pictures here are taken from his website, I’m afraid I got distracted by his book and forgot to take the pics myself!

 Shown here is a close up of how the scrap collection is put together and lacquered. Ten layers of high gloss lacquer are applied to the pieces giving a beautiful water effect, and an amazing silky feel.  

For more information on his work  (and better pictures) here’s the link to his website

 http://www.pietheineek.nl/

Here are couple of interviews Peit did for Dwell and also Design.nl giving a more detailed insight  into the production of this collection.

http://design.nl/item/five_minutes_in_milan___piet_hein_eek

http://www.dwell.com/articles/interview-piet-hein-eek.html

Here’s a link for the book by Max Fraser covering the first 15 years of his work – sorry its amazon- other book stores are available! just use the isbn no.   

http://www.amazon.com/Boek-Piet-Hein-Max-Fraser/dp/9063691483

Or, even better, if you email here  apparently you can get a signed copy Well it says so on his website!

http://www.pietheineek.nl/en/book

Quilt by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec for Established and Son is an inviting and comforting chair. The idea originally came from the desire to make something unstructured and welcoming like a quilt or a blanket.  Using stretch fabric  by Kvadrat, the chair is sewn with individual pockets each containing foam cells this gives the chair and elasticity and enveloping nature as you sit in it.  Unfortunately the rather tired Italian grandma found it so comfy she didn’t want to go so after waiting ages I just took a pic anyway.

Memory Chair by Ole Jensen for Normann Copenhagen was also designed with the idea of enveloping you. The warmth of the wool fabric and the arms that embrace you as you sit in it give a comforting security. Created on a wood frame base with different types of foam upholstered on to it. The patchwork effect is created using 120 pieces of tailored wool stitched together. I do love this patchwork effect.

   Soda Chair by Trimodestudio was inspired by bubbles in soda water.  There’s something rather charming about the irregularity of the upholstery.  I’m afraid my picture isn’t so great but they have a much better image on their website.

www.trimodestudio.com

Moroso made Patricia Urquiola’s Bohemian chair in African hand dyed fabric.

Also worth a mention though not at the show.

Charlotte Kingsnorth’s One Chair which won the D&AD Award last year. Inspired by the work of artist Jenny Saville’s painting of a rather rotunde lady and also the media obsession with obesity, Charlotte created a chair that devours the occupant  ”a sofa that has been devoured by its obese occupier”. “The flesh has spilled and encased the sofa… until the two have married into a new grotesque form,” she explains.

http://www.charlottekingsnorth.com/

 Tokujin Yoshioka’s Panna Chair, also explored the idea of encasing the occupier. Made of polyurethane foam over a metal base the fabric and foam adapts its shape to the person sitting in it. I can’t help feeling both the Quilt and  Memory Chairs owe a nod to this earlier work by Yoshioka.