Last month’s London Design Festival was a huge success, with over 250 partners and 300 events celebrating the best in design and encouraging more than 350,000 members of the international design community to flock to the city.

For me, a particular highlight of the season was watching the collection of live interactive installations at Decorex. I watched in fascination as Front London had their master weaver demonstrate intricate weaving techniques and Watts of Westminster hand block painted wallpaper. This made me think, with manufacturing increasingly outsourced abroad for cheap mass production, what does the future hold for British craftsmanship?

This month’s Expose discusses the resurgence of interest in craftsmanship. Bespoke furniture specialist Rupert Bevan presents his belief that the design industry needs to take responsibility to ensure the continuation of British craftsmanship by promoting its value. Rupert explains: “The ties between design and production need to be strengthened rather than them becoming detached. To me it is the time, skill and attention to detail going into a piece that gives it charm and character.” Read the full article on page 22.

Other issue highlights include The Boss Design Group’s Philip Duggan discussing the growing popularity of office pod systems on page 8, and on page 27 Karen Warner from Interface demonstrates how flooring solutions can help to improve acoustics and in turn, wellbeing, within the workplace.

As always, I hope you’ve found this issue both inspirational and useful. For this resource on the move, you can download Inex’s free of charge app for specification and inspiration at your fingertips. Simply search ‘Inex’ in App Store and Google Play.