british designer debbie smyth created ‘pins and threads’ a drawing of electrical pylons. to create the piece she stretched threads between pins. each point was plotted and measured to ensure that the pylons were illustrated accurately. her ‘pins and threads’ drawing was on display as part of tent london. debbie, it’s a shame that you don’t have a website!
debbie smyth
I don’t even remember when or where I saw the meltdown chair for the first time. but I remember that I liked it on the first sight and that feeling hasn’t changed. since I’ve been in london I’ve been constantly confronted with tom price’s work. I’ve read about him on the internet, saw his new fleece chair at the from now to eternity exhibition at the mother biscuit building (isn’t that a cool name for a building?) in shoreditch and finally run across him at tent, a design event during london design week. I actually just took a picture of his cable tie meltdown chair and the guy at the stand was so kind to put away the label on the chair so I could make a proper picture. shortly after I went away I asked myself if this guy was tom price himself and I went back to find out. yeah, it was him. we had a little chat and he told me that barbara chandler, a famous design journalist, once said that she has never seen a design like his pp tube meltdown chair and that she likes it a lot. I guess these things are the moments when you realize that you are on the right track with what you do. congratulations tom - I want to see more!
happy tom
detail of one of his meltdown chairs
tom is drawing
meltdown chair - pp tube, 2008 (picture from tom price)
meltdown chair - cable tie, 2008
draw yourself
describe yourself in one word
draw your favourite product
I have been in manchester on saturday (uk has more cities to explore than just london) to be honest, I havent been very impressed by the city. just the fact that the city was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1996 and has been already rebuild is amazing. when I heard the story I thought it is just a joke, but it’s true. and you can’t find any traces. so, I was there, the sun was shining and I visited the urbis, an exhibition centre about city life and also one of manchester’s most recognised buildings. there was the best of manchester awards 2008, annual awards which are now in their second year celebrate innovation in three categories: art, music and fashion. I present you the work of jai redman. it’s a project which intended ‘to give commuters a few precious moments of peace and beauty in a city otherwise plagued by the incessant noise of advertising.’ jaj hasn’t won the award but I give him my credits.
‘trees breath - adverts suck’
last week I’ve been in a little gallery, called 1.1, close to bethnal green (the place where I live right now and the best area of london). I saw this work of vincenzo di maria. In the first moment I haven’t recognized that he just used 2 chairs. It’s still the simple things that are best.
vincenzo di maria
london design festival is over today. there is still a lot I want to show, even when I am missing a real highlight of the week. one of the things I’ve also visited is the tom dixon showroom in south kensington. unfortunatly I couldn’t make it to the book signing of ‘the interior world‘. I really wanted him to draw for me. besides there is a 70% friends sale at 5 cromwell palace upcoming friday and saturday for everybody who wants to spend his money on a tom dixon piece.
the interior world, the new book by tom dixon (in the back)
blow light on floor by tom dixon - the new collection
mirror ball on stand by tom dixon - the new collection
spin by tom dixon
cuts of the wingback chair by tom dixon
wingback chairs - process
the back of a unfinished wingback chair
some dancing at the kith-kin pa-ah ty last saturday in covent garden.
pa-ah ty
jochim mayr, derya inanici and marion fussi
- my company for the night
robert andriessen - mr. designguide.tv
rory dodd - one of the temporary hosts of the venue
pencil bench by boex is made of 1,625 pencils, each of which is individually sprung. you can remove and use them, should an idea occur to you while you’re sitting on it.
twins: the funny sam boex and the good looking will boex
something else than design.. a couple of days ago a friend took me to e pellicci in bethnal green, london. I found myself in a small cafe full of people and activity. a real greasy spoon caf’ with italian charm. It is owned by the pellicci family for over a century. mama pellicci is standing in the kitchen and prepares you a proper dish. if you go there don’t miss the chips. these are mama’s best. lovely nevio even remembered what I had to eat the last time. to sum up: e pellicci is the social institution of london and is on the right track to become even mine.
lukasz czarnecki, tony pellicci, nevio pellicci - polish-italian power
pellicci london - since 1900
the art deco interior
liver, bacon, onions, sweetcorn and some gravy - that’s what I like
definitely worth taking a look at, is the okaystudio exhibition at the aram gallery. okaystudio is a collective of individual designers and this is their first curated exhibition. they are coming from different countries and met while studying at the royal college of art. I guess their intention is to present work in a combined context to reach more attention. but what’s so likable about it? the fact that it still looked like a student exhibition because of the samples and models of the workprocess, which were hanging on the ceiling.
under the same roof, the title of the exhibition
when I went to the established & sons breakfast I had the chance to ask jaime hayon, a spanish designer, to draw for me. he studied industrial design and started his individual career in 2004, after working as a researcher in fabrica, benetton’s communication research center in Italy.
jaime was presenting his new book, works by the gestalten verlag, which is like an encyclopaedia of his versatile work. he worked for different companies, like bisazza, metalarte and lladro, and I guess he could work for more.
the main thing why I like what he designs is that he wants to add value to life by creating fun objects. like a little boy who thinks that drawing a rabbit on the livingroom wall would make the people smile. how else could you have the ability to ‘play’ with plain material but with marvellous forms which tend to be giant, sometime. and how else could you publish portraits where you are wearing a pink bunny costume? wanna see? photo by nienke klunder, photographer and jaime’s girlfriend.
