Fruits of the fall

Judging from the title of this blog, you may be thinking that you’re in for a religious treatise about forbidden fruit and the fall of man. Well, sorry to disappoint you, I was thinking more along the lines of the sort of things you might see at a harvest festival celebration – a time when we remember the cycle of nature and enjoy the past season's fruits of the earth.

What I especially want to mention, though, are the curiosities that I stumbled upon at The London Design Festival – the fruits of long hours of labour, lots of creativity and presumably a fair amount of love too.






The event held at a venue called The Dock, a canalside basin tucked away in deepest Kilburn, was especially original and authentic. I visited on a beautifully sunny late summer afternoon, when the sun was low in the sky and there was a slight chill in the air.

The natural environment, a somewhat industrial setting, was put to good use - with the canal basin itself being used for an arty display of giant cups, together with a solitary cupcake.






Man-made and natural elements were also combined in Dominic Wilcox’s unusual installation called ‘Field’. Wilcox used 400 ethically produced shoes, their laces rising up like blades of grass, to “make a connection between the products we consume and the natural world to which they ultimately return.”








As well as Tom Dixon’s showroom and an exhibition of the works of up and coming designers, there was a curiously quirky ‘art car boot sale’. I had such fun wandering around and chatting to the eccentric characters who were selling their wares.








One couple came up with the inventive idea of selling off stretches of the River Thames, as part of a unique piece of design art. Actually, they were badges of pieces of the Ordnance Survey map of London – but only the areas along the river.







Of course, I felt compelled to buy my bit of land (and river), which was duly made into a badge on the spot. Not so sure of the investment value of this one though.






Another stand offered the ‘lost and found tombola’, where for £2, you could win recycled products made by ethical designers.

I must be lucky as my ticket was a winner and I was presented with this lovely basket of ‘natural treasures’, which seemed curiously appropriate.







At ShopCurious, we’ve our own handmade, eco-friendly treasures, like this uniquely stylish papier-mache ladybird bag (left) – which reminds me, I spotted a ladybird just the other day…very curious, as I’m sure it’s not at all the right time of year?









Perhaps global warming is tipping the cycle of nature upside down, in which case Patrick Morris has come up with a nifty solution for turning gardening on its head. These 'sky planters' are probably a great way of making your fruits fall to the ground as soon as they're ripe, but if the climate’s getting hotter, I just wonder how the plants are going to get watered...

Do you?