Clerkenwell Design Week 2017 – Design Highlights

Between 24-26th May London’s Clerkenwell area hosted its annual design week, a three-day architecture and design festival in the heart of the cities’ oldest artisan neighbourhood. The historic Clerkenwell area of London plays host to more creative businesses per square mile than anywhere else in the city. What better place to hold a festival celebrating the design and interiors worlds and bringing that creativity to life in the form of Clerkenwell Design Week (CDW)?

Now in its eighth year, the exhibition spaces and numerous showrooms, talks and gateway installations, make Clerkenwell Design Week one of the capital’s largest design gatherings. This year, the Edelweiss Pianos team dropped in for a dose of design inspiration and (taking advantage of the glorious sunny weather), we headed out to take a look at the latest trends in the interiors industry.

Here are a few of our highlights from the new extended show.

Strolling under the majestic St John’s Arch, we started our visit at Additions – CDW’s curated collection of home accessories brands – were struck by the graphic fabric design from Beatrice Larkin. Beatrice established her own label with a desire to create design-led textiles for the home. Her woven fabrics are characterised by inky line drawings and broken geometrics, using a pared down palette to complement the bold graphics. This softer approach to the masculine look that is proving so popular in interiors at the moment really appealed to us, as did their making process. All the textiles in the collection are designed and sample in their London studio and woven from the finest quality Lancashire merino wool. We loved the versatility of the monochrome palette against the trend-chasing millennial pink and green, and could just see one of the beautiful throws thrown over an armchair alongside one of our self-play pianos.

Crossing the square, we made our way to the Detail exhibition at The Crypt of St John. Here, the unique space and detailed architecture of the catacombs combined seamlessly with the intricacy of Michael Northcroft’s furniture pieces, bringing their new Serafina collection to life, with live demonstrations of the amazing wood carving and finishing techniques that go into each piece of their furniture. Michael Northcroft are luxury British designers and manufacturers with exclusive finishes, luxurious details and expert manufacturing techniques at the core of their philosophy.

Other notable designs came from the British Collection, housed in another cool church undercroft, this time at St James’ on Clerkenwell Close. New to CDW last year, this space is designed to celebrate the work of great home-grown talent and here, there also seemed to be a focus on use of natural materials, with feature woodgrain forming a major trend throughout CDW this year. This was a trend highlighted by modern bespoke furniture makers Lozi. Making everything from their workshop in Hackney, East London, what we loved about them was the way that every piece was fully customisable and made to match their client’s individual needs – something we take great pride in ourselves.

We particularly appreciated their unique combination of digital manufacturing and traditional woodworking methods. The marriage of technology and craftsmanship can produce such elegant designs, full of personality that will fit seamlessly into any contemporary home.

Lastly, we were struck by the custom methods of basketry and weaving with contemporary design from lighting designer Louise Tucker. Located at the Design Fields, a pop-up location in Spa Fields, showcasing a collection of modern contemporary lighting, furniture, and product design, her pieces combine traditional skills in high-end quality, pioneering their sustainability and bringing these skills to light in a modern application. Inspired by traditional weaving techniques and organic forms, the PREN lighting range is woven out of sustainably sourced specialist maple wood. The design is both a sculptural object and delicate light feature, and each piece is unique and woven by hand.