Our Materials Edit

Colour Hive returns to Surface Design Show this year with a new and exclusive Materials Edit. Part of Surface Spotlight Live, our installation will showcase a selection of innovative and inspirational objects and materials.

 

 

Provenance Inspired

This year’s Materials Edit is inspired by the drivers behind our 2024 design direction Provenance, featuring innovative surfaces and projects included in both MIX Magazine issue 69 and our 2024 Colour, Material and Finish Directions.

Our dedicated installation will feature materials and objects that embody themes central to this story, from craft, localism and slow process to the role of technology in driving transparency and responsible manufacture.

You’ll discover materials and projects from both established and new designers from hard surfaces to textiles, engineered composites, wallcoverings and organic material explorations.

 

Our participants include:

 

 

Studio GdB

Studio GdB's custom glazed tiles are the result of allowing a computer-controlled application of liquid glaze directly onto ceramic tiles in biscuit state. Finding no conventional glazing technique that suited their requirements, the studio developed their own, whereby the machine essentially functions as a digital glaze printer.

 

 

Tal Narkiss

Modern interpretations of ancient crafts and authentic materials are explored in Kelim by Tal Narkiss. Made as a single piece on a dobby loom, the handwoven 3D vessels are crafted in linen, a fibre once abundant in Israel, and are dyed using different Israeli soils.

 

 

Mestiz

Design studio Mestiz, together with Don Javier, revive the Mexican tradition of wood carving and carpentry, a craft slowly falling into disuse, in their Wood Fauna collection. Their hand-chiselled wooden creations in vivid colours take inspiration from the figures and symbols of Novohispanic baroque and Mexican wildlife.

 

 

Drag And Drop 

The marriage between craft and technology is exemplified through digitally printed design. Drag And Drop's sculptural Armadillo lampshade, made from coconut fibre and PLA, features mathematical pocketing and uses additive manufacturing to enhance light and shadow.

 

Feeling inspired? We will be posting more about our Materials Edit on Instagram over the next few weeks.

 

 

 

LIVE Seminars: Colour Hive 2024 CMF Directions

As well as our dedicated installation, Colour Hive’s Creative Director Hannah Malein will be presenting our 2024 Colour, Material and Finish Directions.

Join us as we profile the influences driving consumer preferences and two focused design directions for the season. We'll explore how these stories will emerge in design concepts and inform the creation of meaningful design for the decorative market.

 

 

The first direction, Provenance reflects broad concerns about sustainability, the dangers of greenwashing and recognises a new commitment to localism. Lack of transparency is a real issue, and in response many makers have realised that for a process to be truly sustainable, the entire life of any object needs to be measured and quantified. 

 

 

This concern for provenance and authenticity has led to a flourishing interest in craft, and slow process. But while this is a story about making, it is also highly digital, looking at how technology can aid transparency and responsible manufacture.

 

 

The second direction, Submerge charts how our relationship with water is evolving and often contradictory; we seek out blue spaces for relaxation, yet anxiety about the precarity of water, too much or too little, informs everything, from fiction to urban planning.

 

 

While much of the focus on wellbeing has highlighted green spaces, now the health benefits of blue spaces from stress relief to reduced inflammation are being explored scientifically. 

 

 

Along with the positive associations with water, there are also underlying anxieties. Against a backdrop of rising sea levels and the risk of flooding, there is an impetus to stop fighting to control water and instead adopt less invasive approaches.

 

.

Where To Find Us

Interested in joining us?

 

 

 

Planning to visit?

 

 

 

 

Image credits from top:

© Colour Hive | © Colour Hive | Studio GdB | Tal Narkiss, Photo Leigh Chen | Mestiz, Photo Pepe Molina | Drag And Drop | All © Colour Hive