The last three years I have visited Clerkenwell Design Week I've discovered new things and interacted with interesting people, as per my glowing reviews in 2023 and in 2025. But not this year, because I found it has become more of more a hospitality event with unusual seating, rather than a showcase for design with occasional canapés.
I visited for 3-4 hours on both Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. First stop was the booth outside the Farringdon station where, in previous years, they print the badges for scanning on entry to the participating venues. This year we were encouraged to use our phones. However, I'd had problems accessing the app through the QR linky code thing they'd sent me, probably because I have an old model. BTW: App. That 'word' makes me shudder – sounds like a disease as in, keep away, I've got apps.
The lady said that the QR code was my tickety barcode thing, though that did seem strange to me and at odds with the text that accompanied it. Ah, but yes/no, it seems she was wrong and my hunch was right, because later in the day, the on-screen doobrey wasn't recognised at the entrance to St John's church and the rude geezer there as good as berated me (er, it was fine the last eight places I visited, mate) then, in a very stroppy manner he printed off a physical ticket for me complete with a lanyard I said I didn't need, and said that next year the event would all be completely digital, all delivered in a tone that intimated I was stupid.
Anyway, that exchange was mid-afternoon, let's get back to the beginning... my first visit was to a company on St John Street where I had previously registered to attend a talk. The staff looked confused. It seems the talk wasn't happening, or ever, or it had happened, or it scheduled for another time. They were as confused as I was. Hmm. I'd booked that about 5 weeks ago, yet I'd not had any alerts re a change to the date. Ah well. Plenty more to see...
I wandered northwards and went into a couple of other places only to find that I was completely ignored. OK, so I am a woman well over 50, and I am therefore quite used to being invisible even when I am wearing a red hat or a turquoise jacket, but surely CDW is a promotional event – shouldn't they be keen to talk to potential new clients and customers? In two stores, I gazed intently and inquisitively at products and swatches and perused the leaflets, but the staff stood chatting amongst themselves swigging bottles of beer or sipping from plastic Prosecco flutes, guffawing at each others' anecdotes. They could well have been ignoring their best client ever.
Back outside, I saw something that cheered me up. Something that has nothing to do with CDW – a manhole cover plate with wood paving inside it, directly outside 79 St John Street:
Blimey! I have found other similar examples in the vicinity too (
see my A-Z here) – though it's strange that I hadn't spotted this particular one before. I walked up and down the street looking for more, but no joy, so back to the world of interior design.
At the junction with Clerkenwell Rd there is a company that designs and produces mosaics. But no one was looking at the mosaics, instead they were all eating free pizza and drinking wine or whatever. So, obv, I did the same. I noticed that nobody was actually interacting. No one made eye contact with me. The one person I said 'hello' to looked at me like I was mad. Do these people have friend? A staff member was preoccupied arranging pre-poured Prosecco into two neat rows. I wondered who pays for all this.
Feeling I had travelled to a parallel universe, I was in the need of some decent conversation so I went to visit my friend Thomas who works at at a company making office environments. Good chats (phew!), plus a glass of red and a small plate of salad. Natch.
Along the way I sampled raspberry ice cream and chatted about indoor plants where I was given a small spider plant. Later, people asked me where I got the free plant. Hmm. As I suspected, it's all about the freebies.
I then headed to St John's church where the aforementioned bolshy badge man was stationed, and headed down the stairs to the crypt. But – Ker–POW! I was dazzled by white! I am pretty sure I have never before seen it so shockingly bright down there.
Imho, the bright paintwork is unsuitable for this space. It's likely that it's been applied specifically for events like this. The paint is sloppily applied and doesn't bear close inspection – go check for yourself. I was pretty sure that it hadn't been this bright white in the past – I'd spent a lot of time down there when I was doing the Clerkenwell and Islington guiding course back in 2017, and if it has been like this last year during CDW, then I surely would have noticed. Perhaps they have boosted the lighting down there and this has exacerbated the effect..? My old photos show that the walls were previously painted, but not this shade of florescence. Such a shame. A warmer, more natural, creamy tone would be far better – but why paint stone in the first instance?
