At the Heal’s Autumn winter press show last week Ros and I cooed over the many new products. A few things caught our eye especially. Number 1 – a fab contemporary four poster bed by Kirstie Whyte, who is the in-house product and designer manager. She started her relationship with the company as one of the Heal’s Discovers ‘emerging talent’ students, so it’s nice to see this career arc. She’s now the mentor for Heal’s Discovers students and the whole concept – nurturing designers who are just graduating – is having its tenth anniversary this year. Her bed Abacus is a great modern alternative to a trad old idea.

The wooden beads were very playable with.

Also worthy of a shout out are Gavin Coyle’s JAC stools and Rick Tegelaar’s Constructed Surface table – notable for their highly patterned finishes (trend).

Tegelaar used offcuts of plywood – ie waste material – to achieve his design while Coyle worked with sawn planks of Douglas Fir wood, creating a pattern with the wood grain. Ideas that you’d associate with flooring designs and which ought to be pretty popular in our pattern-loving times.