Horizon by Flynn Talbot at TENT DIGITAL

Spotted at Tent in the Truman Brewery was the hypnotic ever-changing light installation by Flynn Talbot.

It was a shame we didn't catch the blue lady in front of it, though not sure the cameras metering would have coped... Thankfully not all people considered it essential to strike such a ridiculous pose.

Visit us at 100% Design

Please visit us during 100% Design, we're in the central walkway next to the ICON stand. Come to see Karen Smarts winning design, talk interiors and furniture, or drink our beer. (If there's any left).

Matt Gagnon Studio Table

We love this table from the Matt Gagnon Studio Brooklyn, New York. It is hand made using Homasote (100% post-consumer recycled paper board)

and is designed to be used either upright or on its side.

www.branchhome.com

Finalists for Manchester Evening News Young Business of the Year

NoChintz are pleased to announce that we have been selected as finalists for Manchester Evening News Young Business of the Year. Here's a snippet from today's full page spread in Manchester Evening News...

"A BUSINESS that began life two years ago providing furniture packs for city dwellers is set to break through the £1m turnover mark. NoChintz has blossomed into a complete interiors studio providing a wide range of services for domestic and corporate clients and has seen revenues double each year.

But it is as much the company’s commitment to giving back to the community, nurturing other local businesses and local talent and supporting local events that earned it a place as one of the finalists in the young business category of the M.E.N. Business of the Year competition"

Hail the real bargain of tabledom!

We got the IKEA 2010 brochure through a few weeks ago and whilst its ubiquity means that for many its not given even a cursory glance there are some really interesting changes. IKEA often make annual references to cost cuttings past onto customers through refinement of production, transportation etc but this time you couldn't help but notice, the Lack sidetable in solid colours was reduced from £7.99 to £4.99. There's a huge amount of snobbery and elitism in the design community, to a degree its impossible for anyone involved to not be partially guilty, but no designer can deny that a perfectly functioning table for under a fiver is simply brilliant.

The Lack range, for the money, is a great range. It gets unfairly dismissed as a cheap product with jibes about cardboard construction and shoddy build, but its a £5 product! How much does its nearest competitor cost? For the price of 2 pints (real beer we're talking about, not alco-pop lager) you've got a perfectly functioning, neutral table that will survive and function satisfactorily for years. If treated and looked after in the same regard as an equivalent table costing £300+ it would last for ages. But no, its treated as the bargain product it is, gets knocked about, sat on, abused, and then moaned about as a cheap and nasty piece of furniture befit for students for 9 months then binned when they move out of their squalid rental properties.

I'm sure that the real reason for many designers/specifiers distaste for it lies in the fact they can't really spec it, they're not going to if they can't make their usual percentage on it, and even if IKEA did offer an interior designers discount there's not a whole lot of margin in £5.00.

So all hail the real bargain of tabledom, arise Sir Lack!

“Per fare un albero”

20 fiberglass replicas of the nostalgic Fiat 500 C are appearing on Milan’s famous fashion street, Montenapoleone.... as planters!

Created using the car's exact dimensions, these tree planters form an installation called “Per fare un albero” (translated as 'Create a tree'). Artist / designer Fabio Novembr is responsible for the installation, in collaboration with the City of Milan and Fiat.

They are on show until 30th September.

www.novembre.it

Dayboard calendar

Check out the Dayboard calendar on today's Dailytonic 

http://www.dailytonic.com/dayboard-by-stokkeaustad-for-abr/

That's why we LOVE ABR!

Zeitraum

Our friends at Relay Design Agency are now UK agents for German furniture company, Zeitraum. Each piece of furniture is unique. "The timber for each piece is individually selected and combined making it unique in terms of colour and grain"

Have a look at www.zeitraum-moebel.de for a full range of their amazing products (check out Relay's website for a peek at some of their other great brands too - we're particularly fond of Buzzispace!)

www.relaydesignagency.co.uk

BOOKSHELF SIDETABLE By Front

We Love the 'BOOKSHELF SIDETABLE'(part of the BOOKSHELF collezione) by our favourite designer's at Front.

Available to buy from www.skitsch.it

NoChintz launches The Box Project

We've launched a design competition in collaboration with 100% Design London. Through collaboration, inspiration and participation, we hope this project will encourage and support emerging design talent of the North West.

