Designers from Shenzhen to Beijing make a splash in London
Chinese design has moved on from traditional elements to embrace abstract concepts and functionality, and London Design Festival showcased designers familiar with international tastes but confident in their own roots
National showcases for design are often hit and miss. Institutional support or money, however well-meaning, can stifle creativity and result in objects that are beautiful or well presented but not always memorable. That was, thankfully, not the case with Hi Design Shanghai's first British celebration of Chinese design at this year's 100% Design (as part of the annual London Design Festival, which ended on Sunday).
A collaboration between London-based design magazine Icon and a panoply of Chinese and British business and design organisations, it was a focused and mostly well-edited display of work that runs the gamut from playful lighting to modern sofas, from traditional lacquer work to geometric furniture.
The smallest offerings were sometimes the most tantalising. A range of desk-top accessories by Jerry Huang of Shenzhen-based EY-products was made out of a blend of ebony bark (discarded by a factory making ebony furniture) and resin. Aptly entitled Landscape Series, the resulting containers, pencil pots, rulers, paperweights and business card holders were functional but also poetic with layers of gold and brown and internal flourishes created by the resin as it had filled the gaps left by the bark. Another item by EY-products was a simple wooden square lamp with a carved moon. "My designs are about recreating specific moments," says Huang. "This one was inspired by a night-time walk and the sight of a beautiful moon."
Huang's Moon Lamp represents a recent trend or shift in Chinese design says Zheng Qu, the director of London's China Design Centre (co-organisers of the show), an exhibition space and centre founded in the summer of last year to provide a bridge between British designers and Chinese manufacturers and to familiarise British audiences with emerging Chinese design.
"Designers from China are starting to understand that they have to tell a story with their work, it can't just be about the product or brand," he says. "Telling a story is more important."