At the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, botanticals bloom
May 24th, 2007 Category Events, FurnitureEverything’s coming up roses at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, just concluded at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. OK, that’s an exaggeration. It wasn’t all floral, and it wasn’t all roses, but the recent decorative and back-to-nature trend in modern design is definitely, er, flowering.
From the three-dimensional flowers on Tord Boontje’s Little Field of Flowers rug collection for Nanimarquina (he’s the Dutch designer who started the ball rolling a year or two ago with his whimsically botanical chandelier) to the Le Fleur sofa by Pasquale Natuzzi, from the magnetic flowers of British textile designer Michelle Butler of Isolyn to the botanical inspiration of the new textiles from Rockville Centre-based textile company Carnegie Fabrics, flowers and trees are inspiring modern designers as they have designers throughout the ages.
“Tord brought it all back, and everyone is kind of leveraging it,” says Dario Antonioni, a designer whose California-based company, Orange 22, introduced a new line of low tables and benches called Botanical with floral cut-out designs. “The beauty of the trend is that floral graphics have endless variety. It humanizes modern design. It makes it more approachable; it makes it more feminine.”
As usual, the fair’s offerings ranged from young and edgy to posh and sleek, from handcrafted woods and natural fibers to the most innovative of man-made materials. But since it’s spring, we’d thought we’d just stop and smell the roses.
Information from: www.amny.com
