Design Event at TENT 2012

Phew… I’m now back from five days at the London Design Festival, where I had a great time.
I was there with a number of neighbour designers from here in the North-East. We were all under the banner of ‘Design Event’ and had a stand in the ‘Tent’ part of the festival.
Tent takes place in a huge former brewery in Brick Lane, which is incredibly lively at the best of times, so not only was the festival fun, so was going out for lunch!
Karen, who, with her team, Kala and Olivia, organised us all and did a great job – we put on a very professional front.

I guess we must have spoken to hundreds of people who came and asked us questions about all the products we were showing (I was showing my table place settings and my shelves). The big hope was that some major buyer would come by and place a huge order…
I was fortunate to have at least a few serious enquiries and orders; and who knows what might happen down the line?

Many people were drawn to our stand by the incredible bubble-vase which was being promoted by the lads from Psalt. They are very nice lads and very inventive, and I really hope the bubble-vase takes off.
It’s one of those things that could just take the public imagination – and suddenly you’ll be seeing it everywhere.

I managed to make a couple of festival parties too. At one of them I was introduced to Palinka, a Hungarian version of Schnapps.

Sadly, there weren’t many products in the festival that fired my imagination, which surprised me. I think that, in this recession, even new designers are playing it safe, and there was a distinct retro feel about a lot of products. I did like one item though – a sort of jigsaw-style paving, which could be customized.

All in all, being in London at such an exciting time was a lovely experience.

Links

• Balancing Fishbowl by Psalt Design (naskin.typepad.com)
• Design Event

Ink’d in with Lamy

It’s strange how things work out.  I’ve been experimenting with using pen and ink on my porcelain table place-names collection when I just found the perfect pen, made by the German firm Lamy.

I’ve always loved the feel of a fountain pen, and the way the nib smoothed over the porcelain surface was quite exciting (well, it was to me).  Luckily, the pen uses an ink that is washable so that anyone using the table-place names can use them over and over and over….

Anyway, I wrote to Lamy in a spirit of curiosity to see what their thoughts were; and I was amazed to get a response saying they would put my suggestion through a process of ‘testing’ if I sent them a sample of my work. Talk about German precision…

Even more interestingly, they then sent me back a report, which confirmed what I’d thought – their pen loves porcelain. The product development manager was very complimentary.

I never expected that kind of in-depth response…