Colleen Ellington/ Lucy Alice Porter/ Sophie Adamson

Interiors UK 2012 showcased the work of this year’s New Design Britain Awards finalists with the winners in each design category being announced on the 23rd of January. Each winner in the four categories (furniture, furnishing accessories, surfaces and fabrics) were awarded a placement within the industry.

Although Colleen Ellington and Lucy Alice Porter didn’t take home first prize in their categories, we were really impressed with their work. Colleen, who graduated from Cleveland College of Art and Design, created some vibrant, luxe surface designs for interiors covered with decorated with animal and figurative motifs. Lucy Alice Porter’s series of owl and squirrel shaped wall decorations were also really eye-catching.

Heriot-Watt University – School of Textiles and Design graduate Sophie Adamson scooped up the top prize in the fabrics category for her Pouffe design. Drawing inspiration from bird feathers, Sophie created a wonderfully thick yarn which incorporated both hand and machine knitting techniques.

Rachel Hagger

Taking home first prize in the Surfaces category was Rachel Hagger who designed hand-printed wallpaper covered with an architectural motif. Drawing inspiration from Cavern Home interiors and Trove wallpapers, Rachel layers the different images to great a busy, bustling cityscape.

James Uren/ Roland Beaven

James Uren was lucky enough to take home both the people’s choice award and the award for best furniture design. James’ Luso Lounger is a modern reinterpretation of the classic Chaise Longue while his Dorso Stool is an investigation into different ways of joining wooden components together using a second material. Roland Beaven was awarded the prize in the furnishing accessories category for his Peaucellier Lamp.

Camilla Barnard

ARTS THREAD and Designersblock teamed up once again to bring you some of the best and brightest emerging design talents, this time at Interiors UK, Birmingham. From our Call for Entries, we selected six unique creatives from the realms of illustration, ceramics, product design and textiles.

University of Brighton 3D Materials Practice BA (Hons) graduate Camilla Barnard was there, displaying her three dimensional illustrations. Using wood, Camilla recreates everyday objects such as telephones, pencils and screwdrivers, all to surprisingly life-like effect.

Camilla explains: ‘I made the objects to trick my classmates. When they were looking for tools I would trick them into picking up the wrong ones. It will annoy them at first but I think it also makes them really appreciate the real thing once they have it.’

Catherine Frere-Smith

Catherine Frere-Smith also joined us to showcase her beautiful prints for interiors and fashion design. The Chelsea College of Art & design graduate also showed her lovely Old Farmhouse collection of hand embroidered fabric birds.

Sarahjane Harrison/Holly Wilson

We were pleased to see so many visitors at the Designersblock Design Village were enjoying sitting on Sarahjane Harrison’s Urbanisation chairs. The Liverpool Hope University Design BSc graduate printed the upholstery with photographs of Liverpool which she took during her investigation into how Chinese culture has affected the city.

If you visited The Local pub in the Design Village then you would have spotted University of Worcester Illustration BA (Hons) graduate Holly Wilson’s brilliant owl illustrations. The incredible amount of detail which goes into Holly’s illustration really impressed us and visitors.

Karin Soderquist/Katy Jennings

Camberwell College of Arts graduate Karin Soderquist had several of her 3D illustrations dotted around the Village while Royal College of Art
Ceramics & Glass MA graduate Katy Jennings had a display full of her ornamental Knitwear Birds. The birds are purposefully chipped during production in order to give each one its own individual ‘personality’.

Camilla Barnard
Catherine Frere-Smith
Sarahjane Harrison
Holly Wilson
Karin Soderquist
Katy Jennings

Birmingham City University, Tender

Birmingham City University presented their interpretations of Global Color Research and Mix Publications trends for Autumn/Winter 2012-13 at Interiors UK 2012. The students from the University’s Institute of Art and Design interpreted two up-coming trends: Ember and Tender.

The Tender trend draws reference from late 18th and early 19th century design. Georgian shades of blue and grey are given a contemporary twist by being mixed with contrasting pinks and azure and a touch of glitter.

Birmingham City University, Ember

Ember contained an autumnal palette of oranges, browns and reds. The trend drew inspiration from natural and manmade objects, fruits and foliage, volcanoes, derelict buildings and fire damage.

Helen Stevens/Lianne Mellor/Camila Prada

British retail adviser and television presenter Mary Portas teamed up with House of Fraser to find Britain’s next top homeware designers. The top entrants were exhibited at Interiors UK where the designers were given the chance to pitch their ideas to Mary Portas’ business partner, Peter Cross. ARTS THREAD select some of the best designs on show.

Helen Stevens of Surface Philia presented her beautiful collection of printed ceramics and textiles which drew inspiration from Portas’ own designs. Lianne Mellor showed some cute tea party sets which featured delightful watercolour depictions of British wildlife enjoying typical British pastimes. We also really liked Camila Prada’s bone china tableware which came shaped like adorable little creatures.

