Knitting, pleating, embroidery, quilting -- you would think this was a craft fair. And in a way, the 15th annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair, which was held recently in New York and featured more than 450 exhibitors as well as a slew of design events around the city, was something of a touch fest.
As contemporary and modern design goes, there are periods when austerity prevails. Sharp lines and right angles define products. Texture is viewed as excessive. Machine is god.
And then there are moments when the opposite is true and curves return. Gentility of form is important. And the hand of a human being in the making of a pillow or a chair or a candlestick is a good thing.
And then there is today. And there is high and higher technology -- and designers and artisans who did not run from it, but rather dived right in and learned how to harness computers and machines to their creative advantage. The result is an emerging body of products that nimbly straddles the divide between design and craft, mass production and hand work, being modern and being high-touch.
Those were the products that stood out at this year's ICFF -- products that find a way to bring softness and texture (the hallmarks of craft) to the production process. Have a look at some of the high-touch highlights from ICFF 2003. Those that don't involve a complex technical process involve an inventive mechanical or logistic one.
* Knitte Wallpaper
By Petra Blaisse for Wolf-Gordon
Sometimes tactility is an illusion. And high-touch is technology's last laugh. But to Dutch interior and landscape designer Petra Blaisse (who is best known for her collaborations with superstar Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas), illusions work just fine.
The cerebral Blaisse found a way to draw depth and tactility and translucency -- or at least the appearance of those things -- out of flat vinyl wallpaper. And she found the way in a technical process.
Her new "Touch" collection of wallpaper comprises eight patterns that are based on high-quality digital photographs of a curtain sample she made for one of her architecture projects.
Although the New York-based Wolf-Gordon focuses on commercial applications for its wallcoverings, Blaisse hopes homeowners will "dare" to try her vinyls. About $15 to $20 a linear yard (at 54 inches wide), through architects and interior designers.
Visit www.wolf-gordon.com or call 800-347-0550.
* Flipper Screen
By Material Furniture
Spin those disks, close them up or lock them (via small latch fasteners on the backside) in a 90-degree angle so that they become little tables or shelves -- Flipper is all about interacting with your furniture.
Christopher Douglas, a 38-year-old graphic designer and drummer in a rock band in Portland, Ore., introduced his first collection of "knock-down / drag-out" furniture (collapsible, assemble-it-yourself furnishings) for urban nomads and other hipsters with a space problem. Douglas was clever with his mechanics. In addition to those latch fasteners, there are "super-powerful magnets on the edge of the disks and inside the rim so they stay in a closed position," he explains.
And most of his furniture assembles by simply slotting the pieces together and locking them in place with hidden fasteners. The 6-foot-long and wide, birch-ply screen costs $1,400; additional panels may be ordered for $500 apiece.
Visit www.materialfurniture.com or call 503-231-0617.
* Air Chair
By Gaston Marticorena
Not that its inner-tube innards aren't important -- you inflate this portable chair at your local gas station air pump. But the cotton-nylon cover was what New York-based designer Gaston Marticorena labored over. He worked with a fashion designer to find the right indoor-outdoor fabric and to create the right pattern so that the fabric becomes "almost like a corset or bustier," as Marticorena likes to describe it, that forces the inner tube into the shape of a chair. Once the chair is deflated, the cover can be zipped off and machine washed. Cost: $65.
Visit www.gaston-nyc.com or call 917-237-1719.
* Passages Quilt
By FunQuilts
In the 19th century, quiltmakers embroidered likenesses of their loved ones on their quilts. Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr, a wife-husband team of quiltmakers in Illinois who are known for their modern designs and ways, are putting a techno-spin on that tradition with a photo-transfer process that allows them to print black-and-white or color photographs onto a quilt. It has been done before, but not with this degree of image crispness (it holds up with laundering).
Ringle-Kerr found the advanced technology in both the chemically treated cotton fabric and in the specialized ink-jet printer. Note their clean, gallery approach to displaying the photographs. Cost: $1,150 to $3,400, depending on size.
Visit www.funquilts.com or call 708-445-1817.
* Loop Cube Ottoman
By Anne Kyyro Quinn
"I have to think, it's my Nordic background coming through -- the simple, Nordic influence," says Finnish textile designer Anne Kyyro Quinn, who lives and works in London. Kyyro Quinn figured out a way to take utilitarian fabrics such as industrial wool felt and use them to sculpt a very tactile third dimension into textiles. She loops the wool felt, twists it, makes tubes and circles out of it, and then appliques or stitches the raised relief patterns onto a background of lush woolen cloth, sailcloth and linen. She then fashions her 3D textiles into pillows, lamps, table runners, wall panels, blinds and a cube ottoman.
Visit www.annekyyroquinn.com for prices.
Karen Klages is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
