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TO DO Fest, Day 6: Designer Fashion Statements, Spanish Imports and Stunning Ceramics

Everything we saw and loved during day six of Toronto’s action-packed week of design events


dl-0117-events-dllovestag2All throughout the Toronto Design Offsite Festival, our editors are on the hunt for spectacular products and installations. From January 16 to 22, we’re awarding 100 Designlines Loves tags to the most beautiful, most innovative, and downright coolest stuff we encounter.

Below is the sixth batch of designs that caught our eye. Keep track of everything we tagged in our master list.

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Work: Visual Arts Exhibitions

The festival’s most dramatic fashion statements, plus bright ideas about lighting.

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Harbourfront Centre woos this month with four design-heavy shows, on display until April 23. The first, Workwear, is a mind-blowing exhibit of fashion and textile art by 39 international artists, designers and architects. Curated by Alessandro Guerriero, explorations of “who we are and what we want to be” come courtesy of such notable names as Faye Toogood, Alan Wexler, Elio Fiorucci and Issey Miyake.

Also onsite is Everyday Lighting, a stunning survey of illumination curated by local industrial designer Kate Tessier and produced by the ceramicists, glass artists, designers, and jewelers from Harbourfront Centre’s Craft & Design Studio. One of our favourites is the Wind-up Lamp by Oscar Kwong, a playful piece in porcelain and glass that references toys with keys. Wind up a lot to use for tasks or enjoy it wound down in times of rest.

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Get Lost: A Survey of Spain

An exhibition traces Spanish furniture through the design and manufacturing process.

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Co-curators Biography Design, Founded by Garcia and Commute Design displayed a number of beautiful pieces in this exhibition, including the Ernest Desk by Punt. Also on display: original sketches and furniture jigs.

The Stockholm sideboard by Mario Ruiz for Punt was another favourite. The length alone makes it feel so luxurious, and we also loved the glam gold top – especially against the raw space of the venue – and the invisibleness of the legs.

Also tagged today:

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Rorschach. Our minds were blown by this new series of mirrors from Creators of Objects. Made in Toronto, each wingspan-long piece has unique “spots” in hand-gilded silver and/or gold, plus resin-filled, shadow-throwing “gaps”.

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• Made in Clay. An exhibition of ceramics produced by past and present members of The Shop included plenty of pretty vessels, but this series by Shakeel Rehemtulla stood out. We love how the vases strike a balance between stripes and mottled patterns, and dig the coastal hues.

• Surface, Seating, Storage. We were struck by the versatility of this wbite oak and woven paracord design by Jacob Riches. Is it an entryway bench with a built-in boot shelf and side compartment for gloves and scarves? A living room coffee table with a magazine rack and a catchall for video game controllers? That’s the beauty – it’s both. A handsome addition to any space. Spotted in the window of Province Apothecary.

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• Marrs Brand Future. According to Toronto furniture designer and Ryerson instructor Graeme Marrs, “The future is limitless and infinite in its sunny potential. The future is green, lush, and vibrant. It’s productive and fertile.” His physical manifestations of this ethos are all super smart, including this self-reliant solar-powered table lamp that can be used to charge any low voltage device via a USB cable.

• Merged Moments. Also on display at Unlovable General is a body of work by Adrian Thomas Kenny, which includes this triptyque of wall-hung copper etchings that hail to symbolism that shapes the Toronto artist’s creations.


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