Like other aspects of interior design, custom furniture and cabinetry occur on a spectrum. There are terrific bespoke examples made by thoughtful craftsmen, and then, there are not-so-good ones. Rook Fine Furniture, founded by three craftsmen—Ken Stahl, Cory Herweck and Shawn Hoven—falls under the former category. They boast a passion for elevating furniture design and construction that zeros in on the nitty gritty details while producing work that runs the gamut of all kinds of fine furniture to custom kitchen cabinetry and other built-ins.

    Art can take on many different approaches and styles. Ken Wood, an artist and professor at St. Louis Community College, combines relief printmaking, the more traditional process of printing,  and collagraph printing, a process in which glue and fabric are used to add texture to a print. The end result under Wood’s artistic eye is a smattering of colorful shapes swirling across a white background.

Tracy and Chad Smith, co-owners of Long Row Lavender Farm, make bath and body goodies for their love of flowers. “I wanted to create products people would be proud of having in their homes,” Tracy explains. “It’s true that lavender’s soothing smell offers plenty of aromatherapy benefits,” she says, “but I also wanted to make products that would be beautiful, like our flowers.”

    Not every artist hangs their artwork in galleries to sell. In fact, it can be more fulfilling and lucrative for artists to license their art to big name clients. That’s what Angela Staehling, artist of colorful illustrations, does for her artwork. Today, her bright and vibrant designs can be found on products available everywhere from Urban Outfitters to Barnes and Noble.

These days when so much is mass produced, unique stationery and prints can be hard to come by. It’s partly why, in 2017, Madeleine Wiering and her dad, Vernon Wiering, decided to co-own and co-found Papillon Press, a maker of distinctive prints, stationery and other goods. They wanted to revive old designs using traditional printmaking techniques. Several of the brand’s items are amazingly informed by designs from the past, approximately the period between 1790 and 1910.