Seeing the Moroso showroom was one of the highlights of New York Design Week. Patrizia Moroso found Kim Beck's book, "A Field Guide to Weeds," and loved the graphic imagery. She invited the artist to create an installation to go along with Moroso's outdoor furniture collection. A forest of acrylic trees and vinyl vines covered everything - I love Patrizia's vision, stunning as always.
Another nice exhibit among the student booths was RISD's Immaterialize. The pieces focused on materials' abilities vs. their typical applications. Among the highlights were Elisa Werbler's Pour cups, Ruth Fore's Crochet Crochet chair, Ian Horowitz's Loofah Ankle Boot and Debra Folz's 100% Wax table.
Pratt's 'Design for a Dollar' exhibition asked its students to create pieces made from a dollar of materials. Above are scissors made from discarded saw blades by Brian Persico, an oiled and heat pressed paper bag bag by Rebecca Marchall and pendants made from borax soaked pipe cleaners by Jennie Maneri.
I was really excited to see that Brklyn Designs had a booth at this year's fair. The show, which highlights local NY designers, usually takes place the week before ICFF - thus eliminating my chance of seeing it. The first table is by Umproject, while the bottom two pieces 'Metal Stoolen' and 'Stitched Table' are by Uhuru.
During ICFF, I spent most of my time scouring the off-site exhibitions for MoCo Loco. Over the next few weeks you can read many, many posts over there. However, I did make it to the Javitts Center for a few hours and came across some interesting new items.
Hyock Kwon, the designer brought us the wonderful Tree House My House presented his new project called Bloc at this year's ICFF. Bloc is a series of stacking candles whose wicks interlock, allowing users to build their own Lego-like towers.
Anna Olivia Kristiansen is a ceramicist whose work was recently shown as part of the Danish Crafts, Hand On! exhibit at ICFF. Her series of plates called 'The Danish Pig' provide a step-by-step illustration of how pork is made. With straightforward graphics, she follows the pig from birth to bacon. Kristiansen's motivation is simple, "If the consumer wants to eat the pig, they should be able to stomach the background story."
A selection of containers from ICFF:
More from the showroom floor of the Javits Center, this round - Furniture:
Winnie Lui's spectacular 'White' chandelier made it's US debut at ICFF last week. Each piece is a one of a kind compilation of objects the designer has collected throughout the years. Lui will be creating 50 of these chandeliers in both white and black for the British label Innermost.
More lighting from ICFF - the top image is one of the beautiful lights from David Trubridge's new Spiral Islands collection.
All in all, ICFF was rather lackluster this year, although there were a few gems in the crowd. The new 'Cloud' lights by Molo (top) were some of my favorites, although they are not yet in production. Hopefully they will sell them both with and without the light fixture itself because they looked really wonderful with just the ambient light coming down from above.
One of the best parts of ICFF every year, hands down, is the designboom mart. Not only is it like a mad flea market with vendors selling their wares and people waving money, there truly is an excitement in the air that you generally don't find in the thousand dollar exhibit booths across the way.
Believe it or not, I still have not made it into the Javits Center yet - my days have been spent wandering around the many satellite shows going on all over the city. Today I was in the Future Perfect in Brooklyn and spotted these great fabric waterproof vases by Cody Hudson for Raptus Lab. Tomorrow I really am going into ICFF - we'll see if I can get it all done in a day. To check out my coverage of the satellite shows, visit MoCo Loco over the next few days.
Here's a special sneak preview of some of the patterns Flavor Paper will be releasing at this year's ICFF - I can't wait to see them in person. If I've counted correctly it looks like my friends at the Flavor Lab will be exhibiting ten new designs! (Thanks Jon.)
I don't usually write about beds, but then again I don't see very many worth mentioning. I did a double take though when I walked past Blu Dot's new collection at ICFF. Their soon to be released Nook bed has an upholstered base and headboard - a nice change from standard platform beds out there. This piece just feels cozier...especially with a Denyse Schmidt quilt laying on top.
ICFF is such a whirlwind - sometimes you take photos of things without writing any notes and sometimes you jot down phrases like, "awesome design," without taking any pics to remember what that amazing product was. 
