The World of Interiors July 2022

TANIA COMPTON Garden designer Tania points her green fingers to the pages of WoI, joining the team as a contributing editor. With a penchant for weeding, ‘especially raised beds, first one half then the other’, Tania applies her methodical eye to a recent job in Greece. Drawn to the garden by ‘the irresistible opportunity to indulge in some deeply aromatic planting’, she digs up this terrestrial paradise on page 116. ISABELA ONO The apple did not fall far from the tree for Isabela, who now leads one of the most important studios in Brazil: that devoted to Roberto Burle Marx. Her father, Haruyoshi Ono, was the great landscape designer’s creative partner, ‘and conveyed to me his passion’. For this issue Isabela analyses one of the Brazilian’s gardens she has ‘a close relationship with’…

Thanks to dual citizenship I was fortunate enough, during the pandemic, to travel between lower Manhattan and the Cotswolds when possible. In the former I was a short walk from Washington Square Park, once intended for the perambulations of Edith Wharton’s old New Yorkers, latterly a gathering place for protesters and revellers drawn from all points of the city and its boroughs. In Gloucestershire I sheltered in the shadow of the golden valleys immortalised by Laurie Lee and took coffee breaks to literally smell the roses. In both places it was landscapes – wild or human-tamed – that sustained me through those dystopian months. This issue celebrates the sustaining beauty of the world of exteriors, from Marrakesh to the Umbrian hills. The stories have been orchestrated with the invaluable help of…

WHAT DO YOU get when venerable Austrian glass-maker Swarovski and Bavarian porcelain company Rosenthal fall into bed together? The answer: ‘Signum’, an appetite-whetting tableware collection with looks worthy of the Wiener Werkstätte or the earlier Vienna Secessionists. The similarity is indeed no coincidence. Giovanna Battaglia Engelbert, creative director of the former company (pictured), sought inspiration in the Austrian art movements, particularly the graphic work of Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann et al, and talks admiringly of their ‘modern approach’. The result of her time-travelling design quest is a celebration of l’art de la table, one available in an array of colours with hand-painted gold accents and Swarovski’s signature octagon motif. ‘I hope that people will have a great time with their families and friends around a beautiful, decorated table – as…

Sicily, awash with sunshine, is never far from the mind in the world of Dolce & Gabbana, no matter the actual location. That’s especially true of the company’s first boutiques dedicated to homeware, which are to be found in Milan at Corso Venezia and Via Durini. Inspired by the carretti siciliani, those horse-drawn carriages that act as vehicles for a distinctly Mediterranean decorative mania, these cabinets of hot, chequered prints (from £38,500) will bring a shot of kaleidoscopic brightness into any home. Dolce & Gabbana Casa, 7 Corso Venezia and 23 Via Durini The kitchen makes its way into the garden with Officine Gullo’s outdoor collection. Fully customisable and completely weatherproof, this modular configuration (from £9,050) allows you to remain, in the words of singer/songwriter Jona Lewie, ‘always in the kitchen…