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This week, Admiral Lord Nelson's statue is towering over Trafalgar Square as usual, but he's sharing the space with some unusual playthings: a massive chess set with gaudy two-metre-tall ceramic pieces created by the Spanish designer Jaime Hayon to kick off the London Design Festival.

“It is important for design to have use of the space, to have its moment,” says Will Knight, the festival's deputy director. “A million people will see it.” It's a rare moment in the spotlight for London's sophisticated design scene – which will be taking over spaces across the city this week, from the square to the venerable Victoria and Albert Museum and beyond.

London's contemporary furniture designers, like Tom Dixon and Ron Arad, have huge international reputations. Yet it's usually hard for visitors to sample local design; the scene occupies a series of hip enclaves away from the centre. “The key is to see it as a series of districts,” says design professor and curator Gareth Williams. These places, like post-industrial Clerkenwell, Shoreditch and Deptford, aren't on the radar of the average visitor. To get a flavour of the festival, you can schlep to each of them, stumbling across work like Assa Assuach's delicate crustacean-like lamps in Rabih Hage's gallery in Kensington, or a live “battle” between graffiti artists and illustrators on the walls of empty shops in the suburb of Hornsey.

Or you can just visit the Victoria and Albert, one of London's landmark museums. Its barnstorming exhibition of contemporary design, Telling Tales, demonstrates why London is at the heart of furniture design at the moment.

It may seem like an odd match. Dating back to the 1850s, the V&A is a history-minded place once known as the Museum of Manufacturers and dedicated to the decorative arts. Contemporary furniture – with its high-tech production methods, and minimal forms rendered in plastic and metal – generally is very much focused on the present day.

But the show suggests that the line between past and present may not be so impermeable.

“The idea of the V&A was that by looking at history, you could be inspired for today,” says Williams, curator of the show. “Recently, the institution's made an attempt to reconnect the past with the present.” And the work in Telling Tales implies that design art, a limited-edition, couture approach to designing furniture, has a lot in common with the decorative arts the V&A was set up to champion.

Telling Tales draws links between past periods and contemporary work by Atelier van Lieshout, Maarten Baas and Jurgen Bey. Then there is star designer Tord Boontje, who mentors young talent at the nearby Royal College of Art. Boontje's fantastical Fig Leaf wardrobe, covered in 616 hand-painted copper leaves, is one of the highlights – and its sense of continuity with historic forms is apt, since Boontje has said he spends a great deal of time in the V&A's 17th-century tapestry collections.

(He's not alone in using the museum as a resource. Fashion names like John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood are also known to frequent the clothing collections.)

The designers' emphasis on decoration is typified by the dark humour of Studio Job's Robber Baron Table: The top is a smoke cloud made of inlaid bronze, and below it, a model of a 19th-century factory – with smokestacks – forms the legs.

Just like London as a whole, it builds something new on a foundation of history. And that approach to design looks set to hold the field in London for a generation to come, now with South Kensington as its home.

Special to The Globe and Mail

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If you go

LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL
Through Sunday; www.londondesignfestival.com.

WHERE TO EAT
Tom's Kitchen 27 Cale St.; 44 (20) 7349 0202; www.tomskitchen.co.uk. In a Spartan white interior, Michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens offers simple British food with an emphasis on organic meat reared close to the city.

WHERE TO STAY
The Sumner Hotel 54 Upper Berkeley St.; 44 (20) 7723 2244; www.thesumner.com. A brand new hotel, part of an 1820s Georgian row of houses. Deluxe rooms are custom-designed with Ligne Roset furniture.

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SHOPPING
Brompton Design District
The dialogue between past and present in South Kensington makes for a rich creative environment, and it is also translating into retail. Three years ago, part of South Kensingon was styled the Brompton Design District, by its owners, one of the city's oldest family-led, land-owning estates. The concept has gained traction, with shops like the Scandinavian design specialists Skandium (86 Marylebone High St.; 44 (20) 7935 2077; www.skandium.com) taking root.

One attraction has been pop-up shops during the Design Festival. In 2007, retailer Libby Sellers took over an empty storefront to feature works by design art stars. This year, the Gallery Libby Sellers is in an underground parking garage, with work by Dutchman Dick van Hoff. Sellers has effectively turned the garage into a home, complete with chimney. Van Hoff uses industrial materials, baked ceramics and copper to create almost quaintly domestic items like stoves and carriage clocks. Next door, the shop MINT (Alexander Square; 44 (20) 7225 2228; mintshop.co.uk) moved here in July. It will be featuring a new show for the London Design Festival called Mint Escapes, which features work like the unusual stitched illustrations of Lisa Connolly, created with masses of black thread and calico. T.A.