Emma Cowlam/Tara Willis

Emma Cowlam’s wallpaper was wonderfully illustrated with continual line drawings of women rushing around urban environments. Tara Willis presented some humorous illustrated handkerchiefs as a replacement for traditional greeting cards.

Helen Stevens
Lianne Mellor
Camila Prada
Emma Cowlam

House of Hackney

During our stay at Designersblock’s Design Village at Interiors UK we decided to check-in to their unique Designer Bed & Breakfasts.

Created by Donna Wilson, House of Hackney, Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan, these three unique interior spaces acted as sources of inspiration for interior designers, hoteliers or visitors thinking of sprucing up their own bedrooms.

House of Hackney covered the entire space with their luxury Dalston Rose collection. The floral collection draws inspiration from the quintessential English rose and traditional British home decor with a dark twist.

Donna Wilson

Donna Wilson brought the outdoors indoors with her Squirrel Tree Forest design. We especially loved her signature woolen creatures which inhabited the bed and bed-side cabinet and the playful foliage which covered the walls.

Morag Myerscough & Luke Morgan

Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan collaborated with one another to produce their vision for a contemporary bed & breakfast. The bold, graphic wall coverings were very eye-catching and we liked the intermittent pops of bright colour and typography.

House of Hackney
Donna Wilson
Morag Myerscough

Urbanisation, Sarahjane Harrison; 3D projects, Karin Soderquist

Design Village also includes all manner of marvellous delights, including B&B installations by Donna Wilson, House of Hackney and Morag Myserscough and Luke Morgan.

B&B Installations: Morag Myserscough and Luke Morgan; Donna Wilson; House of Hackney

Design Village by Designersblock at Interiors UK continues until Wednesday 25 2012.

Sian Zeng, 'Magnetic Wallpaper'

While some of you might have headed to the high street for your Christmas shopping last weekend, ARTS THREAD were scouting for one-of-a-kind handmade gifts at Cockpit Arts’ Christmas Open Studios. Now in it’s 25th year, the award winning Social Enterprise and ‘creative business incubator’ for designer makers opened its Holborn studio doors to the public for three days, and will be doing the same at the Deptford studios this weekend.

We found the quality of everything on show really impressive, with nothing below par, and some really original concepts across all crafts. There was a great variety of jewellery, fashion, homeware, textiles and lighting.

Our favourite discovery was the interactive magnetic wallpaper by Sian Zeng (above), which features magnetic paper characters that can be moved around an illustrated scene, as well as speech bubbles that can be written on to create a personalised, ever-changing narrative. The concept is based around the changeable nature of fairytales, in which things are not always as they seem, frogs become princes, and vice versa. A Central St Martin’s Textiles graduate, Sian creates unique interior products with strong visual narrative, and her wallpapers have been chosen as one of Heal’s Christmas Picks this year. Sian’s collection of stuffed toys, Christmas cards and cushions all feature her quirky illustrations.

Tania Clarke Hall

Another highlight was Tania Clarke Hall’s dynamic leather jewellery. Inspired by tribal jewellery, Japanese wabi sabi and ‘the beauty of geometric solutions’, Tania explores the potential of leather as a material in jewellery, by bending, weaving, slashing and manipulating vegetable tanned leather in a variety of rich colours.

Sena Gu

We also loved Sena Gu’s tableware featuring fruit and vegetables cast in porcelain. Her cauliflower range seemed to be attracting a lot of attention and we also liked the simplicity of the lemon squeezer. A Royal College of Arts graduate, Sena aims to inject humour and a sense of vibrancy into her work, pulling away from the stereotypes associated with traditional tableware.

Some other stand-out designers deserve a mention – tailor Justin Oh, ceramicists Yoyo Ceramics and Shan Annabelle Valla and Zoe Miller of Tangent Accessories with her beautiful lambswool accessories.

The Deptford Christmas Open Studios will run from 2-4 December at 18-22 Creekside, London, SE8 3DZ. Opening times are 11am- 9pm on Friday and 11am – 6pm on Saturday and Sunday.

For more information:

Cockpit Arts Website.
Sian Zeng
Tania Clarke Hall
Sena Gu

Hotel The Exchange

Eight students and alumni from the AMFI Amsterdam Fashion Institute have been given the unique opportunity to design the interiors of the conceptual Hotel The Exchange. Situated in a narrow alleyway running from Amsterdam’s Central Station through to Dam Square, the unique fashion hotel will open on the 3rd of December.

