designjunction

Part of the London Design Festival, designjunction is about the most glamorous trade show I've ever been to.

Sort of trade show, sort of public show, it's intended to showcase the best contemporary furniure, lighting and product design. Mainly, you wander around thinking 'oooh pretty'.

The bottom floor was by far my favourite. The top two floors had lots of lovely furniture, but it was far too expensive to ever be a serious consideration. The bottom floor had lots of smaller stands selling accesories and gift type bits. They also had a couple of live demonstrations happening, which meant that I got to cut crystal using a diamond. It was strangely soothing.

My friend and I got most excited about the Minalima design stand. We spotted the Harry Potter posters first, and got immensely excited when we realised they'd done all the paper props for the films. We then spotted the 'Collective Nouns' posters, which I'd previously seen at the Southbank Centre design shop. Both Miraphora Mina (she sounds like a Potter character!) and Eduardo Lima were there, which meant my friend was able to get the book she bought signed by both of them. I ended up buying a box of flash cards, which I plan to use as gifts and posters. My favourite is the 'E' of course (above). An embarrassment of pandas is just too cute.

The other interesting part was a 'year of the bus' Transport for London pop up restaurant. It looked lovely, but the menu wasn't particularly appealing so we gave it a miss. Of course, I couldn't resist the limited edition gin from the East London Liquor Company. We haven't cracked it open yet, but the bottle is lovely. I'll report back.

All in all, it was a very pleasant evening. The one regret I had was not buying one of these beautiful Storytiles, from a dutch designer. They were so pretty, but I just couldn't justify buying yet more prettiness, when there are about six prints I haven't managed to get up in the house yet! Next time...