A Point Of Design: Vogue Light Up Bond Street

To much excitement and anticipation, today sees the launch of Vogue magazine’s Street Lights initiative: a new artistic endeavour taking over London’s second most-iconic shopping street, Bond Street. The brainchild of Vogue’s Jewellery Editor, Carol Woolton - in collaboration with Bond Street Association - Street Lights is an artistic collaboration between the street’s renowned fine jewellers, The Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins.

Collaborating with 50 2nd and 3rd year students from The Royal College of Art  and Central Saint Martins(studying a mixture of Goldsmith, Silversmith, Metalwork and jewellery courses), the brief was to create conceptual and innovative approaches for the display of jewellery within the windows of the fine jewellers of Bond Street. Iconic brands such as: Asprey, Cartier, Chanel, Mappin + Webb, Van Cleef + Arpels and Tiffany +Co are all taking part, in addition to many more.

From simply removing the usual constraints of traditional jewellery displays such as boring busts and generally black Perspex plinths, the results are both intriguing and unexpected, showing exquisite luxury items in a whole new light.

“It’s a fantastic artistic collaboration of some of the world’s most beautiful jewels being showcased in extraordinary, fresh and innovative ways, provoking us to think about the role of jewellery in our cultural life. The students are bringing wit, originality and imagination to the street in a way that London does better than anywhere else in the world. The idea was born out of my time as a judge at the Royal College of Art each year, by the displays the students created for their work and the manner in which they dealt with scale and environment.” comments Carol Woolton.

Street Lights runs from 10-15 May inclusive and is a celebration of the excellence of the capitals jewellery courses, drawing attention to the fact that more creative jewellery design comes out of London than anywhere else.

A Point Of Design: Saxon Leather

Scroll Chair and Ottoman in Vele Red

A massive fan of the chesterfield suite, I always make it my business to sniff out a good replica or modern alternative, where a sexy vintage chesterfield or chaise longue isn’t available. A brand I’ve recently discovered who certainly know they’re way around a piece of leather are Saxon Leather, who offer a striking range of high quality classic suites in a wide array of colours. With each piece created within their factory in Bolton, all production is UK based, including their bespoke service, offering customers the opportunity to create any chair they so desire.

A Point Of Design: John Makepeace

Imagery throughout courtesy of Watershed PR

An exhibition that has been high on my agenda of things to go and see this spring is the eagerly anticipated John Makepeace’s Enriching the Language of Furniture, currently showing at Somerset House; where an array of 25 privately and publicly collected works will be displayed together for the first time.

Celebrating Makepeace's half century at the forefront of British design alongside his international renown for revolutionising the way we view furniture –  encouraging us to see and eventually appreciate it as a form of contemporary art. Enriching the Language of Furniture showcases the famous ‘Mitre’ chair created in celebration of HM the Queen and Prince Philip’s Silver Wedding Anniversary and ‘Ripple’; a chest carved with wave forms penetrating the surface of the oak, from a tree planted in 1740 and harvested in 1980.

Respectfully known as the father of British furniture design, Makepeace's design aesthetic and unique manufacturing processes represent a marriage of classic and modern, embodying workmanship of the highest standard whilst striving for and championing sustainability.

Taking his Inspiration for cutting-edge furniture design from Danish pioneers working at the time of his emergence in the ‘50s, a young Makepeace achieved national acclaim by creating a series of retail products for Heals and the Centenary Dining Room for Liberty’s. By the '70s Makepeace had become a founding member if the Crafts Council and went on to become somewhat of a household name for setting up the now infamous Parnham College.

Better known in his formative years for addressing some of forestry’s most pressing economic concerns, Makepeace explored the environmental potential, bringing together foresters, chemists, material scientists, structural engineers and designers to research and develop sustainable new technologies and building systems.

Most recently, Makepeace became an OBE in 1988 for services to furniture design, received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Furniture Society (of America) in 2002 and was recently nominated for the Prince Philip Designers Prize 2010 where he received a Special Commendation.

Makepeace says: “In a world where so much attention is given to the short-term and superficial, our relationship with craftsmanship is more important than ever. Beautifully made and designed pieces that will endure and become heirlooms are a necessary antidote to the virtual reality that now permeates the culture.”

A Point Of Design: Sarah Bonallo

Image courtesy of Sarah Bonallo

A few weeks ago I was delighted to discover the work of British furniture designer Sarah Bonallo, who has created a range of three summer chairs all with heaps of nautical appeal, breathing a new lease of life into vintage pieces. My favourite of the three is the Deauville; a delight of sky blue and white stripes juxtaposed with jolly polka-dots reminiscent of weekends at the seaside. Taking a dowdy beech framed Parker Knoll winged armchair, Bonallo has worked her magic using original cotton ticking picked up on her travels in Brittany and Normandy.

Embracing the importance of creating a piece of art in a time-honoured fashion, with the greatest respect for tradition, Bonallo’s work is an homage to the craftsmen and artisans of another time, paying her respects with original materials and traditional work practices. Eschewing modern methods and materials, each piece is created by hand, from the loving restoration work and the hand-stitched upholstery, to the springs and recycled animal haïr stuffing.
The Deauville chair is priced at £1,550.

