• Will the massive (single-chamber?) inflatable at the entrance survive the show?
• Bent threaded rod is played out, who started this in the first place?
• Boltmaxxing/hardware fetishism is today where sloppy welding was four years ago.
• Maybe covid restrictions prevented people from learning to weld in school.
• Manneristic use of aluminum profiles has peaked.
• More than a few references that maybe don’t entirely understand or respect the source material.
• Concerningly monochromatic clothing.
• Big fluid pants and jackets hanging on despite slim-fit resurgence warning signs elsewhere.
• 14-inch MacBook Pros lying around everywhere. Silver, not grey.
• Heavy wood: retvrn with a v.
• Miss previous years’ format pairing contemporary and 20th century pieces.
• ”Lamps are a giving medium.”
• Things that looked like they should be soft were often hard.
• Touch, carefully.
• Better to show a candleholder/incense holder that’s been visibly used.
• Cakes and ceramics share surface treatments.
• What’s going on with Switzerland?
• Apparently a heavy Paris design week presence.
• French reportedly more useful than Dutch in design fair circuit.
• Russians!
• One American exhibitor?
• It’s disgusting to use a bunch of styrofoam peanuts in your packing, let alone your scenography — go clean garbage off a beach.
• Did everyone start hanging posters like that after the Wolfgang Tillmans show?
• Sponsors have moved upstairs.
• Champagne only for guests of Rado watch company issued gold stickers.
• Said guests done up in the universal style of watch industry people.
• Two separate Campari stands, one with a baroque dispenser.
• Said dispenser does not account for ratios, assistance was frequently requested.
• Would everyone here, to a person, rather be in Milan?
• Many, many categories of exhibitors.
• Turning out the lights in your area really helps intimacy.
• Wall text lauds fair’s reach in Brussels and New York, but Paris and London too…
• Some designs presented interchangeably in wood, stone, metal…
• Shape not derived from material — “everything’s computer”.
• Credit to anyone who goes to the trouble of 3D printing a nice transformer case for their LED lamp.
• Many lenses, were these all by the same person?
• Did I see this at Dutch Design Week?
• The person at the Maison Dandoy stand will generously give you as many biscuits as you’d like.
• Don’t we recognize that gallery name…
• Are the stickers the same as last year?
• Affiliated tours and events booked up quickly this year.
• Less than a block away, you’re back in the normal Brussels centre atmosphere.
• Friend we met up with after says we didn’t have much to report.

My favourite piece was once again a lamp shown by Vasto of Barcelona, this one an intricate ultralight by Max Mila Serra. It gave Nathan a small electrical shock.

Thank you to Collectible and artecetera for the invitation, here’s hoping for another year without a purge of the VIP list.