The Blog

New products and services, interesting shops, ideas for your garden, our pick from design fairs, and other things we like…
HOW WE BUILT THE FRENCH HOUSE
Hand-crafted lighting, earthenware pots, carbon steel pans, raw brass and copper taps and sinks, marble basins: suppliers are artisans or small family-run firms producing timeless designs for The French House. In this post, the founders Mark and Elke share with...
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What I Learned From Reading Mad About The House: 101 Interior Design Answers
Kate Watson-Smyth has been writing about interiors for 20 years and she has helped clients to style their homes. In her new book, Mad About The House: 101 Interior Design Answers, she shares her expertise and offers a wealth of...
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Reclaimed Leather in Interiors
Adam Hills and Maria Speake, the creative team behind interior design and architectural salvage practise Retrouvius, have a reputation for transforming ‘one man’s trash into another man’s treasure’, reusing cast-off materials in unexpected ways. Their Harrow Road warehouse is a...
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10 Tips For Designing A Home Office
Home offices are essential in the age of kitchen table entrepreneurship, freelancing and working from home. Design of a home office shouldn’t be an afterthought; environment has a significant effect on your mood, sense of wellbeing, and productivity. Here are...
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Family businesses: on working together
We’d like to introduce you to some of the family businesses listed on TheHouseDirectory.com. It’s a tenuous path for family members to work together without conflict and we celebrate companies that have successful inter-generational working relationships. We asked the different...
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Amy Somerville at Milan Design Week 2019
Amy Somerville are proud to have taken part in the Palazzio Della Meravigle joint exhibition at the historic Museo Bagatti Vasecchi as part of Milan Design Week 2019. The pieces launched at the exhibition were created especially for the ‘Sala...
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Top tips for building a brand & developing your business
Polly Williams, the multi-award-winning Designers’ Advisor, founded Camberyard, an interior design business development consultancy, in 2015. Inspired by the belief that collaboration is better than competition, she also formed the Camberyard Collective, a select group of like-minded designers, brands and...
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Antique, Vintage or Collectible: What Is The Difference?
Ever wonder about the distinction between antiques, vintage and collectibles? Florence Martin of Westland London, architectural antiques specialists, guides us through the differences. All too often, the words antique, vintage and collectible are used interchangeably, but there are distinctions between...
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Ceramic art: Craven Dunnill Jackfield collaborates with Frances Priest
Frances Priest’s ceramic art installation at Edinburgh Hospital is engaging patients, staff and visitors with its visual warmth and texture. Completed in December 2018, the work is known locally as The Tiled Corridor. Priest tapped into local, Victorian architecture for...
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Rattan Weaving with Lulu Lytle of Soane Britain
Lulu Lytle on Rattan Weaving for the Furniture and Lighting collections of Soane Britain. Why did you become interested in rattan? I can’t pinpoint precisely when I fell in love with rattan, other than adoring a 1920s portrait of my...
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Alternative Flooring Collaborates with Ella Doran
Alternative Flooring has joined award-winning designer Ella Doran to tell the transformational tale of British wool at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP). The Sheep to Seat, Fleece to Floor exhibition follows the journey of wool from the sheep which graze the...
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Cox London on the Polypore Chandelier
Nicola and Christopher Cox, the husband and wife team behind Cox London, have created the Polypore Dish Chandelier, a handcrafted, four-tier organic light made with thousands of hand-pulled Venetian glass leaves. 1. How, Chris, did you and Nicola meet? We met...
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SALVESEN GRAHAM IN COLLABORATION WITH DAVID SEYFRIED
Introducing the award winning four-piece furniture collection by Salvesen Graham, in collaboration with respected furniture maker David Seyfried. This collection, launched in 2016, was one of The World of Interiors highly commended collections of that year with only two pieces. Since...
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CHILDREN’S FURNITURE TO LAST THROUGHOUT CHILDHOOD.
If you are decorating a nursery or searching for children’s furniture, you may not wish to opt for an age-specific range. Instead, consider buying furniture that will last throughout childhood. Here are some ideas from Go Modern who distribute the...
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Nushka’s Silk Jajim Cushion Collection
Andrew Damonte, founder of Nushka, shares the story of the new Silk Jajim Cushion collection with TheHouseDirectory. “Every now and again a fabric presents itself as the perfect cushion fabric. We are always looking for fabrics which have a slightly...
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