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YSG’s Latest Home Reno Trades White Walls For a Color-Drenched Fever Dream

YSG took a 1990s mock Colonial on the New South Wales coast from plain white walls to a color-filled haven containing 10 different floral wallpapers. Photos: Anson Smart

Australian design firm YSG pulled a reverse HGTV on this 6-bedroom house on the coast a few hours outside Sydney, which is exactly why we love them: They took a boring, all-white 1990s mock Colonial and LSD-ed it into a series of “trippy interior landscapes” lined in no less than 10 different floral wallpapers. While the kitchen is a little bit more understated — maroon zellige tiles, an undulating wood-paneled island — most of the other spaces are balls to the wall, like a bathroom with a chubby lemon-yellow tub under lemon-themed wallpaper with kitschy tulip sconces, or a living area that clashes Josef Frank curtains with Aubusson wallpaper, a checkered ceiling trim, and a multicolor tiled fireplace. An all-green bedroom has a wallpapered ceiling; an all-wallpapered bedroom has a striped ceiling.

The best part are the sweeping nature views from picture windows and verandas, which become living wallpaper, in a way, that blends seamlessly with the rest. YSG’s design brief states that the clients asked for something “cozy” and “welcoming” which made us chuckle — Plantasia, as the project is called, is not exactly the first thing we’d associate with those words, but it might just be the best?

Alana Burns Scales Up From Jewelry to Shell-Studded Lamps in Her Newest Solo Show

Alana Burns’s current lighting show in Mallorca at Heroldian Art. She’ll release more new designs with the gallery in April. Photos: Justine Robineau

Over the years Jill and I have been asked countless times why we never opened a physical design gallery. There are many reasons why we shunned the idea — it’s easier if you come from money, we didn’t want our lives to revolve around sales, we felt uneasy about the pressure of a brick and mortar — but only one reason why it tempted us: because we love collaborating with designers, ushering work into the world and giving it a platform. When we read about how this new exhibition in Mallorca of lighting by artist Alana Burns came to be, we got pangs of envy in exactly the place where that impulse lives; basically curator Katharina Marie Herold of the Mallorca house-gallery Heroldian Art visited Burns in her studio in Mexico City, felt a connection, and said “let’s make a show together.” Oh, the sheer joy in that. Criaturas del Plancton is the result, on view at the house by appointment through the end of January and consisting of seven one-of-a-kind lights handmade by Burns from Tumbaga metal (a gold and copper alloy) and shells.

Lamps are new for Burns — back when we started following her on Instagram several years ago, she was making jewelry out of similar materials, plus the occasional piece of cutlery. At her Future Perfect show in LA in 2024, she scaled up to mobiles and candle sconces. But the Criaturas are more ambitious, more intentional, with whimsical details like abalone pull cords and coral finials. It’s lighting you don’t need yet deeply desire, with more new pieces to come in 2026.

Garcé Dimofski’s New Studio Embodies Their Vision — and Their Love of Portuguese Craft

At Garcé Dimofski’s new studio in Porto, nods to Portuguese craft include metal walls and lighting, terracotta tiles, and ceramic inlays on tables. Photos: Sean Davidson

Did you think, when you first saw these photos, that they depicted yet another rich person’s designer pied-a-terre in Paris, in a fin de siècle former industrial building turned into ultra-luxury apartments? Understandable, and yet this time, you would be mistaken: This project is actually the dramatic new studio space, in Porto, of the design firm Garcé Dimofski. We’ve been talking lately about how office interiors are starting to look more and more like residential interiors, but this one is the most convincing yet — it’s an epic calling card for a firm that prides itself on extremely elevated, tactile, and layered spaces that are at once classical and contemporary, such as their showroom design for Invisible Collection or their own home in Lisbon, which we featured in 2023.

The design duo calls it a “manifesto space,” a sort of mood board writ large of both their Art Deco influences (gleaned from Porto’s own architectural past) as well as their commitment to Portuguese craftsmanship, seen here in the metalwork, and in the ceramic and terracotta tiles and furniture inlays. In addition to their own furniture designs — some created for their collection with Jacques Doucet — there are also pieces by collaborators like Minjae Kim and artist Isabel Cordovil, plus of course the sprinkling of vintage artworks and objects that are a signature in so many of their interiors. The studio is a nice reminder of how special it is, as a designer, to have the opportunity to create your dream project for everyone’s dream client: yourself.

