ICFF: Saturday Highlights
You’ll have to excuse the light posting for today, as I’m heading back to ICFF momentarily. Before I do, though, I wanted to share some of the highlights of my filled trip on Saturday. Josh had warned me there would be a lot of “garbage” at the Javits Center (and indeed, there is) but I guess you can chalk my kid-in-a-candy store excitement up to first-timer enthusiasm. After the jump is a just a snippet of some of my favorite things from Saturday’s field trip, and I’ll be back later this evening and tomorrow with a veritable boatload of photos and stories.
If there’s someone there you think I should check out, hit me up on my Blackberry and I’ll swing by.
Black&Blum have some ingenious wall-mounted magazine racks they’ve entitled “Ring Ring”: installed with two screws, it is extendable by just inserting another one of the rings for a rack that is as long or short as you want. Each piece will be priced out around $22 and from what I understand, can hold a considerable about of weight.
Sitting down on these indoor and outdoor Sling-Seats by Anti-Quaint at the beginning of the day was a huge mistake. Part of the British portion of the show this year, these loungers envelop your body in softness causing instant relaxation and lethargy. The indoor version will be available in fabric or leather and the outdoor version packs up into a portable bag, making it perfect to cart with you wherever you’d like to nap.
Like, say, the beach. Or your office.
Porter International and Claystation are running a competition called “My-Bag” right now, which will culminate in the production of a Global Tote Bag. We were invited to draw the contents of our bags (not to scale, and not the most artistic, that’s for sure) and from all of the entries, one will be chosen to go into production. Not necessarily my style of bag, but the enthusiasm around the booth was palpable.
We had a great conversation with Laurie Beckerman about her new pieces, the Tete-a-Tete Rocker and her Filing Tree, which I adore. It takes the function and storage capabilities of a classic file storage system and turns it into a piece of art. I’d love to see this in an actual living space — I think all the open compartments and striking composition would make it a really eye-catching piece.
At the Designboom Mart, we met Yosuke Watanabe, and his Packed Lamp: a flat-pack limited edition lampshade that easily assembles with zip-ties. Flat-packing has been a huge trend all over the show this year, as it has been commercially for quite a while now, but it’s really interesting to see such new, fresh takes on it.
I love, love, love the CI Desk by CIO at the Pure Austrian Design platform. There’s so much storage in this super-compact and portable little gem that you could probably hide a small child inside of it.
Vifah‘s drainable deck flooring is crafted from sustainable teak and eucalyptus forests, is completely customizable and reusable, and makes that fantastically girlie clicky-clicky-click sound when you walk on it in heels.
Aaron Foster uses vintage license plates to create incredible installations backed by wood, stainless steel and leather. We’ll overlook the fact that by the time I talked to him I was all kinds of delirious and visually overloaded and just say that these pieces look even hotter in person.
Back to the show! If there’s someone there you think I should check out, hit me up on my Blackberry and I’ll swing by.
