Dezeen Wire: French designer Inga Sempé will be Guest of Honour at Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair 2012, which takes place 7-11 February.

Above: portrait is by Anders Hviid

Sempé will create a lounge at the entrance to the fair, where she has regularly exhibited products for brands including Gärsnäs and Wästberg. See all our stories about her work here.

Last year's guest of honour was Arik Levy, also based in Paris, and the 2009 guest of honour was fashion designer Paul Smith.

See all our stories from last year's fair here.

Here are some more details from Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair:

For the ninth year running, an international designer will be responsible for creating a lounge in the Stockholmsmässan entrance hall. This time the task falls to French industrial and product designer Inga Sempé, who has won much attention and appreciation for her designs.

Inga Sempé was born in Paris, France in 1968, graduating in 1993 from the design college Les Ateliers-ENSCI, L´Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, Paris. Since then Inga has focused on the design of furniture and lighting, as well as a variety of objects and textiles. She worked at a couple of design studios before setting up her own studio in Paris in the year 2000. During 2000 and 2001 she was also artist-in-residence for the French Academy at the Villa Medici in Rome. During this period she started working with Italian companies such as Cappellini and Edra, who became her first manufacturers.

“In recent years, our choice of each year’s Guest of Honour has helped explore the boundaries between design and fashion and between design and art. For next year we want to take this a step further, and for the first time turn towards the world of lighting. We have followed Inga Sempé’s work over many years and greatly admired her expressive and varied collection of products. We were particularly impressed by her lighting items", says Cecilia Nyberg, Event Manager, Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair.

Inga Sempé started to work with Swedish companies in 2006. The first of these was David Design and the second Swedish company she worked with was textile firm Almedahls. Since then she has also had work commissioned by Swedish manufacturers Wästberg, Gärsnäs and Svenskt Tenn.

"I am proud to be Guest of Honour, at The Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, because Sweden is a country that gave me many opportunities to work - for instance I work for more Swedish companies than French companies and also I really appreciate this fair, which is not huge, but shows a high qualitative concentrate of good design in a country that shows a lot of culture for it", says Inga Sempé.

In 2003 Inga was awarded the distinction of the “Grand Prix de la Création en design de la ville de Paris” and she had an exhibition the same year at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris.

Today Inga Sempé works with, among others, Ligne Roset, Moustache, Domestic, David Design, Hjelle, Almedahls and Artecnica. She lives and works in Paris.

Previous Guests of honour include Patricia Urquiola, Spain, brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, France, Naoto Fukasawa, Japan, Konstantin Grcic, Germany, Giulio Cappellini, Italy, Ineke Hans, the Netherlands, Paul Smith, UK, and Arik Levy, Israel/France.

The Stockholm Furniture Fair & Northern Light Fair will take place at Stockholmsmässan on February 7-11, 2012.

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