Tent London: Part Three

Hot on the heels of my last post, here are the rest of my picks from Tent London ...

Tamasyn Gambell has designed a series stunning graphic interior fabrics that have a vintage and art-deco feel to them. She has teamed up with with Førest London, who import mid-century Scandinavian furniture, to re-upholster some key pieces of furniture with her fabrics. For Tent London, Tamasyn  was commissioned by Ercol to create a bespoke contemporary fabric for the iconic 203 Windsor armchair. Needless to say it was a much admired piece of the exhibition.

I had to do a double take when I saw 'George' on an exhibitors stand. George, for those who don't know, is a bit of a favourite in our household. He is a rather loveable children's book character from the book 'Oh No, George' by Chris Haughton. I know it's probably rather shallow to judge a book by its cover, but when I bought this book some time ago for Arthur that is just what I did. The illustrations use such a great colour palette and that sold it to me. Of course, the story is great too and it is one of Arthurs all time favourite bedtime reads. If you're looking to buy a great kids book, you can't go wrong with this. Anyway... so there was George at Tent, amongst some rather stunning rugs. It turned out that Chris Haughton is also a rug designer too. 

Before he became involved in books Chris was active in fair trade and has been a supporter and designer for the fair trade company People Tree for many years. In 2010 he took 8 months off to to re-connect to fair trade and find ways his design could work more directly with the fair trade groups in Nepal. Images of his rug designs became popular on the web and were featured in many blogs. Designers were emailing to ask if they could design their own rugs and buyers were emailing to ask if they could buy them. Node was set up to help facilitate this. Node works with some of today's leading designers and illustrators, converting their images into the highest quality hand-made fair trade carpets. 

One of the highlights at Tent was 100% Norway: a showcase of the countries best contemporary design. As a huge fan of Scandinavian design, it's always an exhibition I'm keen to see. There were several pieces that more than appealed to me this year, but these little wooden birds by Lars Beller Fjetland for Italian company Discipline won me over. Each one is made from old table or chair leg. Now that really is taking recycled products to an altogether more stylish level, don't you agree?