A visit to Craft Central is always rewarded with something special and this year’s exhibition for Clerkenwell Design Week was no exception. I touched on this in my May Design Review, but didn’t have the space to do it justice, so wanted to return for a more in-depth post on the blog.
There were three parts to the exhibition and Lotta Cole‘s Streaming Peak knife blocks (top) caught my eye as soon as I walked in the door. Lotte says: “My family comes from a place in Sweden where my great great grandfather set up a farm with a forest three hundred years ago. My father Lars-Ake now manages the forest, and has taught me everything I know about working with wood since I was a child.” This product is inspired by the streams running through Swedish mountains and is available in an on-trend range of neons, and bespoke colours.
A second area was called Design to Serve and included products on the theme of food presentation, preparation and consumption from independent designers. Clockwise from top left in the middle section above, I loved Design K‘s Tea for One Table in a new finish for CDW, Owen Wall‘s restaurant tableware, much of which was developed for the Clove Club in Shoreditch Town Hall, Jo Davies‘ wheel thrown pots with hand pulled handles, and Ying Chang‘s Sketch Objects, an experiment in folding, layering and moulding paper.
And finally, Nahoko Kojima‘s incredible Cloud Leopard, cut painstakingly by hand, over a period of five months, from a single-sheet of paper. This one really has to be seen to be believed.
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- review :: london design in may
- out and about :: design exquis
- out and about :: house of detention, cdw2013
- out and about :: farmiloe building, cdw 2013
