Now in its 10^th year, the London Design Festival has expanded its perimeters to include a host of public events as well as the trade shows that form the core of the activity. The V&A led the way with programme of innovative installations, exhibitions and commissions while galleries, shops, public spaces and private houses opened up to embrace design in all its aspects. Post-Olympic London was still buzzing as design districts from Brompton in chic West London to Shoreditch in the creative East End worked to gather their design talent into a collective consumer experience. Here are a few very personal highlights from a week of pure design delight.

Karen McCartney



(Left) Designer Donna Wilson collaborates with SCP to produce a wonderful range of textiles, including cushions, throws and rugs and this season launched these colourful, laminated ply Fort Trays in her trademark patterns. (Right) London Design Week is an opportunity to showcase conceptual thinking and an exhibition called "Wonder Cabinets of the Europe", curated by Jane Withers and set in the stuccoed grandeur of 4 Cromwell Place, was a subtle and beautiful experience.  Shown here is an exquisite detail of one of the notebooks in the cabinet of Maria Jeglinska who has used the space to pay homage to the role line drawing plays in her creative process.



(Left) This design by Julie Kouamo shows how wallpapers are developing in a much more painterly direction with the repeating pattern more like a scenic photograph rather than abstract shapes. Kouamo, a graduate from St Martins in London, has a great ability with the mixing and blending of colour and pattern. (Right) At the Conran shop was a display of the work of Natasha Daintry. Her slip-cast porcelain comes in a range of shades from dusty pinks, to rose and ruby.



(Left) The democratisation of design is alive and well and being displayed in the pure white surrounds of a 6 storey town house and exhibition space in 19 Greek Street, in London's Soho. The space will permanently house the best of Brazilian design from Espasso and host design exhibitions. This black and white installation shows Nina Tolstrup's chair for Studiomama made from the reclaimed wood of unused pallets. While the chair is not new the monochromatic paint job gives it a fresh energy. (Right) Our own Tamara Maynes showcased her Quilt Light. You may know Tamara's work through Inside Out magazine where she did a series of craft projects over the years. The idea is that you buy a downloadable pdf template from her website and create your own light in whatever colour combination you fancy.



(Left) Established & Sons partnered with the London Design festival to commission a series called 'The Bench Years' by matching 10 designers with 10 material producers to create a bench for public use. The results are as diverse as you would expect from names such as Barber Osgerby, Jasper Morrison and Martino Gamper. All were sited in the courtyard of the V&A and every one was being used as people ate lunch, had coffee and chatted. Here is a close up of the Konstantin Grcic collaboration with Bisazza called Pier. (Right) Visually very different from Nina Tolstrup of StudioMama's Pallet Project (but a continuation of her design philosophy) is her Re-imagine series. Her approach is to reuse the unloved and rejected and reconfigure elements she finds in new and interesting ways. The impactful orange fabric is from Gabriel.



(Left) Decorex is one of the longstanding trade shows with 35 years of showcasing the luxurious, the bespoke and the exquisite to the design trade. This year was no different with designer Christopher Guy coming up with an enormous feature stand of life size furniture items, all in white, in a seemingly precarious pile in the centre of the show. This photograph is but a small section to give you an idea of the way it was put together.  (Right) Graham & Green showed their Ariel Rococo Chair, a charmingly upholstered clamshell  in contrasting charcoal and white linen designed by Jamie Graham.



To celebrate 25 years of the Conran shop in the iconic Michelin Building, Conran has commissioned 40 international designers, artists and craftspeople to create or recreate an existing design in red – the name of the exhibition.  A great range of designers from Thomas Heatherwick (his Spin chairs caused a lot of hilarity as people spun just a little out of control) to  Benjamin Hubert's latest light prototypes – Tenda -  a four way stretch mesh combined with glass rods to give it shape – had enormous design diversity held together by the punchy colour theme.  Shown here are Front Design's Balancing Boxes (left) and Harry Bertoia's Wire Chair from Knoll (right).