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Visitors to this year’s Interior Design Show ascend to fair level through a vast, stringy curtain dubbed “Strip Tease” by Toronto’s RAW Design. Composed of approximately 1,300 long strips of felt that collectively tip the scale at 3,700 lbs, the purpose of the installation is not at all apparent until you enter the show and see it from the convention floor where it transforms into a giant screen for video and still image projections. (Photo above by William Suarez).

There were lots of great booths and exhibits at IDS 12 and one of my favorites was from FLOS lighting where the beautiful people were congregating to drink and schmooze and bask in the minimalist perfection of the display.

Shown like art in picture-perfect cutouts, the FLOS lights literally glowed. Pictured below are Marcel Wanders’ Can Can suspension lights; in the centre you can glimpse the squiggly purple diffuser (also available in clear or amber) that makes the light so unique.

Also working a mostly white theme was architect/designer Pierro Lisonni, recognized as IDS 12′s International Guest of Honour. Lisonni was the star of the Conversations in Design speaker series on Thursday and his By_Lissoni Lounge featured furnishings from FLOS, Living Divani and Lema.

The sublime dining vignette below is a Lissoni composition featuring shelving and furnishings from Italy’s Porro.

If Lissoni was channeling the clouds, IKEA was riffing on black with touches of cream in its expansive mock-condo exhibit, below.

Elte was another retailer that really brought it this year with a dark and luxurious multi-room installation that felt very young and now. The spaces featured the company’s new line of carpets woven from unravelled silk saris; the ravishing rugs had a surprisingly affordable price point at around $5,400, quite a bit lower than offerings from other carpet specialists showing at IDS.

From the luxurious to the more mundane, I was nevertheless impressed by the carefully composed display from MOEN with its tiered taps and note-perfect lighting.

Sometimes the experience of an exhibit is helped enormously by the sales rep giving the tour as I discovered at Caml-Tomlin‘s impressive pavilion. Account manger Steve Laboissonniére was genuinely enthusiastic as he reeled off the specs for the company’s brand new heart-shaped Volta bathtub (below left, $5,200) that’s crafted in white acrylic and is deceptively light-weight considering its ample proportions (72″ x 55″ x 55″). I also loved the company’s Matrix corner shower stall with doors that part in two directions and slide along a brilliant roller apparatus.

Another sales guy who seemed to actually be enjoying himself was Seamus James Butterly, below, from Toronto’s own Resource Furniture. I guess it’s easy to put on the dog and pony show when you’ve got such a pretty pony — Butterly was having a blast wowing visitors with beds that dropped down to reveal built-in storage, then swung back up to unfurl a desk or swung into walls, revealing open and closed storage — ingenious! If you’re spending $300,000 on a small condo, another $10,000 to double or triple the usage of that space seems like a damn good investment (366 Adelaide Street East, 416.901.7555).

I appreciated the pop of colour at the centre of a four-sided exhibit from Ceramics of Italy, featuring tile specialists Appiani and Ceramica Vogue (below) among others.

Alfred Sung Outdoor also laid on the colour with warm tones of orange, pink, mauve and burgundy to enliven its otherwise white sofascape.

Water feature and living wall specialist TropicsNorth constructed a magnificent oasis towards the back of the exhibition hall that was literally a breath of fresh air.

And industrial chic specialist Metropolis Living turned heads with its darkly dramatic space featuring a vintage drafting chair hung by block and tackle from an arcing steel beam.

There was more to see on the IDS floor but that gives you a pretty good taste of the show if you missed it.

All photos by Christopher Jones except the first image by William Suarez

This is NOT a comprehensive look at this year’s Interior Design Show in Toronto. By 11 pm Thursday, after an entire day of talks and exhibitions — including a guided tour of the Gladstone Hotel’s annual Come Up to My Room — I was knocked down and dragged out. Lineups dissuaded me from touring the always popular IDS demonstration spaces (How Do You Live?) and I completely missed the DesignGenNext, the show of promising student work from Ryerson, Sheridan, OCAD, Humber and George Brown.

Even without those pieces of the puzzle my IDS experience was exhilarating. This year, I started with the Studio North exhibition of new work by Canadian designers and Prototype, a launching pad for innovative new products. The recyle and repurpose theme was popular again this year as it has been for much of the past decade. Brothers Dressler stretched their own limits with a dining suite, above, that combined salvaged wood and metal Mart Stam chair frames as well as showstopping lighting. Artist Gilbert VandenHeuvel calls himself The ReCycler, a clever allusion to the fact that he repurposes bicycle parts to create eye-popping furniture and lighting, below.

In a similar spirit is the work of Toronto designer Ronald Isai, above, who explores furniture, sculpture and lighting with rigorous precision.

Some of my favorite work this year featured curvaseous woodwork and none was more astonishing than the pieces displayed by Quebec’s Kino Guérin, below.

I was so taken with Guérin’s S Shelf, below, that I proposed it to my latest decorating client; alas, by the time I got an enthusiastic thumbs up on the purchase, Guérin had sold the shelf to someone else. Fortunately, he has another one already started in his workshop and he kindly agreed to cover the shipping costs from La Belle Province.

Almost as jaw-dropping was Fishtnk Design Factory’s beautiful Cortical Chair, below, which was drawing appreciative oohs and awes. (The company’s website appears to have been highjacked so I won’t direct you to it.)

Toronto-based Woodlight is also bending wood with surprising results and I was suitably impressed with their warm, glowing pendants.

Nomo Creations‘ Orbital table was another crowd pleaser with its deceptively simple elliptical rings table. This kind of short run production piece does not come cheap, however — the Orbital retails for $1,699.

