ICFF Day 3: Something Old, Something Renewed

Another theme threading through ICFF 2005 is renewal. The notion is evident in both its historic sense (re-issues, revivals, and reinterpretations of pieces) and its modern meaning of recycling and recasting old materials.

A prime example of revival comes from Flavor Paper, a company that updates and reissues long-neglected wallpaper designs. Flavor’s latest offering, Onda, is based on a mid-century motif which, in turn, was inspired by the graphical ocean block prints of nineteenth-century Japanese painter Hiroshige. Then, providing a different take on historic pieces, is Didi Dunphy’s Jack Rocker, a twenty-first-century take on the nineteenth-century “joggling board,” a gliding bench commonly found on Southern porches.

As for recycling, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago offers a unique example at its booth. The school’s “exhibit”—as much a performance art piece as a study in design—consists of students cutting prefab shoulder bags from the rolling bolts of graphic-printed cloth on the booth’s sides, re-purposing the material. On a more industrial tip, there is Mio Culture’s Bale chair, a streamlined seat made from FSC-certified plywood and 100 percent recycled polyester. And then there is Zac Ridgely’s end table, comprised of river stones and steel mesh and inspired by the rock-and-chicken wire gabion walls frequently used to prevent erosion along the coastal highways.

To see more examples of revival from day three of ICFF 2005, click here.