The World of Interiors

Get The World of Interiors digital magazine subscription today for the most influential and wide-ranging design and decoration magazine you can buy. Inspiring, uplifting and unique, it is essential reading for design professionals, as well as for demanding enthusiasts craving the best design, photography and writing alongside expert book reviews, round-ups of the finest new merchandise, plus comprehensive previews and listings of international art exhibitions.

Contributors

The World of Interiors

Editor’s Letter • December 2025

Boom! Micro Drop

ANTENNAE

What’s in the air this month

Focus, Please! • In the market for a magnifying glass? Well, the optics are looking pretty good. Having scrutinised the small print, David Lipton is only too happy to enlarge on matters

Coops de Théâtre • Imaginative and humane designers – many of them devoted chicken owners – across the world have flocked to their drawing boards to produce the perfect poultry palace, and have done so entirely without sacrificing originality or invention in pursuit of a reduced scale. Ariadne Fletcher is awed by the drama, wit and ingenuity on display

Dreaming a Dram • Balancing tradition with innovation, renowned graphic designer David Carson has created a new visual identity for venerable whisky maker The Macallan – in particular, for its signature Timeless Collections. The power of these premium single malts, the American knows, is rooted in place

Va-Va-Room • Any decorator worth their stripes will tell you that the way to animate an interior, to give it that extra oomph, is to play with scale. But to this extent…? With floor lamps grazing ceilings, objets amplified, rugs miniaturised and chairs blown up as if to receive Alice in Wonderland herself? Taking doll’s houses and different-sized toys as her reference points, Rose Eaglesfield might have got things out of all proportion when she learned the theme of this issue. But in a good way, naturally.

Model Citizen • Charles Young freely admits that he’s rarely ready to begin work until 5pm – leaving him time aplenty beforehand to pound Edinburgh’s pavements recording its architecture for his latest cityscape meticulously crafted in paper. Back in the artist’s live/work studio, Ariadne Fletcher witnesses a diminutive world unfold in minute detail.

The Little Prints • Fabric in a charming diminutive motif is the very simple secret to a well-tailored room – and, suffice to say, we’re over the moon with these, which have been fashioned into the cutest pin cushions by our very own petites mains. Lining his patterns like a pro, David Lipton has five words of advice: go small or go home. Photography: Edie Telle Nakata

SHRINKING THE ESTATE • Doll’s houses challenge craftspeople, intrigue psychologists and serve as catnip to cultural historians. In this special section on dinky domesticity, you’ll discover why the hobby so obsesses grown-ups (page 66), learn how the Rijksmuseum refurnished one of its 17th-century treasures (page 68) and be led in to the 1920s pocket palace Edwin Lutyens designed for Queen Mary (page 72). Stand by for small fry.

The Ups of Downsizing • Adults have always gone big on the diversionary delights offered by a dinky doll’s house, the more exquisitely detailed the better. Small wonder when the world at large is in the grip of full-scale horrors, says the design curator Priya Khanchandani

A Kraak Job • Getting out their best ‘china’ for an exhibition about 17th-century Dutch life, Rijksmuseum curators suddenly realised that they had a lot on their plates: the itsy-bitsy pieces from Petronella Oortman’s famous doll’s house were so fragile they urgently needed substitutes made with a delft touch and the same opaque glass. The question was how to replicate them when the methods originally used were very...