Today I trundled off to the exhibition centre at Paris Nord Villepinte with the sun shining on Paris. 

This morning I took on the huge Hall 7. While there weren’t as many awe-inspiring designs in this hall (a lot of it was devoted to very beautiful textile designs), there were a few standout pieces.

I stopped by the Artvivant stand where Aussie Terry Bayliss was joined by designer Eun Il Lee (AKA Nil). They had a number of new textiles on show featuring Nil’s signature combinations of natural fibres and materials with synthetic fibres. They’ve also got a new range of wallpapers which echo a trend I noticed elsewhere towards 3D textural wallpapers.

A few stands over I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of an amazing rug that my friend Mandi Keighran had heard about during her recent trip to Belgium’s Interieur – the Palette rug by Sophie Lachaert for Nodus. In the shape of an artist’s palette, it’s made from 266 colours – the most ever made – with 950,000 individual knots. Up close it is amazing, very intricate and beautiful.

They also had the Barbed Wire carpet by Studio Job on show and the hand-knotted limited edition ‘Roots’ – this one is pretty magical.

Melogranoblu had some beautiful new delicate blown glass forms, in clear and frosted glass.

I spotted this colourful little sidetable piece from French company Daha in a small stand in the middle of the hall. Made from a series of L-shaped veneered timbers, each piece has different colours and patterns – eclectic, but well worth a mention.

Bertrand Fevre’s ‘Big Porcelain Sculpture’ for Raynaud was on show (following its successful exhibition last year). This huge teacup made up of hanging porcelain segments is something to behold.

Baxter’s stand featured their latest collections and made me want to curl up on one of their sofas and have a long nap! Their furniture is oversized and seriously comfortable, true luxury. But it doesn’t take itself too seriously, with exposed seams and some playful lighting accessories.

For a statement piece however, you couldn’t go past SICIS – ‘What’s that?’ you say, ‘a mosaic tile company making furniture?’ Yep, these art pieces continue the SICIS approach of making art with their tiles being used in soft furnishing. These are no shrinking violets!

From here I headed over to hall 1 where I checked out 2 of the trends exhibitions as part of Intensité – Maison et Objet’s trends report. 

The first, ‘Un-plugged’ curated by Francois Bernard, pulled a number of designs from throughout the show to draw comparisons between the ‘locavore’ movement in food and a wider trend toward local and individual production (much like the trend identified by Harald Gründl at imm cologne).

The second exhibition by Elizabeth Leriche, ‘Haute Tension’ used contrasting colours – red, white and black to show how our senses are being heightened and bombarded. This exhibition hints at a more “intense and thrilling” world to come, but it was also a great assault on the senses.

Maison et Objet is a big, exciting fair featuring all those products that have truly become more than just ideas, now in full production, as well as emerging designers and smaller companies showcasing their wares to the world.

If my 3 days here are anything to go by, there is an exciting year ahead for interiors. Bring it on!