A Point Of Design: Mustafá table

A Spanish design company I’ve written about on many occasions, Sanserif Creatius last month launched the ingenious Mustafá table. Inspired by Arabian art, the Mustafá is a versatile M-shaped table that stays true to the Sanserif Creatius philosophy of bringing groundbreaking designs created with sustainable industrial materials into social environments. Honing the environmental and social values underpinning Sanserif Creatius’ designs, the Mustafá table is part of the exclusive collection created from corrugated cardboard presented at the latest edition of Habitat Valencia Fair.

Ana Yago; a designer for Sanserif Creatius says: “We are keenly aware that users are looking for added values, furniture and products with soul, that transmit cultural, social and environmental values”. Yago also underscored the need to recover and/or add industrial materials to the repertoire used for the home and office, given that “it is well demonstrated that they are incredibly multifunctional with a range of features well above more conventional materials.”

A Point of Design: Somerville Scott

Image courtesy of Sarah Bowen PR

In the autumn of last year I worked on a design feature and came across the work of the exceedingly talented furniture designer Somerville Scott and one product in particular, her Sloop Chair. Both designed and constructed in England, this unique club chair features slooped lounge arms and what looks to be a fabulously comfortable feather wrapped seat cushion (H 850 x W 700 x D 760). The Sloop chair is shown here in a regal purple mohair with brass studs and solid American black walnut legs, ebonised and lacquered to a chocolate gloss finish. Other finishes and sizes are available upon request.

Prices start at £2,160 plus costs for approximately five metres of fabric.

A Point Of Design: The RCA and Crown collaborate

What do you get when you combine a paint manufacturing company and one of London’s most prestigious art universities? You’ve guessed it - furniture!

Two stunning trompe l'oeil-inspired chairs are the latest innovative additions to emerge from Crown Paints 2011 collaboration with the Royal College of Art which challenges its students to ‘up-cycle’ furniture, adding a new lease of life with a lick of paint. The aforementioned chairs join other products created through this unique collaboration: a retro psychedelic sideboard and a multi-functional, hanging chair available from Graham and Green later this month.

The distinctive chairs were designed by menswear student, Emily-Jane Murray, who was inspired by the 60’s concept of ‘Keeping Up with the Joneses’. Murray recreated the effects of quilting, weaving and padding to enhance the design with paint, transforming the furniture into something entirely unique – great for customising a living space. Made in conjunction with paint-specialist, Tabby Riley - who brought the up-cycled furniture designs to life using a range of Crown primers and undercoats plus Crown’s paints for wood and metal - it really is amazing what you can do with old furniture and an old can of paint in this modern day of austerity.

A Point Of Design: Fotis Evans

Image courtesy of Fotis Evans

Having graduated from a BA in Furniture and Product Design just last year, Fotis Evans is a great design talent to keep an eye out for in 2011. Having worked with none other than Somerset House back in 2009/10, Fotis designed the Somerset House Book Stall System, which is a clever multifunctional book display and storage solution, which fulfils the needs of the small space comprising Somerset House’s newest Bookshop.

Borrowing elements from book flea market displays, the Book Stall System is a combination of three objects, a table and two bookshelves. The bookshelves are made from ash and are lightweight, which makes the crates easy to be transported and transformed into several functional storage and display solutions. The crate bookshelves are routed and finger joined in a way to create square corners inside the bookcases.

With an underlying concern for the future sustainability of design in what is termed as the product’s afterlife, Fotis is continually searching for solutions: “It is very important when we design products to think of their afterlife. One way of course is to make them easy to be recycled, but for me this is not enough. The factories that the recycled products are going to end up in, will consume even more energy in order to create reusable material sources. This means that we don't just have one stage that a product is in a factory but two. For that reason all my product are created using interesting geometries and forms to create afterlife product functions.”

A Point of Design: Jaeger

Image courtesy of Jaeger

Whilst they are from the AW10 collection, and I should probably have had the foresight to write about them earlier, Jaeger's Linden shoes are a work of beauty. I love the rich combination of navy blue crushed velvet juxtaposed with a gold spike stiletto, and I love the ankle strap only exposing the outer side of the foot – tres sexy!

A Point Of Design: Dividing Space with Typography

Valencia based design company Sanserif Creatius have introduced a decorative modular system designed to be used as shelving or to divide spaces within a home or business environment. COMA, whose name is taken from comma (the punctuation mark), is made of two modules combinable in different positions through the use of a metallic structure covered in wood panelling. The main aim is to “reorganise spaces through a graphic play that reconverts a separating wall into an ethereal and multifunctional element”.

COMA helps create different spaces using graphic recourses borrowed from the alphabet. Similar to the way in which punctuation marks indicate different parts of a sentence and text structure, COMA organises spaces without physically separating them. Furthermore, its modular structure enables it to act as a simple arrangement of space whilst transforming itself into shelves, a display unit or a container – among many other possibilities.

With the piece anchored to the wall, “It is akin to a branch emerging from the bricks and cement, bringing light and depth into any space. COMA sets in place an evocative visual game with a lightweight volume, replacing the concept of the dividing wall with a structural element added into the construction”.

A Point Of Design: The Horrice Chair

Image courtesy of COAL design

A couple of week’s back I found the Horrice Chair featured in Stylist Magazine and simply had to find out more. As a lover of yellow all my life, I can safely say that it’s rare to see many products available in the UK in such a spectacular hue, let alone furniture made and produced in Sheffield, with all of the fabric sourced from within Yorkshire! I think I’m in love and at a price of £611.74, I think it’s a bargain.