I was especially impressed to chat with a couple of designers who have abandoned established careers to pursue their creative impulses. Ottawa-based Christopher Solar used to be a software designer but his hands were restless and his mind longed for more material challenges. He’s a self-taught designer and accomplished woodworker and when he decided that his Danish Lounge Chair and Ottoman, below, should have a woven seat and back, he taught himself to do that, too. Solar isn’t at IDS shopping for manufacturers or distributors, he wants his designs to remain handmade, not reduced to lowest common denominator parts and processes. He told me he hopes to connect with designers and well-off consumers who can afford the luxury of artisan furnishings, crafted with passion.

Glass artist Caroline Hébert was a school teacher whose love of glass led her to create fused glass installations like the one she’s showing at IDS, below. I hope interior designer Amy Lau discovered Hébert’s small booth because Lau consistently favours this kind of artesanal glass work in her high-end designs.

I was delighted to finally meet Toronto’s Tahir Mahmood, below, whose creative and colourful floor and table lamps (available through Pimlico, Caviar 20 and other select retailers) have gained a lot of attention locally. At IDS 12 Mahmood is pushing into unexpectedly neutral territory with a new floor lamp series, below left, and he’s working with new materials like brass and copper.

And speaking of new materials or at least materials used in surprising new ways, Dupont Corian really pushed the envelope this year working with the UUfie design team to create the remarkable flower-like chairs below.

From gossamer to angular, I also loved the Eyeful coffee table, below, from Alberta-based IZM.

I have loads of other observations and images to share but I have to hit the road this morning so maybe I can do a part two post tomorrow. Until then . . .

All photos by Christopher Jones

I was lucky enough to start my Interior Design Show whirlwind yesterday morning with talks by top New York designer Amy Lau and 1stdibs.com founder Michael Bruno. Between the two speakers, Lau kindly signed copies of her lavish new book, Expressive Modern, and Bruno was one of the fans in line with yours truly to get his copy autographed. Lau was utterly magnanimous: we chatted as she signed my copy and asked for recommendations of things to see and do while she was in Toronto. I steered her to the Gardiner Museum of ceramics, which I was pretty sure she’d love.

Bruno was also friendly, not to mention impossibly handsome, as he posed for a picture and we shared a few words. Yes, I was starstruck at IDS.

Toronto’s Interior Design Show (IDS 12) kicks off this morning with a slate of design heavy hitters and a media preview in advance of this evening’s big opening night party ($60 and worth every penny!). Tomorrow is trade day, then the doors open to the public on Saturday and Sunday ($22). This truly is my favorite event of the year and I’m palpably excited to see what’s new and what’s next in interiors, something IDS is incredibly good at presenting. As always, I’ll be paying special attention to the Studio North and Prototype exhibits where Canadian talent and cutting edge designers face the industry and the public in search of customers and critique. Above are pieces from Studio North participants Nomo Creations, Tahir Mahmood and Tyler Mackenzie Craft & Design; below are Prototypes from Anna Buechin (Moonlight Shade) and Derek Mcleoud (Sumo Lounge).

My coverage of this event tends to be fairly exhaustive but this year I’m traveling out of town on Friday so I won’t have time for the in-depth blogging of years past. I will, however, be up before the birds tomorrow to deliver a report prior to taking my leave. If you’re in the Toronto area, my strong advice is that you book at least half a day this weekend to wander the enormous exhibition halls of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. You will not be disappointed; I never am.

Online vintage furniture sellers are popping up like dandelions in spring. The explosion of hunter/collector TV shows like American Pickers has spawned a thousand cyber cottage industries populated by Goodwill junkies who think they can make a go of it online. I wish them all good luck but I suspect many of them will wind up with basements full of junk and a server bill to boot.

I predict a happier ending for Susan Elliott of Tribute Decor, however. Susan has a few things going in her favour — she’s an auction addict who learned the ropes as a kid tagging along with her parents and she has a pretty good eye. She follows the blogs so she stays abreast of what’s on trend and she has an intuitive sense of what will sell IF she can get it for the right price, thus allowing her some margin while still passing decent deals onto her customers.

See the mahogany art deco chest above? Susan sold it for just $395, which I happen to think is a steal for a piece of this quality. In fact, I liked it so much I purchased it for my latest decorating client who will use it as a tallboy clothes dresser. The gorgeous mahogany bar, below, just went up on Susan’s site priced at $495.

The clean-lined mid-century coffee and side table set, below is also still available for $285 for the set.

Susan’s real secret weapon is her location — she’s based in Kingston, Ontario, almost equidistant from three of Canada’s biggest markets — Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. She’ll deliver for a nominal fee ($95 to Toronto) and unlike Craigslist, she’ll take the goods back if you’re not completely satisfied. “I want my customers to be happy and to recommend me to their friends and family,” she says.

“I’m careful at the auctions to really look things over,” she tells me, “and I make an effort to photograph and explain anything that’s not quite perfect so my customers understand exactly what they’ll be getting.”

Unlike some dealers, Susan isn’t bound to a particular style or era; on her site right now you’ll find Sheraton, Shaker, art deco, industrial, mid-century modern, even post-modern like the Knoll Handkerchief chairs below ($600 the pair). Susan isn’t greedy and knows that to make a living she has to keep the stock turning over, which means you should probably sign up for Tribute‘s email alert or check the site frequently — there are a lot of “sold” tags on her merch so best to see it when it’s fresh.

Like many sellers, Susan’s collecting habit was getting out of hand and her husband started joking that a TV crew was going to show up and feature them on an episode of Hoarders. Hence the launch of Tribute last May. So far things are going well and posts like this one are bound to help spread the word. That great looking blanket box/TV stand below is priced at $175, but it probably won’t last long.