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Favorites from Stockholm Furniture Fair 2014

It’s my third year in Stockholm for Design Week and the Furniture Fair and I couldn’t be happier to be back—it’s one of my favorite shows, always full of fresh new talent that you don’t see anywhere else. This year’s Guests of Honor are Italian / Danish design duo GamFratesi, who have created a lounge area entitled Get The Balance Right – watch this space for an interview with founders Stine Gam and Enrico Frastesi.

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A new feature for this year’s show was Twelve—a curation by Disegno editor Johanna Agermann-Ross of twelve established Nordic designers—a step-on from Greenhouse, the SFF show for graduates and new designers. More on that to follow too.

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Once into the main show, I loved the rich, yet typically understated Scandinavian color palette on Gubi’s stand. The Ronde Pendant is German designer Oliver Schick’s first product for Gubi— love its neat rotund form.

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I am very happy to see that yellow is still very much on-trend. Aimed at cafes, restaurants and learning institutions, the upholstered birch Nami chair by Lepo Product head designer Kaarle Holmberg would fit just as well into a contemporary home.

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I love the simple and timeless Side Table 606 reissued from the Artek archives and new in this finish for the fair. It was designed in 1932 by Aino Aalto, Alvar Aalto’s first wife and Managing Director of Artek from 1941-1949.

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A thoroughly Norwegian product, the Konfetti blanket was designed by Norwegian designer duo Anderssen & Voll for Røros Tweed which has been weaving in Norway since 1940, using wool from Norwegian sheep.

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Innovative wall-storage solutions were a definite trend at the fair, and my favorite was the Pocket Organizer from Normann Copenhagen, available in a range of colors and handy for everything from stationery to washing up brushes.

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House plants are back and Swedish design brand A2 has them exploding out of bookcases and bursting out of side tables – bringing the outside in with a bang.

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Another brand showcasing a richer Scandinavian palette was Menu, a Danish company founded in 1976. Their range of beautifully understated products had me utterly captivated.

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More clever wall storage from Maze, a company born out of a fruitless search for a smart bed shelf in 2003. Designed by Olof Kolte, it’s equally at home in the bathroom, office, or hallway.

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New Danish brand Made by Hand was showing elegant and simple copper lamps handmade in Denmark from an original 1951 design.

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And last but not least, I love these concrete coasters with fragments of a map of Stockholm by A Future Perfect, spotted in the designboom mart.

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author and, podcaster championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. She is also the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a program and membership community for designer-makers who want to join the circular economy. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine and Monocle24 – as well as being Editor at Large for Design Milk. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.