Have you nailed the interiors trends of 2023?
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Painted paper shades
Japanese lanterns get a joyful rejig this season. The trend for paper pendants takes a painterly turn with this sculptural limited-edition Formakami design by Jaime Hayon for & Tradition, £300.
Globular glassware
Feeling tipsy? The trend for surrealistic stemware that mimics melting glass — as pioneered by glass artist Miranda Keyes’s hand-forged Ball Knoped collection for Fels Farm Shop at London Design Festival — will have guests quizzing their levels of inebriation (£240).
Mannish interiors
Rooms take on a richer flair — think Mayfair gentlemen’s club without the stuffiness. Soane Britain’s rattan Kymo cabinet in scarlet teamed with its sgraffito linen (£250 per metre, pictured edge of page) by dealer and designer Adam Bray nails the eclectic aesthetic.
Oh, Vienna!
The movement to channel? Art nouveau with a distinctly postmodern air. Mickey, India Mahdavi’s swirling Viennese design, transports the classic bentwood lounge chair straight to Disneyland. From Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, from €3,910.
Full flower
The romantic botanicals of Rameau Fleuri wallpaper are being revived from the riches of the Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler archive (£696 per roll). This trellis pattern is bang on the English country-house-style trend that’s currently in bloom.
Terracotta trophies
Ceramicist Frances Palmer has fashioned unglazed clay containers (from £1,800) inspired by the ancients — and artists Cy Twombly and Brâncuşi — to set against de Gournay’s exuberant Mughal paper collection.
Crafty cocktail cabinets
Drinks cabinets are the new artisanal statement-maker. The more hand-wrought and rough-hewn the better. Tiled Welcome drinks cabinet inspired by the ceramic adornments of Britain’s railway stations, by Matthew Raw, £26,360, from The New Craftsmen.
Block stars
Woven hand-block-printed linen textiles are having a moment. Whether by Drusus Tabor for Schumacher or by designer Jermaine Gallacher, they tell a modernist tale reminiscent of the naturalistic abstract wonder of English artist Ben Nicholson.
Clowning around
Bold, chalky and sophisticated, the new big-top stripes are defined by their earthy and offbeat palette. Pavilion table lamp in Stripe by Palefire Studio x 8 Holland Street, £770, exclusively from 8hollandstreet.com.
Mineral of the moment
Malachite gets a kaleidoscopic retool. This high-octane hand-painted and lacquered table, POA, by PPCDV (the newest incarnation of design duo Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos) takes sitting-room psychedelia into the stratosphere.
Sit here
Counter stools go back to the bronze age. Anna Karlin’s wrought-iron seating forgoes the frou-frou of filigree with a sculptural, glyph-like silhouette that’s elegantly elemental, £4,300 each, from Anna Karlin Furniture + Fine Objects. annakarlin.com.
Art of glass
Glass outshines ceramic as the playful tile du jour. Balineum’s translucent designs borrow from the aquatic, poppy hues of David Hockney’s Californian swimming pool in A Bigger Splash. Dive in from £2.85 per tile.
Tray chic
Peter Mikic’s brilliantly glossy Bordeaux-toned drinks tray for The Lacquer Company calls to mind the Dazzle ships of the first world war. The aesthetic challenge: to conjure a cocktail to visually compete. In three sizes, from £295.
Corduroy cool
Corduroy supplants bouclé as the most wanted textile: tactile, enduring and perennially chic — especially rendered in rose-petal pink (BDDW Fabric #243). Seen here on the cast-blackened, bronze-footed Abel sofa, from $21,300, from BBDW.
Women who weave
Bauhaus is back — did it ever go away? — but this time it’s the women artists who are looming large. Gunta Stölzl’s 1923 flat-weave rug spotlights the textile talent of the German school’s first female master (Karl Lagerfeld was a fan). £8,500, from Christopher Farr.
Bright young things get lit
Modernist marvels feel new again. Jamb’s art deco style ‘Astor’ chimneypiece in black marble and onyx lends deeply glamorous Soanian drama to the drawing room, £27,500 + VAT.
The colour purple
Make it reign: Purple, that most regal — and marmite — of pigments is making a majestic comeback. See the colourful kente-influenced embossed nubuck leather ‘Chester’ sofa by British menswear designer Ozwald Boateng for Poltrona Frau, £13,230 + VAT.
Power dressing — for floors
Inspired carpets: Rugs hark back to the 1980s with primary-hued, hand-woven jacquard floor coverings that pack a geometric punch. Flower Grid wool rug from Chateau Orlando by Luke Edward Hall for cc-tapis, £3.764.
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