The visionaries behind The Exchange – Otto Nan and Suzanne Ozenaar – are no strangers to hospitality, with previous projects including the Lloyd Hotel and Cultural Embassy and the Llove Hotel in Tokyo. For The Exchange, the two came up with the concept of a ‘hotel with rooms dressed as models’ where each room is treated in the same way a designer would treat a human model.

Hotel The Exchange

The eight AMFI designers (Denise De Geijter, Malu Gehner, Paul Hanraets, Iris Kloppenburg, Juanita Koerts, Sofie Sleumer, Roos Soetekouw and Anne Wolters) worked closely with designer duo Ina-Matt to create their final designs. Inspiration for the interiors ranged from abandoned mattresses and cardboard boxes, denim jackets, Marie Antoinette and Frida Khalo.

AMFI on ARTS THREAD

For more information visit The Exchange website.

Rezwana Ahmed, Textiles

Public View is this year’s exciting Postgraduate Degree Show for the University of Wolverhampton.  Held at the diverse arts and exhibition centre in West Bromwich, The Public, it showcases the fresh, innovative and lively talent of the university’s Masters student’s.

The exhibition contains a wide variety of creative skills, covering Art and Design, Design for Advertising, Fine Art and PhD Research.

Rezwana Ahmed examines the beauty behind imperfections in her selection of textile pieces.

What inspires Rezwana? She likes to tell stories and recollect memories, and she achieves both in her patchwork quilts. ‘It’s my story’ is a favourite piece-images from different times, places and incidents in Rezwana’s life have been collated in order to represent the formation of her identity. Rezwana displays four quilts in total, each with a unique story and meaning to capture your attention.

Tolga Bolgac, Interior Design

Interior Design student Tolga Bogac displays MA project, Cyprus Dental Centre. The aim was to create a space where both patients and doctors feel more comfortable, so that they choose to return on a regular basis. Tolga advises: “This project was an enjoyable challenge due to the medical requirements.”

Laura Dicken, Illustration

Illustration student Laura Dicken has created a wonderfully intimate project focused around reportage photography. Her subject was her Grandma and the house she has lived in for the past 50 years. Laura’s project definitely achieves its aim of capturing the small subtle signs of a life lived, something that she explains is ‘incredibly intimate, yet at the same time universal.’

Sahdia Kauser, Fine Art

Dantes inferno is the theme for this thought provoking Fine Art project by designer Sahdia Kauser. The purpose of this project is to manipulate and reconstruct the everyday, to signify personal and universal experiences.

Inspired by the juxtaposition between reality and fantasy,’ Sahdia has explored the ability to form mental images, sensations and concepts through different senses and displayed the work in some incredibly intricate hanging pieces.

Simon Harris, CADRE PhD

Simon Harris CADRE PhD student showcases three paintings along the walkway to the third floor of The Public. Simon describes the paintings as an integral part of his PhD research.

‘The constructed realities within the paintings provide an examination of sensation, decadence and figurality questioning the limitations of conventional formalisms.’

They intend to encourage each viewer to discover their own ‘painterly moment.’

Public View is exhibiting at The Public, West Bromwich, B70 7PG until Sunday 9th October.

University of Wolverhampton Website.

Contact:
Art-design@wlv.ac.uk
www.wlv.ac.uk/artanddesign
rezwana@artlover.com
gypsy.aesthete@gmail.com
sijharris@hotmail.com

Mark van Gennip, 'Ink Storm'/ Magnhild Disington, 'The Modern Amulet' & 'Future Connections'

Over 30 of Europe’s most promising and forward-looking designers are being presented to the public at i Fabric. European Talent in the Audax Textielmuseum, Tilburg in the Netherlands.

Organised as part of the Tilburg Textiles event, the exhibition contains work by participating designers from Central Saint Martins, London, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp and the Design Academy, Eindhoven who specialise in fashion, interior textiles and product design.

Amongst the wonderful pieces on show is Mark van Gennip’s visually stunning textile collection entitled ‘Ink Storm’. The collection developed from Mark’s experimentation with spilling ink onto prints and actively interrupting the printing process to see what kind of unique patterns he could create. Another highlight is the work of Denmark based designer Magnhild Disington who has developed some intriguing designs including a fluffy USB and a furry, slipper-shaped telephone.

Natsai Chieza 'Design Fictions'/ Elaine Ng Yan Ling 'Techno Naturology'

We are pleased to see that CSM graduate Natsai Chieza is also part of the exhibition. We were wowed by her collection at Textile Futures earlier in the year and are excited to see her work reaching an international audience! Also representing the UK is Elaine Ng Yan Ling who is showing her ‘Techno Naturology’ project which investigates the function of ‘shape-memory’ materials in interior and architectural design.

i Fabric. European Talent runs from 24th September 2011 – 29th January 2012 at the Audax Textielmuseum, Tilburg, Goirkestraat 96, 5046 GN

For more information visit the Textielmuseum website.