Drinks trolley v drinks cabinet, and the magnetic wallpaper your children will love

Giles Kime rounds up his favourite pieces of the last week, and tackles a thorny problem.

Drinks trolley
Giles Kime
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published
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Magnetic attraction

Magnetic wallpaper

Dinosaur-mad children will love Sian Zeng’s Dino wallpaper design, in this wonderful interactive magnetic version that allows them to create their own stories and add speech bubbles. £256 from www.sianzeng.com – the non-magnetic version is also available at £65.

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Trend forecast: Forest green

Greens are nothing new in fashionable interiors, but they tend to be slightly gloomy, mossy greens found in the dimly lit interiors of private members’ clubs. Sofa Workshop’s Lady May is a much perkier prospect—less mossy forest floor, more lofty beech forest in spring. This three-seater Lady May costs £1,989 from www.sofaworkshop.com.

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The Design Dilemma: Drinks trolley or drinks cabinet?

Drinks trolley

Mad Men has been credited with precipitating the renaissance of the drinks trolley, but we think it goes deeper than that. In this new age of taboo-free transparency, there is something slightly furtive about closeting all your bottles of spirit away in a drinks cabinet.

Besides, trolleys look pretty and hospitable, suggesting that almost anything could be an excuse for a party—even if, for most of the year, the Stoli, Sipsmith and post-prandial Fernet Branca sit gathering a layer of dust. An exquisite example is this Nureyev trolley, from £4,900 via Soane Britain.

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Green lantern

Pooky is succeeding in putting the fun back into lighting. As well as launching wooden lamp bases in a choice of 21 Farrow & Ball paint colours, it also offers an ever-proliferating range of lights and shades. Our particular favourite is the Grey Ferns block-printed shade, shown here on the Nellie table lamp in an emerald glaze. It costs £70 and the lamp £90 from www.pooky.com.

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A twist in the table

Oka’s Gosford table employs barleytwist, a decorative device beloved by 19th-century furniture designers as well as Bernini, who employed it in his design for the baldachin at St Peter’s in Rome. We feel sure that it would look just as at home in less elevated locations. It costs £2,325 from www.oka.com.

Oka's Gosford table

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Rug and roll

Mahout Lifestyle’s huge range of rugs offers a simple (and inexpensive) opportunity to add pattern and colour to floors. This Moonga design measures 121cm by 182cm (47in by 71in) and costs £350 from www.mahoutlifestyle.com.

Giles Kime
Giles Kime
Giles Kime is Country Life's Executive and Interiors Editor, an expert in interior design with decades of experience since starting his career at The World of Interiors magazine. Giles joined Country Life in 2016, introducing new weekly interiors features, bridging the gap between our coverage of architecture and gardening. He previously launched a design section in The Telegraph and spent over a decade at Homes & Gardens magazine (launched by Country Life's founder Edward Hudson in 1919). A regular host of events at London Craft Week, Focus, Decorex and the V&A, he has interviewed leading design figures, including Kit Kemp, Tricia Guild, Mary Fox Linton, Chester Jones, Barbara Barry and Lord Snowdon. He has written a number of books on interior design, property and wine, the most recent of which is on the legendary interior designer Nina Campbell who last year celebrated her fiftieth year in business. This Autumn sees the publication of his book on the work of the interior designer, Emma Sims-Hilditch. He has also written widely on wine and at 26, was the youngest ever editor of Decanter Magazine. Having spent ten years restoring an Arts & Crafts house on the banks of the Itchen, he and his wife, Kate, are breathing life into a 16th-century cottage near Alresford that has remained untouched for almost half a century.
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