Alarm-clock week

After Christmas it's always the second week in January that's our real wake up or alarm-clock week. This year is no different.

Many of the important fairs happen now, so this week I've been at Heimtex in Frankfurt, whilst our designers have been building our  HOME/Top Drawer stand at Earls Court in London (which opens this Sunday).

Heimtex is the Worlds largest interior textile fair, and apparently they had 14,000 exhibitors and 371,000 trade visitors last year. This year looked a bit down to me, but it's still a fun fair to visit.

I was mostly interested in the Sun Protection hall, but as much of New House's trade is so international these days I visited many other halls too.

The trip 'away from work', always next to the ECB building.

One of the joys of Heimtex is visiting the Trends Hall, and this year the organizers had spent much on production and display. the colour groups were The Historian, The Eccentric, The Inventor and The Geologist. I was authorized to take pictures, but didn't take so many. however here are a few that I took....

This was in the historian section, where the portrait was superimposed with a talking moving-picture face, bringing the painting to life.

This was the ever-moving gold-foil roof of the Geologist section.

I loved the pianola and 'old laddies in big hats' video in the Eccentric section.

Windmills (made from acrylic and bicycle parts) in the Inventor section.