The world of Interiors May’26

The May editions of The World of Interiors have long focused on kitchens and bathrooms. For two such functional rooms, researching them is always a fun opportunity to plumb our archive and revisit some of the very best, often wildly camp examples of the genre. If you’re a long-time collector of the magazine, I urge you to dig out the November 1985 issue, where you will find Rudy Verspyck’s brilliantly OTT four-poster bathtub, or September 1995, where Colin Childerley’s shiny shower bears a fleeting resemblance to a Richard Serra steel sculpture – distant cousins perhaps? Emile Zola’s kitchen, featured in May 2021, was afforded by the phenomenal success of his novel L’Assommoir (there’s something gratifying about the great practitioner of literary naturalism marking his success with a kitchen refurb) and was equipped with all the mod cons, including hot and cold running water and an impressively stocked batterie de cuisine. While the mint-green-and-red kitchen in Adam Bray’s recent Trellick Tower project (WoI January 2026) will surely inspire many an imitation