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edited by Craig Kellogg -- Interior Design, 11/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

Mobile, by MIranda Watkins, circle 321 November

Piano Rug by Annemette Beck Designstudio, circle 322.

Sculptures by Mari Ruth Oda, circle 324.

Glass-ring curtains by Ruth Spaak Glass. circle 327.

New Bend Cocktail Table by Burnt Toast, circle 329.

Rex Upholstered Chair by Kvist. circle 330.

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If bright Wedgwood blue skies hadn't been enough to raise spirits during the first annual London Design Festival this fall, then the nonstop openings, exhibitions, receptions, lectures, tours, and parties would surely have kept visitors looking on the sunny side. So would the avant-garde furniture, lighting, and accessories at 100% Design, the fair at the center of the activity. A shiny stainless-steel mobile by Miranda Watkins summed up the mood, affably blending late-century modernism with British minimalism in a way that would flatter a London house by John Pawson no less than a Los Angeles pad by John Lautner.

Another retro-inspired exhibitor was Ruth Spaak Glass. Reinterpreting love beads, the namesake designer presented loose curtains of candy-colored glass bits threaded together with miniature plastic zip ties.

Besides attracting attention with room dividers of wispy woven African plant fiber, Denmark's Annemette Beck Designstudio won hearts with the keyboard-inspired rectangles of a Piano rug in tufted wool. Meanwhile, the right angles of sanded-ceramic sculptures by Mari-Ruth Oda, a Japanese artist who now lives in the U.K., were shot through with biomorphic holes.

Peter Harvey London went with bio-curves for the birch Tongue Module chair. The bends in New Bend, a folded-acrylic cocktail table by Peter Masters of Burnt Toast, put a slightly sharper edge on the curve theme.

Some of the best seating hailed from the Continent and beyond. Danish company Kvist showed an upholstered Rex chair, the result of a competition for a contract-quality "throne" suitable for the prince of Denmark. We also liked Italian manufacturer Ferlea's Pop lounge chairs and the Lebanese Nada Debs Furniture & Design's Floating stool, an acrylic box holding a cube cushion covered in houndstooth wool.

British seating included several reissued classics by Lucian R. Ercolani. His 1958 Butterfly 401 chair, which features a curved plywood back and a Windsor-style base, is now produced by Ercol Furniture, the original manufacturer, in collaboration with fashion designer Margaret Howell.

Quintessentially English Isokon reintroduced the Penguin Donkey, a 1939 piece launched shortly before World War II put a stop to the Allied manufacture of domestic goods. A four-legged plywood end table named for its original marketing concept, the unit was sold to book lovers as a home for up to 90 Penguin paperbacks.

From powerhouse SCP came Michael Sodeau's Plus Modular sofas—their beech frames covered in multi-density foam—and Nava's Times Square– Numeri Soft clock, reminiscent of the typeface and color scheme of the TKTS Broadway ticket booth in New York.

It was nature, on the other hand, that inspired the mosaic abstractions of Paul J. Marks as well as the cloud shape of Nimbus, Mosley Meets Wilcox's pendant fixture of polystyrene balls and resin. Another lighting design, Half-Pipe by Jo Vincent, captivates in stripes of kiln-formed glass.

Moooi presented Jasper Morrison's cork Corks stool—a deadpan worthy of Claes Oldenburg. And the humor became more Monty Python–esque with Isaw Products's Lazy Cleaner stool, shaped like a mushroom brush with polyester "bristles."

Lazy Cleaner's rather energetic brand of fun epitomized the experimental spirit at Designers Block, where Isaw Products exhibited among 50 other emerging talents. Located in a tea warehouse in Shoreditch, across town from 100% Design at Earls Court, this alternative show draws the London equivalent of New York's young Williamsburg crowd.

The relatively venerable 100% Design, established in 1995, isn't resting on its laurels, however. A Moscow spin-off is set to debut in March. Sign us up, if you please.