Pli shared a stand with AnotherCountry, Scene and Assemblyroom at Clerkenwell Design Week from 24-27 May. Together we are ASAP, a collective show from British furniture design companies which do all our manufacturing in the UK. It was a good show: quick, simple, and productive. Our thanks go to Paul at AnotherCountry, Gemma at Scene and Pete at Assemblyroom for being such a pleasure to work with during the hitch-free run up to the show, and for being great company while the show was on last week. Hopefully we’ll be able to work together again.

A.S.A.P (Another Country, Scene, Assembly Room & Pli) feature in the July edition of Onoffice magazine as part of the Clerkenwell Design Week issue. Is was great to be a part of the collaboration of like–minded British furniture labels, with the feature in Onoffice testament to the marketing strength that came from co-operation rather than competition. Get the issue or read more on their on line blog.

Alex’s Pennyfields chair has been selected by Germany’s Zehn.de web magazine as one of the top 10 beautiful bamboo creations. If you’re interested in bamboo designs, there are some great pieces in this top 10 list, including lighting, home wares and even a bicycle. Hit the link to find out Alex’s score…

Die 10 schönsten Bambus Kreationen

Pli has teamed up with Another Country, Assemblyroom and Scene to mount a collaborative exhibition of UK-designed and made furniture at the Clerkenwell Design Week on 24-26 May 2011.

You’ll find us in the Shed in front of the famous Farmiloe Building on St John Street, Clerkenwell – this is the centre point of the whole exhibition, which stretches across the many showrooms and gallery spaces of London’s creative quarter.

We’ll be releasing lots more information after the Milan Furniture Show has finished, at the end of this month. In the mean time, save the dates – we’ll see you there!

We’re thrilled that Anthea Bailey has joined Pli as our Architecture & Design Sales Manager. Anthea will be the first point of contact for distributors, dealers, architects, interior designers and facilities managers: anyone, in fact, who needs to source eco-friendly contract furniture.

Anthea brings a wealth of experience and knowledge of contract projects from her years with Wilkhahn, Knoll and Heal’s as well as working as a freelance interior designer. Most recently, prior to joining Pli, she was A&D Sales and Marketing Account Manager for Wilkhahn. Anthea studied 3D Product & Furniture Design at Plymouth so she knows the industry from both ends: in fact her own designs have been exhibited at 100% Design and sold at Heal’s.

I’m sure many of you will have the opportunity to meet Anthea in the coming weeks and months. She can be reached at anthea@plidesign.co.uk or on 020 8670 6857.

Alex Whitney, Head of Design at Pli, made it to the final shortlist of 3 for the 2011 Homes & Gardens Awards – Eco category. The awards were given out on Tuesday 15th March at the British Museum, Bloomsbury. The category was won by Samuel Wilkinson in conjunction with Nicholas Roope of Hulger for ‘The Plumen’ light bulb. This excellent design also went on to win the coveted ‘Brit Insurance design of the year 2011’. The other runner-up was the studio behind the Lining Energy Monitor: Greta Corke, Richard Woods and John Sawdon Smith Silver. Congratulations to all involved and hopefully Alex will have better luck next year.

This time last year (April 2010) I had just started the development of the Pennyfields chair. I had just returned home to New Zealand to see my niece and I must have sat on every chair from London to Wellington and back again, for research. I had a good idea of what makes a comfortable dining chair, but when I looked at each chair from a production point of view, I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to accomplish things on a tight budget. There was an amazing variety of manufacturing methods which were used to make the chairs I inspected. I soon started to get a picture of what materials and processes I could to use.

The Pennyfields chair with the Whitechapel slim dining table

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£7 for adults on the door or £6 etickets bought in advance from www.modernshows.com

Pli is bringing its furniture range to Midcentury.Modern for the third time on Sunday 20 March from 10am until 4 pm. It’s our favourite selling exhibition of the year, where we get to meet our customers face to face and offer bargains on end-of-line stock, prototypes, ex-display furniture and one-offs.

“Created as an unpretentious one stop shop for busy people who love collecting beautiful pieces for their homes, you can find everything for the eclectic abode from an original Eames rocker to a contemporary ceramic from a hot young British designer. Our shows attract a whole host of design luminaries. Regular visitors include Sheridan Coakley from SCP, the Conran design team, V and A, Barbican and South Bank shops buyers, designers Russell Pinch, Jonathan Adler, Orla Kiely, Margaret Howell and Matthew Hilton as well as famous artists including Dinos Chapman and Mike Nelson have been spotted brushing their hands over the rosewood and teak. More importantly it is a fun day out. Go straight through this link to find out http://www.modernshows.com/docs/shows/midmod/index.html“

See you there!

Ideal Home Show’, March 11th – 27th

“In the year of Coronation Street’s 50th anniversary, the Ideal Home Show has taken one of the nation’s most iconic homes, shared by Ken and Deirdre Barlow, and given it the ultimate refurbishment in a before-and-after transformation…”

Channel 4′s George Clarke has transformed the old No.1 into a modern, eco home with Pli’s Reee, Grass, Whitechapel and Pennyfields ranges on show throughout. The furniture looks fantastic in this amazing, purpose-built home.

Now couldn’t be a better time to book tickets with our fantastic 10% off advance ticket rate offer. See details below…

Quote ‘IHSV11’ when you book online or call 0844 415 4144. A £1.50 per order transaction fee applies and must be booked before 26 March. Children aged 15 and under go free when accompanied by a paying adult.

This offer gives £11 weekday or £13 Weekend tickets

There’s an article in this month’s edition of OnOffice magazine called ‘Green Rinse by Frederika Whitehead featuring the experience of MARK, InterfaceFLOR, ThinkErgonomix, Orangebox and Pli. The article focuses on Environmental Product Declarations and the role they play in creating a transparent view of the relative environmental impacts arising from different products. Pli supplies self-assessed EPDs in line with the ISO 14025 standard for all our products. The print article (page 93) features images of our products, including the new Pennyfields chair. The online article is here (text only).