London Design Festival
Left, Steel Coffee Table and magazine rack, Alex Bradley. Right, Picnicware for Wentworth, Tim Parsons (All on show at Britain Can (Still) Make It)
The London Design Festival kicks off this week, with a huge range of venues across the capital celebrating everything and anything design (until 27 September)
Things don’t really start to get going till next week when the London Design Embassy opens in a space specially designed by Suzanne Trocme at the V&A and 100% Design opens, but Jaime Hayon’s show-stopping giant chess set, parked like a vast space ship outside the National Gallery is already on view. It’s the festival’s centrepiece, and whether or not you think it’s just one huge gimmick, or a piece of beautifully conceived design, it’s fun and certainly an eye-catching way of giving the festival a healthy helping of publicity.
Among the raft of exhibitions worth checking out this week is Britain Can (Still) Make It at Liberty curated by David Nicholls, design editor of the Telegraph Magazine. Inspired by the 1946 exhibition of the same name, the idea is to show that Britain is still at the top of the design class by featuring both traditional and completely new products. So John Smedley and Lloyd Loom products will be shown alongside a collection by relative newcomers People Will Always Need Plates and Squint’s anglepoise lights covered in Timorous Beastie fabric. Other shows already on this week include Viaduct’s New Modernists, featuring furniture by designers such as Jasper Morrison, Simon Pengelly and Maarten Van Severen, and Into the Woods, an exhibition of Scandanavian glass from the Iittala archive at Chelsea space.
Check out Crafts magazine’s own guide to the London Design Festival here.
www.londondesignfestival.com