By 4.30pm I'd had enough. I decided to come back fresh the next day.
On Thursday, I arrived via Barbican and, having decided I needed a purpose, a theme, I set about finding out about cork for walls and floors. But, here we go again... two more showrooms failed to notice me looking at their samples even though I was the only potential punter in the room.
So I went to see who was exhibiting within The Charterhouse where, I got chatting to a friendly exhibitor. He said it seemed quiet and he wondered if people knew they were there. Ironically, the floor there is mostly covered in cork tiles!
The pic on the left, above, is a terrazzo stairwell within a building on St John's Lane which I found to be more interesting that the products in the showrooms. I wandered around in there completely unnoticed. Again. Perhaps I should take up a life of crime/theft?
Adjacent to St John's Gate I entered a courtyard full of with people chatting and quaffing free alcohol, plus nuts, olives and cherries (very nice, thank you). The space is bordered by companies, one of which has some gorgeous fabrics and textiles.
I happened to spot this black and white image by Alexander Girard framed up on one of the walls here. A few years back I'd bought this a greeting card for a friend's wedding.
I am not mentioning the names of the companies here. Because I cannot recall all of them so best that I omit them all. You'd think the pocket map and guide book would help with that, but no. The format is a mess. Large versions of the same were attached to walls here and there but they are as good as useless because both listings/indexes are sorted alphabetically thereby assuming you know who you are looking for in the first instance. Aaargh! You might think, ooh what was that company I walked past half hour ago. Well, good luck, because you will need to scan the whole thing to find them again.
It would be wise to have a list in numerical order. However, finding a number on the map is difficult because they a
re not consecutive across it, as is the norm. It's horrible. I noticed all this last year too, but glossed over it because the event was so much better. This year, because I was trying to find companies who made certain things, it highlighted the inadequacies of the information.
I headed to The House of Detention, its old prison cells used to showcase lighting companies. In previous years this has always been one of the most vibrant zones with a steady stream of people going in and out, up and down the stairs. But this year it was rather empty, probably because everyone was eating and drinking elsewhere. I tried to find something innovative and interesting to inspire me, and I tried to find people to talk to. But this is what I was met with:
Lighting should be inviting. This environment was alienating. So I removed myself and went to look at the spaces within St James's church on the green. On entering the crypt, I stopped in my tracks when I noticed a really wobbly Heal's logo with horrid letter spacing on a wooden partition, below, left:
Convinced this was a badly applied rub-down (well, it is – there's a lost serif at extreme top left as well as the undulating baseline), I looked at their printed ephemera and discovered that this ugliness is actually Heal's standard identity!
See here. The H and the E look, to me, unbalanced, almost flipped, as regards the position of the cross bar. After all, why employ an E with a base longer than it's top width that creates an awkward space against the slope of the A which is itself divorced from the L – as we used to say, you could drive a bus through there! Also, why is the apostrophe positioned so low? The choice of "typeface" is not good. There's also the issue of the letter-spacey sans serif as a secondary line underneath that looks like an afterthought. Eurgh.
'Where Design Lives." Full point. Statement. Yeah. Seriously? Is it supposed to be ironic? Who 'designed' this guff? How much did they get paid?!
I headed to The Sessions House but couldn't get in – a bouncer on the door said it was closed to visitors now (4.15pm) so, having had enough of all this stuff, I went for a sit down somewhere nice, on a bench under some trees in the lovely St John's gardens, off Britton Street
In conclusion, CDW has always been a schmoozing event but this year it just got silly. It is now just a big jolly – three days of parties catered for by hospitality companies keen to promote their nibbles and slurpables. It's become all about the food and drink – the new products and design innovations for homes and offices are now incidental. In contrast, many exhibition spaces are devoid of people. My heart went out to the companies who had travelled here from other countries only to find that hardly anyone came to see them.
