Quirky designs on display at Clerkenwell exhibition

A car of the future, a swing at your dinner table and a garden shed where no one can hear you tinker.

Just some of the inventions on show at a three-day festival of design, which has opened today in Clerkenwell.

Swinging London is in Clerkenwell this week, the little village in EC1 has an identity formed centuries ago around the printing and bookbinding crafts. Today it houses artisans and designers from every field all exhibiting in the buildings ancient and almost modern.

The reason that Clerkenwell grew up in EC1 is its proximity to Smithfield Meat Market.

The glue used for binding books and later for sticking architectural plans and furniture was made from animal bones boiled down.

Handmade objects of beauty need careful marketing to drag the rich away from expensive tat to bespoke pieces.

Everything in Freya Sewell's world is made from wool felt, even her iPad nestles inside its protective coat.

They are both exhibiting in what were once cells which housed the pickpockets and streetwalkers of Dickens London.

Other designers bring life to the Farmiloe Building, once a glass factory now showing students impressions of the next Jaguar car.

The lights are designed by one of Clerkenwell's most commercially successful residents Claire Norgross who designed the iconic Habitat lampshades.

The exhibition ends at close of play on Friday.