2013 saw the 4th annual celebration of craftsmanship in the form of Wallpaper* Handmade, where designers, craftspeople and manufacturers are brought together and commissioned to create one-off pieces especially for the exhibition.

Acting as patron, client and creative director, Wallpaper*  commissioned their favourite designers, artists, craftsmen, makers and manufacturers to create unique furniture, fittings, food stuffs, fashions and more.

The exhibition was intimate, slightly eccentric and the unmade interior was the perfect contrasting backdrop to showcase all the highly finished and well-crafted objects.

Leclettico is a shop and gallery space owned by Claudio Loria –  and specialises in one of a kind furniture and object d’art.

Always looking to the future and pushing the boundaries of design, Wallpaper* Handmade is a complete celebration.” … Tony Chambers, Editor-in-Chief, Wallpaper*

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A Selection of Other Projects:

Tokyo-based French architect Emmanuelle Moureaux has worked with Schönbuch to create these ‘Mille-Feuille’ storage units with sliding drawers of varying depths positioned up each cabinet.

“Imagined as thin layers of colored sheets scattered in the air, then settling randomly on top of each other”, these cabinets are a vibrant stack of blocks that open to show spaces that you might not have imagined at first glance.

Lola Lely has been working with master patineur, Derek Bayley from Bronze Age art foundry in Limehouse, East London to create the Patina candlesticks.

Bayley is experienced in the art of patination and this collaboration resulted in some unusual and striking colour patinas for the lighting pieces.

Design heavy-weight Naoto Fukasawa created the ‘umbrella for life’ with Ombrelli Maglia, an umbrella company which has been producing brollies since 1854 and now working with a modern designer to use their craftmanship and Fukasawa’s design to appeal to a new audience.

This marble installation by Michael Anastassiades and Henraux was inspired by those red cellophane fortune-telling fish you get in Christmas crackers, pushing the technological limits of what’s possible with marble to the limit.

This marble installation is representative of chips curling in heat but created in marble on a far larger scale showing the natural movement that these chips would create.

A collaboration was undertaken between Harry Winston’s artisans and industrial designer Stephen Burks for a very unique jewelry box.

Carved out of a single piece of quartz, it is as precious as the jewels it holds.

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The Re-Imagined Chair by Nina Tolstrup was created in collaboration with Marc by Marc Jacobs.

19 Greek Street worked with resident designer Nina Tolstrup to create a unique collection in partnership with Marc by Marc Jacobs, which also saw a show at the Milan flagship store. This piece was a variation on previously shown Re-imagined chairs.

Welsh designer Bethan Gray surprised everyone with a new collection of tabletop items made in collaboration with bespoke-stone company Lapicida, a partnership which sees both companies moving in a new direction and one that has started some future projects together.

Bethan’s designs saw two marble materials in light and dark finishes combined to create a strong, graphic design with patterns ranging from circular to an enlarged herringbone effect.

The stone tableware set was inspired by the striking black and white stone configurations found in historic buildings such as the Amalfi Cathedral and the San Giovanni Battista in Mogno, Switzerland.

It’s quite a departure from her current work, so it was really exciting as an example of what can happen when designers are set a brief like this one.

Karl-Johan Hjerling and Karin Wallenbeck have worked together previously so coming together to work with George Smith to create the Högalid sofa named after a town within Stockholm.

Mathias Kiss drew and painted the marble patterns onto this seat using an old oil technique he learned as an apprentice at the French Guild of Craftsmen and Artisans that dates back to the Middle Ages, Compagnons.

Innovative clothes horses seemed to have been a bit of a trend in Milan this year – this one was designed by Jonah Takagi for Another Country and painted in their signature Pigeon Blue.

Canadian designer Philippe Malouin has been experimenting with architectural materials for some time and worked with Will Yates to create this range of concrete Tupperware-moulded containers.

Inspired by London’s brutalist architecture, they have been sandblasted to reveal the aggregate rough finish.

Klaar Prims essentially draws in glass, creating coloured strings that she weaves and melts together before forming the whole thing over a mold, in this case into a simple bowl as seemingly delicate as spun sugar.

Tej Chauhan who created the iconic Colombo telephone was asked to work with long established Fiskars, famous for their orange handled scissors to re-imagine the traditional tool box and create a series of tools for the home that change the way we think of these practical objects.

Chauhan wanted to change the way we think about these objects as something that can live alongside other household objects that have been moved from the back of the cupboard and now proudly on show