The art world and home decor have been circling each other for a while now–first famous designers, from fashionistas to architects started designing items like toasters (Michael Graves for Target) to sponges (Betsey Johnson for 3M); then artists began to make furniture in limited editions and sell them through galleries. The logical next step is home stores that look like art galleries, a trend that began in New York with Murray Moss’s eponymous emporium in Soho, and has spread across the country.

You’d think in rougher economic times going upscale wouldn’t be the smartest business decision, but as the Los Angeles Times points out (in a recent piece that covers local examples like Twentieth and Limn), a little pretension–some storeowners have taken to calling themselves “curators” and furniture displays “installations”–and the better prices that go with it can be a survival strategy in a downturn. –Paul O’Donnell

Technorati Tags: art, gallery, furniture home decor, design, Betsey Johnson, Michael Graves

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Here’s a decorating problem that’s really, I admit, a personal problem: I desire chairs I can’t afford and develop irrational attachments to ones I don’t need. For instance, after shopping for months for a coffee table to go in the glaring empty space in my living room, I’ve given up. I decided to get a couple of drum-shaped thingys, maybe from Pier 1 (though I wish I could afford a few of these Stone Stools designed by Marcel Wanders for Kartell or a Marga cube from Box Furniture.)

But when I get to Ikea in search of a simple rattan blob that might fit the bill, I end up enthralled with their langourous, almost comically spare woven rockers, like the Gullholmen chair, above. They are made from banana fibers, which are completely sustainable, and plus, a great conversation starter to distract guests … as they  dismayedly look around for somewhere to place their drink. –Paul O’Donnell

Technorati Tags: coffee table, rattan, chairs, living room

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The past few years in home design have been all about ornament, decorative frills and, above all, color.

Welcome to the backlash.

This year every forum for design, from the new furniture collections to the hot colors for stone and marble to the Maison & Objet show in Paris, has shown a taste for black and white. Call it, as one observer did, a yearning for absolutes in unsteady times. Or perhaps homeowners’ are rebelling against the challenges of designing, and living, with bright hues.

One thing the trend doesn’t represent is a rejection of the new ornamentation: many of the best new pieces in black and white boast lines that dress up a room and boggle the eye, like Brocade Home’s lace cut cabinet, above.  If anything, some designers are emboldened by the idea that their wildest ideas will be balanced by the combination’s classic formality. You read it here first, in black and white.

Technorati Tags: color, home decor, Brocade Home, furniture, marble, cabinets

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Ladies, when was the last time your man listened when you talked about plush, hand-knotted rugs made from banana silk, in colors that complement Creamy Pearl leather seating? He will now. The prototype Lincoln MKT Concept car unveiled at at the North American International Auto Show last month features an interior that incorporates some basic elements of good home decorating. Tone-on-tone colors, ambient lighting and a continuous console unifying the space makes for an unexpectedly intimate setting–so intimate that Joann Jung, one of the three women responsible for the new design says she feels like buyers are visiting her home.  ”It’s like opening my own room to the public.” she says. –Paul O’Donnell

Technorati Tags: cars, automobile, car show, Lincoln MKT, concept car, car design

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Nothing on the home design scene is more amazing or pleasurable than watching the comeback of wallpaper. Hip, artistically relevant, technologically driven: these aren’t words we ever thought we’d connect with the fusty world of wallpaper. Yet boutique fabric and paper firms like Britain’s Timorous Beasties (whose patterns include oddly sexy butterflies and bees) or Twenty2 , based in Brooklyn, the capital of hipster design, are producing papers that have nothing to do with grandmom’s vegetables-and-daisy prints. Meanwhile venerable old houses like Cole & Son are reviving and updating old damask patterns. At the same time, new, easier ways of applying wallpaper have put innovative metallic vinyls and 3D weaves in reach of those who’d rather (or can only afford to) paste it up themselves.  The result is nothing short of a wallpaper revolution.

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