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The World of Interiors

Editor’s Letter • September 2024

ANTENNAE

What’s in the air this month

Tray Chic • It’s not just the food and drinks you serve that matter, says David Lipton. It’s what you serve them on

Rolls with the Bunches • Floral wallpaper refashioned as individual flowers? It doesn’t get much better, or indeed meta, than that. To showcase lush exotics and busy meadow repeats, we’ve borrowed the form of poppies, tulips, amaryllis and more. Cross-breeding makes for happy marriages, with hybrids guided by Jayne Pickering.

A Knife Less Ordinary • To put it bluntly, every cook needs kit at the cutting-edge of function and design. So allow us to introduce some of the sharpest young blades about town – all of them arranged in frankly unexpected ways. Less stainless steel, more stainless surreal, perhaps (as well as brass and gold).

Finger on the Pulse • Here’s a hot tip: don’t overlook your legumes – least of all the lentil, a chef’s best friend. Those savvy to the seeds’ potential can reap the flavour rewards of simmering them down into cheering, soupy perfection swirled with spices, or else deploying them in all kinds of pairings, from fish to fennel, in their shape-holding puy or castelluccio forms. At any rate, in case of emergency, we’ve got Daisy Garnett on speed dal.

Tagine Learning • Need educating in the ways of the North African two-piece stew pot? Let Rose Eaglesfield lift the lid

Iris Republic • Sir Cedric Morris’s passion for the plant is feeding Hamish Bowles’s own gardening plans

Profiling

A Flea in Your Eye

Isle Witness • If you’re thinking of settling on a certain Atlantic archipelago, pleaded John S. Humphreys, for pity’s sake, don’t go overboard. Helpfully, his 1923 Bermuda Houses records many in the simple early Anglo style he favoured over louder, later imports: mansions and mock-palazzos galore. For all the finger-wagging, it’s a handy guide for hot climes worldwide, testifies Mitchell Owens

Pryde and Prejudice

Urban Mythos

Network • Clare Holley chooses the best merchandise and events worldwide

VISITOR’S BOOK

HOPPING MAD • As he stands in his living room beside a thumping great rabbit sculpture, there’s a sense Shinsuke Kawahara is used to being thought of as a bit of a queer fish. The plans for his seaside house in Amanohashidate did indeed baffle the local Japanese builders – but for reasons beyond the owner’s obvious bias for bunnies. In fact, it was his rough-and-ready irreverence that dropped jaws. Walls formed from low-grade factory plywood? Faux tatami mats painted in place in scribbly brush strokes? Screens made from… cardboard? Learning about his various hare-brained schemes, Augusta Pownall is all ears.

THIS SEPARATE ISLE • Despite residing a stone’s throw from Notre Dame, fashion designer Giambattista Valli exults in not living in Paris. Is he in Seine? Just so. To be precise, home is a flat on the Ile Saint-Louis, its eau de nil walls subtly evoking the river that flows audibly past. Filled with fine art and grand antiques, the beautifully renovated apartment is as sophisticated as any on either bank – but is it actually in the capital? That’s a bridge too far, as Hamish Bowles discovers.

DISSENTING SCALES • In rural Wales, the Nonconformist chapel touched all...