The Box Project consists of a competition for North West creative’s (professional, post graduate and students) where entrants will be asked to challenge the design, function and reason of a 2mx2mx2m micro building to determine…

what’s inside the box?

(Examples being, pop-up retail, pop-up bar etc). Entrants are asked to ‘spend a little, create a lot!’

Be creative, functional, sustainable and innovative, recycle where possible to keep the budget small. 15 finalists will be judged by a panel of respected experts in the creative field and the winner will have their creation made and showcased in September at 100% design, the international design show in London.

Exposure of The Box Project will be reached through regional and national media and a prominent exhibit at 100% Design London, the UK’s leading architecture and design event showcasing everything for the modern building and interior. We want to show that even in this global economic downturn the UK’s northern creative industry is still a thriving and exciting place to be.

Pembrokeshire trip

Our designer Sanjay took a long weekend break to escape Manchester and the noisy NoChintz office recently, and ended up in a remote seaside village in Pembrokeshire. With no wifi, laptop and patchy mobile coverage, it proved to be the perfect way to relax and unwind. With plenty of coastlines walks and megalithic sites such as Pentre Irfan to visit, he also managed to do some photography other than of interior shots for us.





He also found in a sleepy village an up and coming furniture designer who's exhibiting at New Designers this year, but that's another blog entry...

Deborah Elsaesser: re-ply designs

Recently seen exhibiting in a village in Pembrokeshire by our designer Sanjay, Deborah's work stood out amongst the sea of inevitable (some though being very good) coastal scene artwork that proliferates there. Deborah will be at New Designers One Year On this year.

- "re-ply designs is an emerging company producing Eco Furniture and Accessories. Deborah Elsaesser designs and makes each piece using natural and recycled materials. All of her products incorporate sustainability with a style that is simple and contemporary. Concentrating on her re-plied Collection, Debs utilises the plywood waste from several local companies, to make her unique living and dining furniture. "

A ''Shed" for Living

Manchester architects FKDA have designed a shed for living... a shed for working... a shed for playing...

Our friends at FKDA, a small architectural practice based in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, have recently completed the design of a micro-home that they affectionately call a “shed”. This is a shed for living. It’s in response to today’s current economic climate where housing needs to be affordable and easily deliverable.

The idea of creating such a small living environment came from the growing reports of people being forced from their homes unable to make their current mortgage payments, and turning to living with family, in garden sheds and even in cars.

The shed provides a very unique alternative living, working or playing environment, which is eco-friendly, healthy, low cost and easily deliverable. It may be designed in response to this current economic climate, but it could also challenge the housing market to steer away from the standard sized bland brick boxes that are commonly on offer throughout the country. Maybe in the future we’ll all be living in sheds?

The response to their building form has been so great that they’re now also working on a beach hut design!

Liverpool Tate

Tate Liverpool

Colour Chart; re-inventing colour, 1950 to today
After filling ourselves with afternoon tea (mmmmmmm) in the Tate café at the Albert Docks, Liverpool we embarked on our multimedia tour of their latest exhibition, Colour Chart; re-inventing colour, 1950 to today.

Firstly we fully recommend getting the audio tour! In this instance an i-pod touch was handed over, a welcome change from the usual old school voice recorders……… but then the exhibition is in conjunction with the New York museum of contemporary art! Woo Hoo! This also meant it was a full multimedia experience incorporating light, vision, video and sound.

The exhibition is on the whole exceptional and very inspiring, as for any designer colour is paramount to pretty much everything we do.

The installations included versions of Andy Warhol’s electric chair and Marilyn. Some Damien Hirst pieces, a lighting installation be the late Dan Flavin and pieces dating back further to artists such as the revolutionary Yves Klein who had a severe fascination with an over pigmented shade of blue, later know as Yves blue.

Highly recommended and a totally 3-d experience of colour and its visionary’s.

It left me thinking what actually is my favourite colour?

The installation was designed by Manchester based Thoughtful

Latten by ABR Produccion

'LSS Latten' by ABR Produccion

NoChintzLtd are exclusive UK agents for ABR Produccion, If you would like information on any ABR product please email us at:

abr@nochintzltd.co.uk

www.abrproduccion.com