Crafts fashion for yourself and for your home

I like handmade decoration - it always shows personality and individuality of the interior. The same is with fashion - we cannot always make it with our hands, but artists' hands and imagination  that we have chosen speak of our tastes and give a hint  for our personality. That si why the craft trend in interior design so popular. I have found some great ideas by Marie Claire Idées - both, for your homes and for yourself:

Warm and cosy under our feet

It is time to think about adding more warmth and cosyness in our homes. Carpets and rugs are a simple way to achieve this while changing the whole atmosphere in the room.

Warp & Weft - Highlands

 Some beautiful new products -  Highlands collection above by  warpandweft.com is made using a silktweeding technique, which interweaves Indian mulberry silk with unbleached Himalayan wool and. below: 

Mexican designer Liliana Ovalle's abstract pattern La Lomita carpet for Nodus Rug is in wool and silk and is made in Nepal using handcrafted methods.

Paola Lenti - Spin

Cords, braids, knitted tubular fabrics, conceived by Paola Lenti and produced exclusively for the Brand, are loom woven, hand tufted or simply sewn, to create rugs and mats which are unique for their aesthetics, chromatic effect and functionality.

But, if you want something exotic and follow the very popular trend for hand-made designs and also the new love for felt, you may buy a shyrdak felt rug  - a type of felt invented by nomadic tribes 2,500 years ago to insulate and decorate yurts. They are usually hand-made in Central Asia, especially in Kyrgyzstan.

Talent 2009 at Designhuis

Designhuis Eindhoven presents its second edition of Talent with 175 objects and installations from the 2009 graduates of 30 european design institutes and universities.

A lot of talent and clever design solutions along with playful approach and fantasy. Enjoy some of the projects that I liked very much:

'Selfpowered lamp' (left),

designed by Allard from BoerHogeschool (

photo byLsa Klappe)

consists of 90% recycled material and is powered by muscle strength. By using weights one can see how much energy is needed to keep one lamp burning. One hour of light needs 4000 kilos, 4 kg will give you 6 seconds of light. Allard Boer efforts to make people conscious about there energy consumption. In this prototype he lets construction, technique and design coincide while the archetypal form of a lamp is maintained.

Copper cabinet, Designer David Derksen

Graduated Design Academy Eindhoven 2009

This fragile cabinet is intended to store small things that hold a great personal value. It's entirely made of copper foil with a thickness of 0.1 millimetre. The folds make it sturdy and give it a papery look. You can see that the cabinet needs to be handled gently and with care, the same applies to its content.

Wall lungs, Designer Myrthe Mandemakers

Graduated Sint Joost, 2009

(

photo designws.com)

Designers idea: Plants are the lungs of the house, these 'wall lungs' enhance the air quality and improve the acoustics. They are made from biological degradable felt that's been treated for dust mites. The plants grow on biological cotton that's been finished with a watertight natural rubber.

Bed with a collar or Cot for Adults?

 I just saw this new bed from Lago - and my first thought was: isn't that an attempt  to remind us early childhood when we all were feeling safe and cosy in our cots? Is the currant economic situation so frightening and we are so desperate to search reassuarance and hideaway from the everyday routine in our childhood memeories?
Even if it has to make us feel like hiding in a nest, as Products | DOMUS describes it,

"As cosy and comfortable as a nest, this bed is fitted with an original ring in soft foam that runs around the mattress and can be rolled and unrolled like the neck of a jumper. This element, fixed to the bed frame with a Velcro fixing, creates a visual and acoustic barrier that means you can relax and get away from the everyday routine. The ring can be set in an open, semi-closed and completely closed position."

 still I find it a too artificial way of using design as a problem-solver. A strange idea, but, who knows - it might be helpful. I am curious if this bed, named DOLCEVITA and designed by Nuša Jelenec / Lagostudio, is going to sell?Or - is it meant to be ironic? I doubt.

Interior Design Tools: The most practical soft partition

- it is not only beautiful, it is also a sound absorbing screen made from moulded fiber felt and, as you can see from the pictures - it can be used as comfortable pocket for your reading. Airflake modular system is built around the shape of a hexagon in a variety of designs and colours, which can be freely combined to create the screen. Moulded fiber felt panels in five colours and four patterns. It can be fixed to aluminium rails for mounting on walls or ceilings, or fixed directly to the wall as a sound absorbing decoration.
Available in red, green, brown, black or white it makes a great centerpiece, too.
Design by Stefan Borselius forAbstracta

source: Architonic
Textile, in all its forms is one of the basic tools of interior design, but the revival of felt is a prominent trend in the last couple of years.

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The Relief Chair and Fashioning Felt

I have been posting a lot about felt lately - felt is my personal discovery as a material for furniture and other unusual products such as jewelry or lighting, but The Relief Chair by Brooklyn-based Mickus Projects in addition to being visually impressive and very elegant is a great idea from technological point of view - digital fabrication is applied to craft a complete piece of furniture without the use of upholstery, foam, or toxic finishes. Instead, dense wool felt composes the seat and back, carved into gentle ridges. The Relief Chair is part of a collection called solid/surface/series, which includes several other pieces of furniture experimenting with the same material reportsDwell magazine
Relief Chair is featured in Fashioning Felt exhibition opened last week and running through September 7, 2009 at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum.

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