Home Furnishings

Barcelona-based rug studio nanimarquina, founded in 1987 by Nani Marquina, has been creating contemporary textiles for the floor crafted in India, Morocco, Pakistan, and Spain. This month's Deconstruction takes us to India, for the manufacture of one of the company's most popular, and surely the most fun (polka dots in relief!): a fuchsia and purple concoction from the Topissimo collection, which won a Red Dot Design Award in 2003.

It's been quite a while since we talked. It's time to find out a little more about you guys out there in Internet-land.

Terrariums are made for people with black thumbs (i.e., me). Not only are they easy to take care of, they are beautiful to look at. They're like little worlds contained in a miniature glass greenhouse. Luckily they don't have to be just a glass globe or a jar anymore with options like these from æther.

Sometimes I geek out over more than one piece of furniture in a collection, as is the case with Miniforms, which has just been added to the Leif Petersen showroom in High Point. I pretty much love everything in the entire collection. I won't be going to the October High Point Market this year, but you can bet that this would be at the top of my list of must-sees.

With queues around the block for the opening night party, designersblock was set to be hit from the beginning. And, it didn't disappoint. Known for their use of interesting spaces (they were in the Familoe Building last year), this year's venue was the Southbank Centre's Festival Village - a space that's never been open to the public before; it's usually used as a green room for performing artists.

Designers Jonathan Glatt and Sara Ossana of O&G Studio met over ten years ago as graduate students at RISD, where Jonathan studied jewelry and metal fabrication and Sara studied interior architecture and theatrical set design. Their backgrounds have a synergistic dynamic which allow them to blend intricate detailing and experimentation with scale and proportion to bring traditional motifs into the 21st century. The duo, who has an affinity for old things, look towards the wisdom and inventiveness of traditional American design traditions for inspiration. They feel strongly that furniture should be collectible, meaning relevant and fresh now, yet will last for a lifetime and be passed down for generations. They currently work out of a 3,500sf combined studio and workshop space in the East Bay area of Rhode Island, and you can see that influence in their Friday Five inspirations.

During Helsinki Design Week, I visited Habitare 2012, a furniture and design fair that drew about 57,000 people over the five days it was open. There was such great work on display including a large amount of student designs and work by Finnish designers.

The Etsy shop, CRESUS artisanat, run by Japan-based artist Haruhi, is a needlepoint and knitting wonderland.

Barcelona-based architecture and design studio 5LAB, founded by Roberto Paparcone and Iñigo Gómez, creates modular and flexible objects like this cool coat rack consisting of different sizes and shaped horns and antlers.

The V&A was bursting at the seams with installations for London Design Festival 2012. Here are three of the best - nendo's Mimicry Chairs, Bench Years from Established & Sons and Ice Angel by Dominic Harris.

UTREM LUX is the name of a sustainable design project by Degross Design & Innovation that takes old glass bottles and reuses them to make lamps.

We've featured wall decals before but never ones that are from high-resolution photographs. These Wallflower wall stickers are from high-quality photos that are enlarged to enormous proportions and are a great alternative to wallpaper.