The World of Interiors

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The World of Interiors

Editor’s Letter • October 2026

ANTENNAE

What’s in the air this month

Fall Guise • This autumn, the well-dressed home might well be wearing… a newly launched statement piece or two. These caught Rose Eaglesfield’s eye

Gear Shift • The garments held by east London’s engagingly off-kilter Lore Archive may once have been worn by, say, Japanese fishermen or Hungarian Romani, but such under-the-radar clothing is now available for research and inspiration to costume historians, fashion designers and conceptual artists alike. Take its founder, Sophie Turner, who uses the garb’s emotional register to inspire her own pieces.

Clear Winners • The seven glass artists profiled on these pages are second to none. Whether teasing out diaphanous tentacles, evoking crustaceous curlicues or cross-hatching a delicate reticello mesh, each of them is transparently a master of the medium, proclaim the WoI team.

Cache Converter • In the course of his highly colourful career at sea, Pierre Loti hoarded enough treasures to turn his humble house in Rochefort into a flamboyant fantasy, complete with faux mosque and Turkish salon. But that’s nothing compared with the reinvention that the novelist and married naval officer wrought on himself. High heels? Make-up? Was there something he wasn’t saying? Marie-France Boyer would put money on it.

Blinded by the Lights • Roll up, roll up for the big reveal as we raise the shades on the most dazzling table and desk lamps. Whether you’re scouting about for a bit of eye Scandi or something Secessionist, opaline or ultra-modern, these are guaranteed to generate a lovely warm feeling all over. Absolutely lumen marvellous, says Miranda Sinclair with a glow of utmost satisfaction.

Good Lourdes Above • Millions of people beat a path each year to the basilica in France’s pilgrim mecca. But how many go on to meticulously build their own out of surplus stone? Exactly. And yet that immaculate concept is just one of many extraordinary bricolage projects undertaken by the bereaved seeking solace or eccentrics with plenty of time on their hands. In his new book, photographer Francis David doffs his beret to them all, from the farmer who turned a huge heap of tyres into ‘Mont-Saint-Michel’ to the man who recreated Lascaux’s caves deep beneath his home.

Squatters’ Rites • Imagine a time before young people were stultified by social media and exorbitant buy-to-let rents. Photographer Tom Hunter doesn’t have to: he was there, living – and documenting – the dream as part of east London’s freewheeling, close-knit squatting community in the 1980s and 90s. So what became of his peers and that subversive spirit? As a new exhibition on such ‘earthly paradises’ commences, Nathalie Olah looks wistfully at Hunter’s poignant large-format pictures taken in those prelapsarian years

Tea Rex • Whenever china-mad Charles of Bourbon laid on a spread for guests they could count on the service being by Capodimonte, the Naples factory he established to rival Europe’s most prestigious potteries. Suitably refreshed by nonagenarian designer Federico Forquet, the museum dedicated to its work is now dishing up all sorts of incredible delicacies in prized soft-clay porcelain – including a cracking boudoir created for the queen consort. Marella Caracciolo Chia’s cup runneth over.

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