The World of Interiors

Kerry J. Dean At 25, Kerry arrived in Mongolia, ‘essentially running away from London – looking for an escape’. After two decades of shooting in the country, it ‘still never fails to bring me to my knees’, she says; in recent years, the photographer developed a particular hankering to capture a ger being taken apart and moved. ‘I’ve long been fascinated by those domestic traditions that are so ceremonial and also so theatrical’ (page 182). Alastair Walker A show at the RA kicked things off for Alastair, who fell for Grant Wood and Edward Hopper, ‘especially how they combine bodies and architecture. I love that intersection of people and built space.’ He came full circle in 2023, returning to the gallery as part of the team behind its Marina Abramović…

The monthly ritual of writing this editor’s letter still feels new. I hope you will forgive me for admitting that every four weeks it creeps up on me; a surprise that really shouldn’t be one. Each month I take myself off to the same café, order a black coffee and orbit around the single question that underpins much of my work. What should I choose to focus on? There is a quote from an essay in the New Yorker by Zadie Smith that I am going to take wildly out of context but which I believe can be applied in this instance: ‘Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?’ To me,…

Tray Chic The Omega Workshops, in its quest to elevate decorative furnishings to the level of fine art, reached for the pure colour of the Post-Impressionists. Bold, brash and highly varied, the enterprise’s designs drew power from Cubism, Fauvism and the Arts and Crafts movement. Lately immersed in a similarly vibrant world of pattern and hue while creating wastepaper baskets (which does them a disservice, being to dustbins what Fabergé ornaments are to eggs) for the private members’ club 5 Hertford Street, Johnny Randoll has now turned his talents to tray-making. Continuing with his usual celebration of colour, the artist has amped up his bamboo chargers with patterns pulled from his abstract painting. Thus, he’s serving up the ultimate transportable décor from his Wimbledon studio – the alpha atelier,…

It’s a well-worn provocation, but one that crops up a lot at The World of Interiors: what one object would you save from a burning building? More often than not, it’s a framed photograph, a cherished toy from your childhood, that dog-eared diary that kept all your teenage secrets… something that bears the indelible imprint of imagination, memory or joy. This year, The World of Interiors Writing Competition is back, and our new theme is ‘One Lasting Thing’. Inspired by Montblanc writ ing instruments, which are designed to endure and be treasured for generations, we are calling on budding writers to craft a short, 500-word story about their most prized possession. Perhaps you’ll choose a beloved book, a piece of furniture handed down from your parents, or a very special…

IHF – as Ian Hamilton Finlay was known in tribute to the Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson, or RLS – was a poet of marble and mutability, force and lyrical sensitivity, Doric columns and the gently nodding bog cotton of our Pentland hillside. His most identifiable style may be the word inscribed in stone, but he experienced language as a Heraclitan and oracular medium. To him, the poem was an exemplary device that had a gift for revealing the metamorphoses words contain. The internationally known garden at Stonypath (known since 1983 as Little Sparta), which fuses the poem-as-object with the composed landscape, was a metamorphosis too. And, as IHF and Sue, my mother, were well aware, without constant vigilance the spot was likely to return into the wild arms of…

I have a friend who has exacting standards in how she looks and what she eats. She is chic in a way that I love but find baffling. She speaks many languages, has lived all over Europe and is an excellent cook with a profound understanding of ingredients. But although she is a generous hostess when she makes dinner for others, I have never seen her overeat. It would ruin her line. She is also very funny. ‘Aye, no,’ she said when I saw her one afternoon in late spring. ‘Darling, I am really in quite a lot of pain. Do you understand?’ She threw me the look of someone who had just had an irresistible but self-destructive encounter. ‘It was…’ she continued, pausing for dramatic effect, ‘it was cherries.…