jaime, while he is drawing
jaime’s selfdesigned shoes for camper
jaime’s book - jaime hayon works
jaime in a talk with lina from gestalten and minnia from established & sons
draw yourself
describe yourself in one word
he said that he is full of energy but sometimes like an old radio which plays the same ’songs’
draw your favourite product
arne jacobsen, stelton ashtray
tuesday evening, phillips de pury gallery, london:
rare table lamp by gino sarfatti, model no 594, c. 1962
large three-arm wall light by serge mouille, 1950s
conoid bench by george nakashima, 1985
exterior light by le corbusier, 1960
set of ten door handles with lock plates by walter gropius and adolf meyer, 1922
unique bed with pair of bedside tables by gio ponti, late 1950s
wall light by gio ponti, 1959
some of this designers aren’t alive anymore and there is nobody who updates a website of dead people. but I linked the designers with information on what they have done or with biographies. walter gropius is linked with an audio archive of the bbc from 1968. I think it’s worth listening to.
yesterday mornig my day started with the a breakfast at the new established & sons studio in north london. we just had some little problems to find the studio because it’s in an area which seems to be not discovered. anyways the studio is great, we got a tea and some fruit sticks and the important part, a warm welcome from minnie from established & sons. I’ve alreday seen the new collection of established & sons, design and manufacturing company, in milan at the design week earlier this year but I will show you my favourites and an some impressions of the showroom.
torch light by sylvain willenz
minnia from established & sons
the new studio + raw edges by shay alkalay + industrial facility by sam hecht
future system by amanda levete
the new studio + exhibited collection
konvex mirror by sebastian wrong
surface table by terence woodgate and john barnard + frame chair by wouter scheublin
the surface table is available in the sizez: 4 x 1.3m rectangular and 2 x 1.1m elliptical - the best table ever which has a thickness of just 2mm at the edge (five times thinner than its nearest equivalent)
tonight was the official opening of the london design festival at the southbank centre. a lot of veuve clicquot, a lot of people, 3 speeches and a bag. but why are there no goodie bags? promotional items from designers would be great.
jude kelly, artistic director, southbank centre
john sorrell, chairman of the london design festival
dezeen is everywhere
‘all things design’ - bag
yesterday I spend the day in brighton. what can I say? of course, london is great, but I am girl that needs some leisure time out of town. It’s good to see something new and it’s good to breath some fresh air. so we went to brighton, an idyllic town on the coast of south england. It even has a little bit southern france charm. but at the top of the list was the recommended dolphin derby. it’s a fairground booth where you try to let a little plastic dolphin ’swim’. 18 people can take part in a game. they sit next to each other and try to get balls rolling which make the dolphin move. lucky me took 2 little dolphins home - maybe a cheap victory but the fun time that I needed.
my new buisness cards arrived yesterday. just needed some new ones with my uk mobile number. I gave one of them to a friend and we replaced his awful van gogh print from ikea with the matandme picture which is taken by lutz caesar. now I am immortalised in a cool london apartment.
among all the upcoming design events (london design festival is coming soon) I decided to pop into the carpenters workshop gallery for some unique pieces. It was a private viewing of the work of ingrid donat (mother of one of the gallery owners) and vincent dubourg, 2 french artist who are sometimes even mentioned as designers. but how far can you go by describing furniture as design? I would describe both works as one of a kind furniture sculptures made of bronze - a delight to look at and free to use. these limited pieces upvalued the gallery but were unfortunatly often hidden from the strolling guests. vincent dubourg’s pieces are dynamic, a bit fragile while ingrid donat’s creations are massive. if I hadn’t already known it, I would have had the impression that donat’s furniture is made by a man and dubourg’s by a woman. that’s just my impression. so, merci beaucoup, c’était un plaisir.
ingrid donat
table basse anneaux
vincent dubourg
boite noire, 2008
the capital acquirer
vincent dubourg
napoléan à trotinette, 2007
I haven’t been to the thames river since I was 13 years old - it just never occured to me that I needed to go there when I was in london. but tonight I was invited at the design museum, which is on the south bank of the thames, for the opening of the designers in residence show. it’s an annual exhibition that forms part of the london design festival. talented new product and furniture designers who graduated within the last five years are invited to transform an area of the museum. so I found myself in the entrance hall of the museum where a lot fancy, designish lookalikes were hanging around and were enjoying the free drinks. I had some nice moments and these are some I am gonna share with you.. and I really liked to see the thames at night. again.
london bridge
the designer attitude
freddie yauner, designer and rose ethrington, dezeen editor
matthew falla + lea jagendorf - interactive wall, which combines access to information about key pieces from the museum’s pernament collection
cicada brooch, 2006
sleeping soundly in the jaws of a wolf, 2006
the first time I saw the work of kelly mccallum a couple of weeks ago, just by browsing through the internet. currently she is exhibiting at the selfridges wonderwall and when I got there on sunday it was the first time that i was glad to be in the department store. kelly creates sculptures and jewellery and is interested in the stories of how things age, how they decay or are preserved, are forgotten, covered in shrouds of grime, only to be found again and given new meanings by our own sentimentality. in simple words: she is adding value to minor things.
yesterday I popped out and went to the butt magazine party at the bistrotheque, east london. butt is a highclass homosexual magazine for and about ‘poofters’. (english people told me that this is the way you call our gay friends) which is published in amsterdam. I have a big sympathy for the magazine. I like the layout, the pink paper and especially the front pages. maybe the guys are gay but they are still man. and after having a look on the invitation with the text: ‘buy your own mug and drink as much beer as you possibly can’ I knew that I have to drop over. it was busy and sweatie and I just saw 3 girls, including myself, who lost their way.
almost the only picture in my livingroom in maastricht, netherlands:
butt cover - issue number 11 - autumn 2004
Curating and producing international shows is designersblock’s specialty. their current project are the selfridges window displays in london. 7 artists and designers were invited to create 7 unique window designs. I show you 5 of the 7.
[we]make
sorry for mirroring. lalala
