Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s booth that won Best Stand. Courtesy Carpenters Workshop Gallery & Pad London 2018

PAD London returns to its traditional Mayfair spot for the 12th edition of its week-long showcase of design, art and craftsmanship from the best European galleries. The fair’s unique combination of midcentury, antique and contemporary works is on display, with new and established talent offering a broad view of creativity and craftsmanship.

The winners have been announced for this year’s prizes; 18 Davies Street has scooped the award for Best 20th Century Design with Ron Arad’s steel ‘This Mortal Coil’ (1993). Best Contemporary Design goes to Galerie Negropontes for Etienne Moyat’s ‘Arabesque’ panel, (2017) and Carpenters Workshop Gallery scoops Best Stand. These highlights aside, we select our top picks to look out for…

Amelie Marei Loellmann at Galerie Gosserez

With an interest in the intersections between contemporary design, fine art and theatre, Amelie Marei Loellmann has been developing a body of work which blurs the boundaries between product design and experimental material research. Presented by Galerie Gosserez, her Dis-/_Jointuers project features an exploration of hard and soft materials woven into experimental carpets where solid becomes flexible and heavy becomes light.

Sasha Sykes, Peter Petrou Gallery

Artist and sculptor Sasha Sykes’ work is based on foraged materials, which she incorporates in poetic furniture pieces. An example of her experimental prowess with the natural world is the ‘Gyre’ room divider (pictured), featuring different species of seaweed that the Irish artist has gathered over the course of a year and a half, arranged in a sculptural form inspired by the work of Eileen Gray.

Ingrid Donat at Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Carpenters Workshop Gallery gave Ingrid Donat carte blanche to create an immersive installation, featuring a floor-to-ceiling reproduction of her vision of a home. The booth, which has won the prize for Best Stand, features pieces from the past few years as well as new furniture created by Donat for the project, plus a selection of favourites from the gallery picked by the artist. Her distinctive art deco style is reflected in a series of pieces that combine tribal influences with the artist’s signature opulence. ‘My approach is about imbuing bronze with warmth and vitality by borrowing scarification techniques and visual motifs from tribal societies,’ she explains.

Hervé van der Straeten

The French designer’s participation to the fair is usually one of the most anticipated, as his angled pieces always manage to surprise and offer a novel point of view on geometric compositions and combinations of shapes and volumes. This year’s talking point will no doubt be his ‘Borderline’ console, whose iridescent shapes feature shades of pink, green and yellow, and seem to melt into the wall behind.

Rowan Mersh at Gallery Fumi

The delicately mesmerising works of Rowan Mersh have become a welcome staple at the fair. With his unique approach to the natural world, the artist reimagines complex geometric forms using organic materials. This year, Mersh experimented with brass for his ‘Fluens Aeris’ wall piece (pictured), expanding his creative scope to new material concepts.

Guglielmo Poletti at Rossana Orlandi

The balanced shapes of Italian designer Guglielmo Poletti caught our eye back in 2016, when he presented a collection of resin pieces for his Design Academy Eindhoven graduation. Since then, Milan-based gallerist Rossana Orlandi has worked with the designer to take his compositions and ideas further. At PAD, Orlandi presents a new series by Poletti, a set featuring a table, lamp and chair, whose slim forms are based on the balance of elements. §

‘This Mortal Coil” by Ron Arad, (1993), winner of Best 20th Century Design. Courtesy 18 Davies Street & Pad London 2018

Gallery Negropontes won Best Contemporary Design with Etienne Moyat’s ‘Arabesque’ panel (2017) Courtesy Negropontes & Pad London 2018