Home Interiors

Virgin Vie At Home welcomes the arrival of a brand new collection for Autumn Winter 2008. The new collection offers a gorgeous selection of home accessories, enabling us to give our homes a seasonal update with minimal fuss. With a strong Autumnal feel, the new collection features beautiful accessories in a distinctive series of floral and leaf designs.

Young and talented, 27 years old Lisa Bengtsson was born in a little town called Gnosjö in the south of Sweden. Since she was little, she always felt that she was meant to be a designer so she could communicate her feelings through her work.

Kodak has announced a feature-packed wireless digital frame series boasting innovative capabilities and accessibility to online content. Available in 10-inch and 8-inch versions, these frames will wirelessly connect consumers to photo-sharing sites including KODAK Gallery and Flickr, and Internet content manager FrameChannel, a service of Frame Media, Inc.

A packed saleroom saw fiercely competitive bidding for a number of paintings in Bonhams Old Master Paintings sale today, including a recently discovered portrait by Thomas Gainsborough, (British 1727-1788), which sold for £198,000 – over double its pre-sale estimate. A painting by the Dutch landscape artist Gaspar van Wittel (1653-1736) also fetched an impressive £826,400. The sale itself made a total of £2,876,960. The painting - a previously unrecorded work by Gainsborough – was bought by a private European collector on the telephone.

Nitin Goyal has had a loyal customer base of real interiors devotees since the launch of the label in 2004. The beautiful hand crafted detailing such as intricate smocking, quilting, pleating and stitching, lush colour palettes and the use of the finest materials, such as sensuous silks, wools, cashmeres and velvets make his products must have items for anyone wanting to bring true luxury into their homes. It is no wonder then that the London based designer is gaining international recognition from stylists and journalists alike.

Kährs has been awarded winner of the Contract Flooring Award for Hardwood Flooring for the seventh year. Sponsored jointly by Contract Flooring Journal and the Contract Flooring Association, the Award was given for Kährs complete range. Votes by CFJ’s flooring contractor readership were registered in a ballot earlier this year and the Award was presented at an exclusive luncheon hosted at Woburn Abbey.

The super rich and international buyers are bolstering the arts and antiques industry as signs show the credit crunch is beginning to bite, says the RICS UK Arts and Antiques Survey.

Graduating design student Charles Bramwell has designed the perfect party sofa system designed to save space in modern homes. Charles, who graduates BA(Hons) Furniture with Product Design from De Montfort University in Leicester next week (14 July), has developed an adaptable seating system to address the ever-shrinking average room size in houses.

Ateliers Allot Frères of France, a specialist in top-of-the-range reproduction furniture, will, for the first time, take part in the Maison & Objet trade show, which will be held in Paris from 5 to 9 September 2008. The company specialises in reproductions of works from French master cabinet makers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Allot Frères manufactures a range of over 600 designs, featuring a wide range of lacquers, finishes, fabrics and hand-sculpted models in Regency, Louis XV or Empire styles.

An increased cost of living, at present, means that many of us may be spending more time at home this summer. With the belief that home is the most important place in the world, IKEA have some great products that will brighten up your home without breaking the bank.

In Bonhams sale of 20th Century British Art yesterday – Wednesday 2 July, a wonderful and humorous oil on board, Granny with her Pet Mouse by Beryl Cook fetched more than double its estimate to realise a world record price of £69,600 for a work by the artist. A second work in the sale, The Dolphin also soared in price to realise £66,000, also smashing the previous record price of £28,800.

The fairly traded and sustainably sourced Jogya lounge chair from The Fair Trade Furniture Company recently got the holy seal of approval when Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited The Salisbury International Arts Festival in June. Archbishop Tutu was welcomed to Salisbury for the Peace Weekend where he was invited to talk with ITV News anchorman, Mark Austin, to discuss his ministry of peace and commitment to humanitarian causes.

Konnie Huq - the queen of crafts - may have left her Blue Peter days behind her, but she’s still putting her skill and creativity to good use with her latest project – the Kodak Creative Lab. Konnie is urging the British public to dig out photographs from the shoebox under the bed, pull out jpegs hidden away in folders on computers and turn them into something creative that friends and family will want to keep and share.

Worcester, part of the Bosch Group has developed a new generation of central heating boilers that not only reduce CO2 emissions, but can also reduce fuel bills. Three quarters of the energy used in the home is for heating and hot water which accounts for about 73% of a home’s CO2 emissions.

From the 26th June, look out for a special delivery of homeware to give your abode a new lease of life. With a host of different styles there’s furniture for all tastes. Interior trendsetters should look out for the large range of Oriental furniture including chests and cabinets from £49.99.