I visited Designblok, Prague for the first time this year and one of the highlights was Openstudio. As part of Designblok’s ethos of hosting the festival within buildings normally closed to the public, it was held within Dum U Minuty (The house “at the minute”) on Prague Old Town Square, a beautiful example of high-Renaissance architecture. (Above: Super Light Freestyle by Fehling & Peiz.)
I loved the delicate yet somehow defiant aesthetic of a series of ceramic bowls called The Blast by Adam Železnýa within The Diploma Selection, a showcase of the best graduates from fashion and product design courses across Europe’s universities and art academies.
This short but mesmerising film (above) shows how they’re made – a process the designer describes as “a punk analogy to an industrial porcelain production.”
Another Diploma Selection project was the result of a collaboration between German designer Laura Jungmann and glassmaker Cornelius Réer, reforming existing mass-produced glasswares into sculptural items using traditional glassblowing techniques.
Yet more glassware, but we were in The Czech Republic – I loved the refined lines of this collection by Kristyna Petrova.
I’m told I walked right past a white version of this light, so it might be the combination of natural wood and copper that appealed to me, but new designer Petr Hak is definitely doing something right.
Michael Tomalik‘s duvet-upholstered chair complete with bookshelves and storage for anything else you might want to hand appealed to the bookworm in me – I long for lazy Sundays curled up with a good book in here!
The candy colours of these vases by Romana Vyhnankova of Studio Muck caught my eye – and I like the grid system for keeping stems in their place.
Designblok Talent Card is a long-term project supporting students from Czech Universities. Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (AAAD) student Barbara Pribylova won the card for her Lollykov floor lamp developed for family homes.
The little room occupied by Drzmiskova Ceramics was filled, not only with gorgeous products, but also a cloud of scent, making for a completely immersive experience.
Product designer Klára Šumová and graphic designer Dirk Wright created this range of ‘tables for plants’ for Croatian design brand Oaza to bring calm into the home.
With the strapline, ‘We tell stories in glass,’ Dechem Studio is Michaela Tomišková and Jakub Janďourek. Their combinations of materials and forms were breathtaking – one of my favourite finds of the whole festival.
And last but not least, these gorgeous handblown glass pendants were by Jan Plechac and Henry Wieglus.
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- out and about :: 100{ff546b69e23b1524d799f96c6ba7a638e1f677053b0a2a1568b05315fd5f8fc7} norway, LDF14
- out and about :: home london, LDF14
- out and about :: tent london, LDF14
- out and about :: guide to the london design festival 2014
