Well-made things on show

RICHARD SIMPSON

Honesty in form: Furniture designers Nigel Groom and Emma Fox Derwin. "Everything the designer does must be conscious and considered in a plethora of contexts," Derwin says.

Design for life: Well-Groomed-Fox's Apt shelving, 2014. Lacquered American ash timber, powder-coated steel.

Table talk: Designtree's Chamfer coffee table, 2014. Made from American Ash timber, matt white high-pressure laminate, formica.

Clean lines: Treology's Haast Credenza, 2014. Matai, aged copper and natural oil.

Emma Fox Derwin and Nigel Groom call their Paekakariki business Well-Groomed-Fox and have shown their furniture in design fairs in Cologne, Germany and Milan, London and Belgium.

Now, along with 14 other designers, they are exhibiting in Modern Revivals: Contemporary New Zealand Furniture, at Lower Hutt's The Dowse.

The exhibits all have elements of that fashionable contemporary interior decorator darling, modernist 20th-century design.

"The thing with mid-century modern design is that people love it," Fox Derwin says. "Iconic designs from the era are still being produced and sold. But more than that, designers love mid-century design."

Fox Derwin lectures in industrial design at Massey University's School of Design as well as being responsible, with Groom, an architectural associate, for pieces such as the Cloak Cabinet, with textile rather than wooden walls, and flexible Apt shelving, both on display at the Dowse.

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Well-made things on show