The World of Interiors

Get The World of Interiors digital magazine subscription today for the most influential and wide-ranging design and decoration magazine you can buy. Inspiring, uplifting and unique, it is essential reading for design professionals, as well as for demanding enthusiasts craving the best design, photography and writing alongside expert book reviews, round-ups of the finest new merchandise, plus comprehensive previews and listings of international art exhibitions.

Contributors

The World of Interiors

Editor’s Letter • July 2023

ANTENNAE

What’s in the air this month

A Class of Their Own • The sun is out, the blazers are off, so it’s time to take tables, chairs and other furnishings outside – and into a disused school’s Modernist pool and gymnasium – for a lesson. Today’s subject: stylish alfresco living, as instructed by Miss Miranda Sinclair.

Trip the Light • Have lamp, will travel… If you’re feeling feckless about the flexless, allow David Lipton to lead the way with these portable possibilities

Faces in the Crowd • Bare-knuckle boxers hobnob with prime ministers in one of the National Portrait Gallery’s redesigned rooms, the works hung cheek by jowl in a tribute to salon style. That’s just one distinguishing feature of the institution’s refit. Equally striking, reports Tim Smith-Laing, are its new period-themed woollen walls, which aid visitors’ navigation thanks to ‘enfilades of colour’.

Your Strata for Ten • Could anything be simpler than layers of cake, fruit, jelly, custard and whipped cream? Well, that really depends on how you like your trifle. Keep it basic by all means, says Daisy Garnett, a sworn fan of the stuff – but for the sake of some extra effort and ingredients you could have a showstopper guaranteed to wow stacks of guests.

Dessert Roses • For pud to be really good, a vessel is essential. Whether for mousse, trifle or syllabub, David Lipton’s picks will give you a lovely afters taste

Stars Aligned

Bodies of Evidence

Privy Counsel • Take it from us: it’s well worth outsourcing your outbuilding design to the masters of the past. For one, Peter Joel Harrison’s pattern book-style Garden Houses and Privies: Authentic Details for Design and Restoration (2002) is a compendium of pre-eminent American examples – and, with a dash of imagination, offers a shedload of models for modern projects, from garden offices to art studios. Listen well to Mitchell Owens’s proposed elevations

The Pitter-Patter of Feats

Network • Clare Holley chooses the best outdoor merchandise and events worldwide

VISITOR’S BOOK

PIQUE DISTRICT • What with no rainfall, steep mountainsides and active volcanoes in the vicinity, Filicudi attracts only the hardiest visitors. Still, lured by Memphis founder Ettore Sottsass to the wild Aeolian island, Yoyo Bischofberger created a home here, much to the scepticism of the few remaining locals. But, like her stunning terraces of cacti and succulents, the art collector faces the conditions with spiky fortitude.

GROTTO FABULOUS • A château can be as baroque as you like but it’s absolutely nothing without a picturesque cave somewhere in its precincts. Louis XIV and the mad monarch Ludwig II both knew it – so too does that interiors sorcerer Jacques Garcia, whose vast Normandy estate is now equipped with one that’s been more than a decade in the making. Ye gods, says Mitchell Owens, this folly de grandeur even comes with an amphitheatre of deities.

GROWING PAINTS • After quitting her job as fashion director at La Rinascente, Tiziana Cardini began to feel the squeeze of her ‘chic but austere’ flat, which no longer suited her penchant for overgrown gardens and romantic brushwork. Happily, a converted artist’s studio in Milan would give her ample room for manoeuvre – especially once a...