From the Editor
As I find myself working at home (who ever thought this would become the new normal?), sat at my dining table staring across the bright, cloudless skies of east London, I’m struck by two things: firstly, the fact that, regardless of whatever horror the world is experiencing, on sunny days the skies are still blue; and, secondly, how unfamiliar it is not to see aeroplanes and their ensuing vapour trails criss-crossing over the horizon.
Now, more than ever, it’s important to focus on the positives and, while this strange Coronavirus world we’re now inhabiting has many of us confined to our homes and thinking of ourselves and loved ones, it’s also an opportunity to consider the wider world. We’re all in this together after all and, in some sense, the lack of air travel and manufacturing-made pollution can be seen as a sort of silver lining to this ghastly viral mess. Wild goats have even taken over the streets of Llandudno in North Wales and in every affected corner of the planet air quality has improved as emissions have fallen.
We planned this issue many months before our current predicament and the focus was always going to be on sustainability, and a recognition of the design world’s renewed vigour to tackle environmental concerns in a credible and impactful way. Look out for our ‘Eco Deco’ label, which highlights the stories, people, products and places at the forefront of this new ecological movement. These pages are proof that we can think about decorating and kitting out our homes, while, at the same time, also showing consideration and care for how we interact with the world.
Searching for pertinent cover images for the version of the magazine that goes to our subscribers, we came across a simple but striking photograph of a small cloud floating in a clear, azure sky (it also opens our essay about the joy of silence on p98). I was impressed by its sense of positivity and how it sums up that idea of looking towards a brighter future. In William Wordsworth’s aptly titled poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, he talks of thoughts of nature being ‘the bliss of solitude’. Having worked on this issue in isolation, I couldn’t agree more.
‘This issue is a RECOGNITION of the
design world’s RENEWED vigour to tackle environmental
CONCERNS’