Contemporary Heaven Division

No matter where in the world you live, it rains. Well, OK, perhaps not very often in the Sahara desert, but in most places it rains regularly. In some places, such as the Amazon rain forest it rains almost all the time, but even in London and Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, we have our fair share of rain, and if you don't want to get wet you will need an umbrella. If you have an umbrella, you will also need somewhere to store it when you arrive at the office or back home. If it hasn't been raining that is not too bad because it will be dry, but if it has been pouring down it is going to be wet. Either way you need an umbrella stand that will hold not just one or two umbrellas, but as many as four (one for each of the family) and won't let your wet umbrella sit there dripping on to the carpet. At Contemporary Heaven we have a choice of umbrella stands including some from Umbra, from Blomus, and from Kartell. Umbrella stands used to ...

The Italian design firm Kartell have produced a lot of furniture over the years. There is quite a big range of seating of various types – dining chairs, sofas, office chairs, garden chairs, and so on. Some of the chairs in the Kartell furniture range are designed by Philippe Starck and are called the Ghost range because you can see right through them, being made of a clear plastic. Some of these chairs and stools are produced with a colour tint of gold or blue, but you can still see through them, and they appear to be hardly there, hence the name. Designer Patricia Urquiola has produced some high back chairs which have different bases, so there is a rocking chair and an office swivel chair in addition to a standard four-legged version. These are available in black or white, together with a choice of several different colours.    Philippe Starck has also designed some single chairs that look very comfortable with padded seats and backs in a selection o...

Umbra began life in 1979 when the founders, designers Paul Rowan and Les Mandelbaum, launched a single window shade. They realised that there was a need to design products for the modern age that would be accessible in both attitude and price. Umbra is the Latin for "shade" and is based in Toronto in Canada, but today operates in 120 countries and has offices in Europe, the US, Brazil, and China as well. The team of international designers puts thought and creativity into the design of items that are in everyday use. Take Umbra curtain poles for instance. Most of us don't give much though to our curtain poles, but many homes have them because we need them to hang our curtains from. Umbra have designed quite a number of curtain poles and they have made them out of a range of different materials. Of course, windows come in a lot of different widths, but the designers at Umbra have overcome that with a lot of their curtain poles because they have m...