Visited Design Market

Helsinki Design Week is once again going on together with Habitare (home furnishing expo). Our family is sick, except me, so we have been staying mostly put in home. I’ve been able to finish a lot of stuff, as nothing has lured me away from the computer.

Of course, there was an exception. I visited Cable Factory on Saturday morning to visit Design Market — a unique place to meet the makers and buy stuff directly from them.

The place was packed, as you can see from the photo. We’ve visited the event once before, so we already have some of the stuff on sale. There are great prices, especially on textiles and small items. This year I bought a set of towels with about 30% of their retail price and an Iittala pitcher. The pitcher fits perfectly to our fridge, and there are only about thousand made — all will be sold in Design Market.

The only minus in the event is that you usually cannot pay with anything except hard cash. My wallet had €2, so I couldn’t shop that much. The towels could be bought with a bank card, so I queued about ten minutes in the line, just to notice that my card didn’t work with their terminal, as there’s no chip in it. Fortunately, people do trust strangers in Finland and they will send me a bill later. I got the towels with me.

Then I asked the local café to give me €20 for the pitcher from my card. I had to buy a sweet, as you just can’t hand out the money… So the final price of the pitcher was €20,20.

If you are visiting Helsinki in fall, check out this place. You may make real finds on contemporary Finnish design.