London Craft Week

Our highlights from London Craft Week

David Linley 

An evening event with a social aspect and a dedicated talk from four high profile hosts discussing how they use the senses as part of their luxury retail offer.

The event provided opportunity to meet a representative from Moser taking custom orders for personalised engraving onto a crystal glass, a representative from a woodworking company providing demonstrations of their process and a selection of staged processes to demonstrate how guitars are made.

Both Cartier and Prestat were in attendance discussing the importance of packaging. Cartier’s red box is synonymous with luxury in the same way that Tiffany’s blue box is iconic. Prestat discussed their purposeful selection of their unusual pink, blue and gold colour way for retail impact when in department stores.

Digital Drawing Workshop with Laureline Galliot 

A presentation and workshop at the Cloud Bar at Citizen M hotel hosted by Laureline Galliot. Around 40 guests were invited to listen to Laureline talk about how she started her work and how she views her role as a designer, and then have a turn at using her methods on an iPad to create digital art that could be turned into textiles, prints and more.

We learnt that lighting is more important than any other factor in this expressionist form of drawing and the colour is often irrelevant so long as the amounts of black and white in the colour make sense.

Digital drawing is not about erasing but about building and expressing. The workshop was attended by photographers, technology fanatics, designers, makers and more. The process we learnt could be applicable to almost anyone.

Santa & Cole @ The Conran Shop

The first UK retailer showcasing the new Teklo Light – a flexible lighting system by London based designer Anthony Dickens inspired by Chochin, the traditional Japanese paper lanterns.

A temporary parquet floor helped to distinguish the exhibition area and a series of curtains and panels helped to create different textures and opacities.

The exhibition was a good example of how something minimal like lighting can be a stand-alone feature. The addition of a wall with technical detailing was an unusual way of making a specification feel more artful.

The Johnson Tiles Award @ Material Lab 

An exhibition of the winner of the Johnson Tiles Award, Tana West for (UN)WOVEN. The exhibition showcased the winner’s installation, an expression of current political anxieties expressed with a high fence, barbed wire and a brick installation.

Bentley 

‘A Passion for Rigorous Precision’, a showcase of the hand crafting that goes into a luxury car. A celebration of artisan craftsmanship, working in tandem with technology to deliver premium vehicles. The message behind the event was to show that each car is unique, and is created rather than assembled.

The demonstrations were engaging and provided a clear example of the craftsmanship which makes each Bentley car. The emphasis was around the handcrafted side of luxury and was reinforced by premium materials.

Gieves & Hawkes 

An exhibition celebrating the craftsmanship of tailoring, with different tailors and makers celebrating and sharing their craft daily. The space was open as both an exhibition and a workshop location on the famous Saville Row.

Rails featuring the panel patterns for a multitude of suit styles and mannequins and busts showing high end tailoring mid-process demonstrated the time, skill and precision involved.