which was cheaper, lamer and just plain plus quétaine than last year's show. A few notable exceptions were :

• fridgeland, less because I really liked the furniture (I don't think it will age very well) but more because their website made me laugh.
• xera, whose kitchen designs don't actually look like they were tested with honest cooks. Still the zero_2 is pretty clever, modulo the electric burners and faucet that will probably need repairing every four and a half months.
• messier designers, who would do well to flesh out their website if they're seriously looking for companies to mass produce their very nice "Flo" faucet; it's a free-standing, shiny chrome dealie where the arm juts out at a ninety degree angle from the shaft. Its unclear what the potential for dowsing yourself is (why do they never install plumbing at these shows?) but it will probably be a big hit with the less-is-more crowd.
• Namber-pamber-umlaut-gobble, or something like that. I wrote the name down somewhere...oh, here it is: nienkämper. I note, however, that they don't bother to include the nice chair I sat in on their website and that they are responsible for producing tables with those silly spinal cord thingies. Oh well, it may have just been that the sum of the chair and my spiffy Italian shoes was greater than either of its parts.