out and about :: platform & additions 2015

As promised, here is part two of my Clerkenwell Design Week post, following last week’s round-up of the Design Factory. Before I get into the gems I spotted at Platform and Additions, I must big-up the Invisible Store of Happiness (above) team. It was incredibly inspiring working alongside Sebastian Cox, Laura Ellen Bacon and AHEC to write a series of four essays about this project and wonderful to see the finished piece in-situ.

Platform is a showcase of new design talent at the House of Detention, a subterranean former Victorian prison and Additions is the space for small home accessories at the Crypt on the Green, the brick-walled crypt underneath Clerkenwell’s St James’ Church – two of my favourite parts of the festival and always a good space to find emerging designers. Here are a few of the things that caught my eye…

From top to bottom, left to right:

• I spotted Gemma Kay Waggett‘s quilted textiles almost as soon as I walked into Additions and was immediately drawn by their complex patterns and understated palettes. What I did not know at the time is that Gemma is also the brains behind Nothing But Navy, a shop that, as the name suggests, only sells things that are navy blue.
• Amy Whitworth (the Boost designer behind Qubis) has moved into furniture – and I love this little orange-legged stool.
• The Naive chair by etc.etc. has been stripped down to the bare minimum, with none of the fun removed – each piece comes in a range of bright colours that can be mixed and matched. This all-yellow version is perfect for me.
• I first met Zoe Tynan-Campbell of Stumped Studio at New Designers many moons ago and have been watching her career flourish since she made the leap to becoming a full time designer more recently. It was so lovely to see all her work in one place in the depths of Platform.
• I am a big fan of Billy Lloyd‘s ceramics. This collection of mugs was being shown as part of a curation by Charlotte Abrahams called This Is Craft, alongside work by Gemma Kay Waggett and Joe Hartley.
• There is a real trend about at the moment for embracing the imperfections of natural materials, such as ‘waney edges,’ – the wobbly outside section of wood that goes right up to the bark, which is normally trimmed off to create consistent straight planks. A lot of the work that embraces these foibles is very ernest – and beautiful and well considered with it. What I love about Richard Hardy‘s collection though, is its sense of fun. It would sit very comfortably in a normal family home, and if we’re going to change the way normal people consume wood, that’s right where it needs to sit.
• I got spoilt rotten at this year’s CDW including being treated to a meal at Skandium to celebrate Klaus Haapaniemi’s new collection for Iittala. We had a Scandinavian seven-course taster menu made by the Cambridge Cookery School that was so good, I completely forgot to snap the right plates – sorry Klaus!
• I interviewed Ambrose Vevers in the run-up to the show, but we hadn’t actually met in person, so it was great to put a face to the name and see his furniture in person.
• Camille Walala‘s colourful pictures brighten up my Instagram feed – I’ve been a fan from afar for a while, so it put a great big smile on my face to walk around a corner and smack bang into the Walala Dreams Come True Building!
• I love Lunarium’s celestially-inspired ceramics – the brain-child of sculptor, painter and recent RCA graduate Isobel Church
• This is the debut collection from N and N Wares and I’m a big fan already. This one stopped me in my tracks – beautiful.
• I love Matt Pugh and have one of his little birds sitting on my mantlepiece at home. These candlestick holders come in a set of five and I think they work just as well without a candle as abstract forms adding a pop of colour.
• Alicja Patanowska was featured in the first issue of Fiera Magazine and won the 2015 confessions of a design geek bursary early this year – she has been going great guns since. Of course, I can’t take credit for that, but it still made me very proud to see her exhibiting at CDW and May Design Series simultaneously!
• Hjem (Home in Danish) was another new launch at Additions – the homeware and paper goods brand is based in the Alps and run by Emma Richmond
• And finally, it was an absolute privilege to interview Harriet Wallace-Jones and Emma Sewell, founders of woven textile design studio Wallace Sewell. I have admired their work since their first moquette for Transport for London, and they didn’t disappoint in real life.

Further reading for the especially geeky:

• out and about :: stockholm
• out and about :: twelve at stockholm furniture fair 2015
• out and about :: ambiente frankfurt
• out and about :: greenhouse, sff15