Paper Strip Bowl. Yolanda Resendez, 2010.

One of my favorite elements of visiting NYIGF each year is the international perspective the show brings to product design. Maintaining a close connection with the international design community is something we hold near and dear to our hearts at the MoMA Design Store. For many years now, we’ve celebrated global design with our Destination: Design series which showcases emerging designers from countries such as Finland, Denmark, Japan, Brazil, and Portugal.

The spring of 2012 marks our tenth Destination: Design product collection which will focus on Mexico. The Museum of Modern Art has had a long relationship with Mexican artists that dates back to the earliest days of the Museum. In December 1931, the Museum launched a monographic exhibition on Rivera that set new attendance records in its five-week run. Rivera had been brought to New York and given studio space within the Museum where he produced five “portable murals” with subjects drawn from Mexican subject matter, addressing concepts of revolution and class inequity.

Today, we’re seeing a revolution among emerging Mexican designers who have built on the culture’s aesthetic traditions to create products that put a modern spin on classic themes. Destination: Mexico… Continue reading →

Sourcing for international resources is even easier this summer. Now in its new location in the Level 4 Galleria, NYIGF’s Handmade® Global Design will present 200 global import resources with a focus on good design, traditional craftsmanship and community building.

A new “Fair Trade Neighborhood” will provide a concentration of Fair Trade Federation member exhibitors together on the exhibit floor. Want to know more about Fair Trade? Find out at the NYIGF seminar, “Mythbusting: Fair Trade & Your Customer,” on 8/21.

Are you a volume import buyer? If so, visit Artisan Resource™ a NEW market running concurrently with NYIGF. Get connected to international producers and exporters representing artisan groups in countries like Afghanistan, Armenia, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Mexico, Nepal, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, and West Africa.

Sustainable products from all corners of the globe find their way to NYIGF. This is a sampling of what you’ll discover:

Bora Scarf by Aria Handmade

With a unique rope-like design, this scarf blends alpaca wool and acrylic. Designed by Nestor Pineda, it’s available in 12 colors, such as denim (shown), cranberry, and citron. Each sustainable, eco-friendly piece is finely crafted by hand, using wool from a local farm. www.ariahandmade.com

 … Continue reading →

Scandinavian design is often characterized by simple designs and functionality, and, to a degree, this is still very much true, but at ROOM COPENHAGEN, we aim to take design further with the thought we put into each item, its quality, and the good feeling you get when you touch it, with your eyes and your hands.

Boys’ Room LEGO Storage Range

Inspiration for ROOM COPENHAGEN’s products goes hand-in-hand with the moment’s trending products, colors and designs. In the marketplace, consumers are replacing ‘fluff’ with style, color, and functionality. At ROOM COPENHAGEN, we honor our Scandinavian heritage with simple shapes and timeless designs. We cater to our customers by fulfilling their universal human needs and bringing their lives “back-to-the-basics.” We drive our brands with the needs of today’s consumer, combined with our design team’s insight.

PANTONE Cups

By adding color and a little bit of humor, we have created a range of products that are still very much Scandinavian, but much more fun and colorful than you would normally expect. Our large oversized LEGO bricks and LEGO figure heads embody true fun. Our products under the PANTONE UNIVERSE brand contain food prep items, all in the PANTONE philosophy of… Continue reading →

The Gourmet Housewares Show® returns to the New York International Gift Fair®, August 19-22! Look for 175 suppliers of high-end resources in cookware, gadgets, textiles, accessories, small electrics, specialty food, cookbooks, and more. You’ll find the newest resources from brands like JK Adams, Joseph Joseph, Oggi, Sagaform, and others.

You’ll also get to meet the authors of several cooking and tabletop titles at the NEW on-site NYIGF Bookstore, sponsored by Artisan, a division of Workman Publishing, and Gourmet Insider. See Shax Riegler (DISH: 813 Colorful, Wonderful Dinner Plates), Katie Workman (The Mom 100 Cookbook, and Alice Medrich (Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts)!

Intriguing. Innovative. Inspiring. You’ll find these products at the Gourmet Housewares Show, and other design-inspired NYIGF divisions, like Accent on Design®. A few examples:

Bamboo Lifestyle collection by Design House Stockholm
Bamboo is not only eco-friendly, it’s sturdy and inexpensive when used to produce these stylish serving pieces. The collection includes Stig Ahlström’s “Pick Up” servers and chop sticks; David Mayhew’s “Whale Tongs;” Rolf Sinnemark’s nest of trays; Ulla Christansson’s “Chop” boards; and Åsa McCormac’s “Hot Pot” serving mats. www.designhousestockholmusa.com

Café Solo by Eva… Continue reading →

What inspires your designs?

Research and travel uncovers new crafts, inspires new designs and sets new trend directions for each collection. Inspiration is drawn from diverse sources such as woodland areas to rusty farm sheds, influencing colors, shapes, styles and design. Our two most recent collections, In A Day and Second Nature were inspired by two different environments we feel proud to be a part of.

For In A Day, we drew inspiration from being city dwellers through and through. While we occasionally escape the city on weekends, more often than not we stay “in” – in our city. Due North is a corner of town we claim to be our stomping ground, postcode 3065 – Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia. In A Day follows a route along our favorite strip in Fitzroy – Gertrude Street. From home we walk – spending the morning drinking coffee, window shopping, grazing at cafes and reading the paper.

Second Nature Winter 2012

Second nature is a collection inspired by color. A visit to an Australian bush land area that only a couple of years before had been razed by fire gave us an incredible visual display of how nature can recover from total devastation.… Continue reading →