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Review of Maison&Objet September ’08 – Part 1: Colors and Materials
Reviews
By Le Vin Chin
There was so much going on at Maison&Objet last month that we’re going to break our report up into two parts. Part 1 will focus on the colors on display and some interesting innovative uses of materials, while Part 2 will be all about design, as well as two specific surfaces – chrome/stainless steel and glass/crystal – which dominated the show. Good news for Swarovski!
On the whole, the show was busy: no signs of any world-wide economic slump here. The new Musées section of the show (featuring everything related to art reproductions, gifts, prints, ties, knick-knacks, sculptures, mugs, jewelry, magnets, pens …) also highlighted how the design business is expanding the scope of commercial art.
Marvellous Materials
“Ethic chic”, as opposed to “ethnic chic”, was the order of the day, with lots of linen and other “ethical” fabrics seen. Aside from that …
Paper: Céline Wright’s Hémisphère lamps are made of thousands of individually hand-glued pieces of shoji paper and can be commissioned for size (pictured are lamps of 80 cm and 74 cm diameter).
Transparent plastic: Lunatic Construction’s cool, yet comforting furniture is built from modular building blocks – LunaBlocks – which are designed to be reminiscent of “a basic object [the designers] had known as children”.
Bottle caps and other recycled sheet metal: as used by the designers behind Galèrie 3A.
Felt: It was nice to see how HAY’s collection has evolved since I last caught up with them at last year’s Design Annual. Fascinatingly, the Nobody chairs I admired then have spawned children: the Nobody Kids range, all made of felt and recycled polyester.
Porcelain: On one of the many stop-overs on her busy shows schedule (we’d last met her at Tendence ‘08 in Frankfurt), Alexa Lixfeld was also at Maison&Objet, presenting her new Kubus line: porcelain made to order and customizable for color and size. Due to the way the walls flop during baking, each piece is unique.
Yee-Ling Wan’s Jewel lamp at Neweba.
Colors
Rebecca Felcey’s furniture designs for Portobello are wonderful, but I loved her colors even more. Look out for more on Rebecca Felcey on XYMARA.com!
This year’s new colors for the garden, by Fermob.
One of Fermob’s three new colors for this year’s palette: Peony Pink (Rose Pivoine). Look out for more on Fermob on XYMARA.com!
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 The colors at Linum seem to indicate a tendency towards cloudier pastels with bright flashes of hot pink, rich cyan and lime green. |
The colors at Puylaert Home Basics.
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 Lanerossi proposes colors for well-being with their “Chromotherapy” concept. |
Color combinations at Kostka.
Belgian glass designer Anna Torfs’ work is all handmade in Prague. And her use of glass leads us into the crystal and glass section of our review, coming next week!