The World of Interiors November 2021

1 Café culture: add a European touch with Devol’s handmade aged-brass ‘Café’ curtain rail. It’s available in four lengths, from 60cm to 200cm, from £80, including brackets and clips. Ring 01509 261000, or visit devolkitchens.co.uk. 2 Magnetic attraction: it’s what holds the extruded metal tube housing the ‘DOI’ fitting’s light source to the iron circle, which is suspended from a ceiling by wire. Visually and technically elegant, it was designed for Luceplan by multi award-winners Meneghello Paolelli Associati. Elements in brass, black and white can be mixed or matched; from £414. Ring 00 39 02 662421, or visit luceplan.com. 3 Twelve years after she founding Arjumand’s World, Idarica Gazzoni (WoI Sept 2021 and Feb 2015) continues to observe life through the eyes of her fictional heroine. Shown here are two of many…

I FIRST ‘discovered’ master woodcarver Hugh Wedderburn during a lockdown walk through London. In the hurly-burly of Borough, its roads askew, old abutting new, I turned down a street and pondered why there was a beautifully patinated wooden shop front amid the neon parade of pizza joints and Chinese takeaways. Drawn to the anomaly of this old-world wonder, I peered through the window to see a weathered figure in a leather apron at a bench, chisel in hand, surrounded by exquisite creations of his making: putti, plumes and brambly roses, all miraculously coaxed from wood. He flashed me a peace sign, and before I could scuttle off like the mortified snoop I was, he stepped to the door for a chat at his ‘actual-reality interface’. Despite the technological branding, Hugh’s ‘interface’…

IT’S OFTEN TRICKY to find a balance between the reassuring permanence of the old and the excitement of the new, but VitrA’s latest bathroom range, created in collaboration with world-renowned designer Tom Dixon, gets it just right. ‘Liquid’ is a range of showers, taps and sanitaryware, furniture, tiles and accessories that’s both traditional and contemporary. Inspired by Victorian plumbing, with its chunky taps and solid fittings, Dixon utilised VitrA’s design and manufacturing expertise to create an innovative look that he describes as ‘contemporary without being of the moment’. The result is fun yet functional, with today’s ubiquitous sleek look swapped for something rounder and more playful. ‘I wanted the collection to look like a kid’s sketch of a bathroom basin or a tap,’ he explains, ‘displaying a clear logic and simplicity…

BRIDGET RILEY: WORKING DRAWINGS (by Bridget Riley; eds Alexandra Tommasini and Rosa Gubay; Thames & Hudson, rrp £45) This isn’t the first time that Bridget Riley’s creative process has been written about. In 1965, the art theorist Anton Ehrenzweig got in there before anyone else with a critical essay on her work in Art International following correspondence with Riley on that very subject. This new book goes much further, however, devoting page after page to her preparatory drawings, studies and, most importantly, conversations with the artist herself. This exploration brings a renewed understanding of how eye and mind operate together to perceive her visual imaginings. Of course, the experience of her work is not just visual; it is physical and emotional too – something that is emphasised here. To properly understand…