The kid and I made an all-too-brief visit to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC yesterday. Gotta say, she was a rockstar, putting up with all my schmoozing while only slightly terrorizing the folks in their booths. Her M.O. was to promptly make herself at home, first by testing every piece of furniture herself, then by rearranging it. In many cases, she'd then start issuing orders, telling complete strangers, "you sit there," and "here, take this."
Anyway, here's some quick, largely photo-less impressions:
They were only showing a prototype, not a production model, but the Calla high chair at Fleurville is pretty slick. It rolls around and raises and lowers on a piston (but at an angle) and it comes with has two sizes of molded seat inserts available. They say it'll be ready in the Fall, and that it'll be ringing in at around $890. That's USD. Personally, I'm fine with that; it's reasonable for someone who's a consumer of high-end and high-design furniture. If you drop a bomb on decorating your house, would you want to pollute it with a crappy-looking high chair? No, of course not. But that's a pretty rareified demographic, and until you can push it down the street, I have a feeling the Calla will be a pretty exotic flower.
The kid loved playing with the Tarantino EVA foam chairs at Offi. They've been around--at least online, if not actually in stores yet--but they look very nice in person. They're $139/pair in blue/green or red/pink, and there's a table, too. The confetti-foam one looks awesome, but it's only a prototype [the picture's on the studio website]. But her--and my--favorite was another prototype, a rocker called the Egg Roll [below]. The seat cut-out flipped over nicely to become a [slightly wobbly] ottoman. White EVA foam gets a little dingy, though, it seems, so if it never makes it to production, it'll be because it turns irreparably filthy within a month.
Iglooplay's sweet bentwood rockers are ready, and they're taking orders, which was a nice surprise. [Judging from the renderings on the website, I thought they might still be in prototype stage. They're slick and solid. When the kid was done, all the ultrasuede cushions in the Iglooplay booth were stacked by color. Sorry about that, folks.
I got my first, in-person look at Not Neutral's stuff. The chairs are cute and heavy/solid, and the Eames Storage Unit-inspired casement furniture--it's available as a changing table, dresser, or double dresser--is gorgeous, very nice finish.
I'll post more later, but right now I've gotta go schmooze a bit. brb
They have the Tarantino chairs at Mini Jake in Williamsburg. Even non-white EVA foam gets gross pretty quickly...
Here's another kid-related product we saw at the show (mini Harry Bertoia chair)
Our daughter cried and cried when we finally dragged her off the thing. We were going to lease her to these guys- she was worth at least a 50% increase in booth traffic.
(Sorry we missed you Greg- we ended up running around all over the place Monday and Tuesday.)
We took the Tarantino range off our site until Offi is up and running so we can get additional inventory. All retailers should have the line again late August/early September.
[so if I understand correctly, Tarantino had been distributing themselves, and now they're hooked up with Offi? Crack reporter that I am, I never asked at the booth. -ed.]