(Another) Office as Chill Space, This One With Chic Wall-to-Wall Carpeting

For Mouthwash’s tiny office in New York, Charlap Hyman & Herrero went big with vintage Persian carpets. Photos: Sean Davidson

Continuing the theme of the non-officey office, Charlap Hyman & Herrero just completed a charmer of an example in New York, at the WSA building, for the East Coast HQ of the LA-based creative firm Mouthwash. A mere 237 square feet, it still looks like it’s dedicated primarily to working, but with major departures like wall-to-wall (and wall-to-ceiling, on that central column) vintage Persian carpets, an ornately framed 17th century Venetian Baroque painting, floor pillows, and antique wooden furniture that looks straight out of grandma’s formal sitting room. CH&H have contributed one of their Clam Shell lamps designed in collaboration with Green River Project, and a crumpled silver sculpture designed in collaboration with Shun Kinoshita for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but this one will almost certainly be remembered for the carpets, which in addition to crawling up the column have also crawled up the sofa, too — creating a low-slung chill spot for when you’re tired of sitting upright at a desk, a must for every fashionable workspace these days.

A Furniture and Lighting Line Inspired by Tailoring, Draping, and Grandma Judit

The first furniture collection of Gergei Erdei, a London-based artist and former fashion designer. Photos: Noah Russell

Before he launched his own housewares brand in 2022 (or the incredible painted room dividers we featured in 2024), Gergei Erdei studied at the London College of Fashion and went on to design womenswear and embroidery at Gucci under Alessandro Michele. While his early career had less relevance than his personal identity as an artist when it came to that first eponymous line — dishware and pillows adorned with his own ’70s Palm Beach–inspired illustrations — it’s had an obvious influence on his newest project, a collection of furniture and lighting for Porta Romana. “During the development process, I draped and constructed the first prototypes of some of the pieces out of fabric, in the same way as I would when starting to develop a garment” — seen most literally in a trompe l’oeil draped table and sconce, but also in the fluid frame of an oval-shaped mirror and the side table that stands delicately on metal “tassels.” Turns out Gergei had a second influence when it came to creating the line, though: His Hungarian grandmother Judit, whose home provided some of his earliest memories of beautiful objects and textiles. She must have been very stylish, indeed.

Shopping For: Scavo Glass

As familiar as I had been with the storied history of Murano glass, I confess I hadn’t encountered the term “scavo” until we featured the contemporary artist Valerie Name Bolaño’s use of the technique in her 2024 collection of glass bowls, vases, and lamps, which was one of my favorite projects of that year. Meaning “excavated,” scavo is a process in which glassblowers fuse certain mineral powders to the surface of a piece to make it look aged and weathered — cloudy, frosty, sometimes speckly or crackly.

After encountering Bolaño’s latest scavo vases at Quarters in New York, during their holiday party, I went digging for other examples of the glass technique online, and found a trove of vintage pieces, often vases, and often with swirly handles. Of course Bolaño’s are the nicest, born as they are from her contemporary sensibility and excellent taste, but you could surround them with a nice little collection if you’ve got the space.
1. Scavo lamp by Studio Valerie Name, price on request, studiovaleriename.com
2. Heavy amphora vase, $595, chairish.com
3. Gambaro & Poggi vase, $345, etsy.com

4. Murano vase with curled handles, $160, earlgrey-studio.com
5. Hand-blown amphora, $152, etsy.com
6. Pair of pink and mint glass bowls/vases, $480, chairish.com

7. Blue Murano vase, $148, etsy.com
8. Art glass bowl by Tom Philabaum, $540, etsy.com
9. Vase by Silvia Buscaroli for Seguso Vetri d’Arte, $1,854, chairish.com

News

World of Interiors recently featured the Italian home of the Chilean architect-turned-painter Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren. Photo: Simon Watson

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If moving into an abandoned 18th-century convent in a tiny town above the coast of Italy sounds like a dream to you, follow this link to a recent story in World of Interiors on the final home of the late Chilean painter known as Matta. Located in the ancient city of Tarquinia, it’s now maintained by Matta’s youngest daughter, and it’s full of his own paintings and furniture, like the incredible carved-wood chairs above. A true visual delight.

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There’s only one day left to view the Jutka exhibition at Objekt gallery in Warsaw, but assuming most of you are not in Poland at the moment, this is moreso a note of encouragement to check out the exhibition online, because it celebrates an interesting Polish vernacular design style called Zakopane, exemplified in the show by carved tables and chairs by the late craftsman Stanisław Witkiewicz. We encourage you to dig deeper into both his work and the overall Zakopane history — and also to peek at the contemporary works in the show, of course.

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If you have our book, How to Live With Objects, and love the feature on furniture designer Minjae Kim’s old apartment in Queens, check out his newer apartment in Brooklyn, which has the same vibe but is somehow even more layered and considered. Curbed featured it last month.

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Wright’s Essential Design auction is *today* and there are a lot of nice things, yes indeed. Here is a non-comprehensive list of my favorites: Italian cobra fire tools, simple 1930s mirror, weirdo Albert Paley candleholder, these three  wooden chairs, stripey William Spratling cutlery set, weirdo ceramic pitcher, Garry Knox Bennett table. I also have a real soft spot for these but brass would not be my first choice of material, alas.

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