Through the work of eleven talented designers, Colourful Personalities, curated by art historian and journalist Elien Haentjens, illustrates the craftsmanship, visual vibrancy, and optimism permeating the contemporary Belgian design scene. Citing Le Corbusier’s notion that “colour is an element as necessary as water and fire”, the collection illustrates the way that contemporary designers challenge the minimalistic design trends of years past. In parallel, their chosen media — from textile, to ceramic, to reclaimed materials — and focus on small-scale production remain faithful to the Belgian context.

The products were for sale at the Contemporary Design Market and are still for sale at the Adorno platform.

Atelier Leda is multiple vivid colour atelier established by Leda Devoldere. Her work focusses on textiles within design, interior art and in between. For her first collection of blankets and cushions, Leda started from a series of collages and drawings, in which she played with the differences between two and three dimensions. For this new series Veld, she continued the same working method.Veld is the result of Leda's love of color combined with a playful composition of planes and lines. 

The unique pieces, such as Hekate, that make up the Reflected Matter collection by Avandi, were made using raw and neglected production materials. The rawness of these natural materials is highlighted rather than hidden using brass and mirrors, cut and shaped from scraps. Ariane van Dievoet is the designer behind Avandi, a studio she founded to create timeless, long lasting objects in collaboration with local makers. Exploring new techniques — both traditional and inspired by new technologies — to create her pieces is part of Ariane’s process. In this collection, contrasts are created using textures and shapes, underlining the past story of the materials used.

For her new limited series of blankets, Emma Terweduwe  threads new life into artisanal crafts of the past, combining her sensibility for strikingly contemporary graphic designs with the traditional process of jacquard weaving. In collaboration with B&T Textilia — a high-end local weaving company — Emma presents two new plaid blankets woven in wool, mohair and cotton, each uniquely finished by hand.

For the Contemporary Design Market, painter and illustrator Gilles Mayk Navangi has created a collection of papier-mâché objects, inspired by African culture and the traditional know-how of the continent. He has focused his research on African architecture. At the same time, he was interested in the relationship between African tribes and their motifs in daily life. This research has resulted in stools/objects, made out of papier-mâché and illustrated through his graphic universe. 

After a career of more than 25 years in the lighting business as a lighting architect, Koen Van Guijze decided to put his ideas of his own lighting designs on paper. This resulted in a brutalistic yet contemporary collection of basics for walls, ceilings and floor lamps. He works with with ‘authentic’ materials such as steel, brass, concrete, cork, ceramics, sand, and paper to create one-of-a-kind collectible lighting pieces and site-specific projects. His approach to design combines brutalism with a sophisticated attention to details.

The work of Peter Donders is possibly the best example of how traditional craftsmanship and 3D design work together. In Parametric Sand, his approach is still a manual labour of love, using a process based on algorithmic thinking to 3D print sand into a tactile and dynamically-shaped vessel. Peter Donders worked for fifteen years as a craft-furniture designer and maker before beginning to integrate computer-based tools into his work. Now he combines his background as a craftsman with his expansive technological knowledge — the computer is now fully part of his production process.

Pierre De Valck will present Side Cabinet with Stone, created with a Thulite stone. In order to create his designs, Pierre oxidized and waxed aluminium. Fascinated since childhood by archeology and collecting historical artifacts, he creates unique, contemporary pieces which harness the power of geological processes. 

Pieter Bostoen designed Proton, a unique ceramic mask. Pieter is a multi-talented creative with a background in interior design. He recently founded ‘Antimaterie’ where he researches the ancient craft of ceramics and how to translate this into a contemporary context. In both brands, a unique design language can be recognized. Graphical and geometrical elements with a clear emphasis on craftsmanship and combining traditional and modern techniques. 

Studio Nas is the creative studio of Anas Kereknaoui. The object TL fruitbowl, from the series TL collection, is made with twelve TL-tiles. TL collection is about three spatial tiles where you can create several objects with. The objects can go from functional to sculptural. The idea is to get creative during a conversation while you are adding, turning  and twisting tiles. The common thread of Anas's work is modularity and is driven by soft colors.