If you start thinking way back you can certainly remember the old, dark and bulky wooden furniture which dominated lots of the living rooms of the generation of our grandparents or even parents. Usually they were used to accommodate the exclusive china set, the crystal glasses or the sterling cutlery. Unfortunately, these pieces of furniture often turned the living-room into a dark and rather unwelcoming place and the younger generation just thought they were hideous!
Especially after the second world war, during the time of the economic boom such heavy wooden furniture was very popular. It satisfied the need for security, tradition and coziness. Besides, it was a way to express the pride of having overcome the time of austerity after the war. Nevertheless, roughly since the 1990s, there emerged a counterculture which supported interior trends determined by a lot of glass, chrome and straight-lined design. Furniture made of natural materials like wood, cork or felt were labeled as old-fashioned and unhip.
However, during the last couple of years a new movement has started which implies more naturalness and comfort concerning furniture and interior trends. This new interior concept was also presented at the international furnishing show, IMM Cologne, which took place in January 2011. Due to the climate change people tend to once again set a high value on the use of ecological materials that are not treated with toxic paint or other surface coatings. The new interior trends 2011 have melodic names like “Emotional Austerity” or “Re-Balancing” and they all focus on sustainable and natural materials, modern design and state-of-the-art technology.
Long gone are the times in which you would be embarrassed to own those pieces of wooden furniture and you felt the need to hide them! Read More
But there are several hardened species which can flourish as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as Antarctica. Of the 30,000 or so different species of orchid known to man there is a small number which are deemed especially collectable. Rothschild’s Slipper, an orchid that takes as long as 15 years to grow, can fetch prices upwards of 5000 US dollars per stem.
Welcome to the 21st century! You only have to look back in history – and not very far back at that – to see that there comes a time when many objects and products which we have grown accustomed or even attached to have had to make way for new inventions which were not only far more convenient, easier to use and much more useful – they simply knocked their predecessors into a cocked hat!
