Paper Perfection

Put a touch of the handmade into your ultra-contemporary digs with Vancouverite Justina Yang’s gorgeous origami light and hanging-art fixtures. Designs range from her round, zigzag-textured Bubble paper lampshades ($40) to the new fluted Ruffle shade, in clean white or cool, of-the-moment mint ($55). Yang is a one-time structural engineer who puts both her mad math skills and the aesthetic eye she inherited from her art teacher mother into the delicate, meticulous geometric designs. The special light-fast, acid-free paper Yang uses is made in a 450-year-old mill in Annonay, France. They sell at Nineteen Ten (4366 Main Street), Brick & Mortar Living (42 Begbie Street in New West), and West Elm and West Elm Market (2947 and 2915 Granville Street), as well as on Etsy.

Wand and Weathered

And yet more signs that design is moving away from cold minimalism: the Canadian wallpaper trendsetter Rollout, better known for carrying the bold graphics of artists and designers, has just launched a collection called New Materialism that celebrates warm, weathered patinas, rusts, and decay in all their natural texture. The line, made in collaboration with surface designer Robert Sangster, was made by photographing his beautifully rough and corroded surfaces at high resolution and turning them into digital wallcoverings. We’re talking the rustic knots and wavy grains of old-barn-style Board (especially in unexpected colours like gold and navy), the rough grey lines of Concrete Wood, the hardened paint-drip marks of Poured, and the corroded blasts of Cosmology. Prices are around $10 per square foot (via rollout.ca/).

It's a Wrap

Spring is around the corner, but the cool, damp nights could push right through to June in these parts. Cozy up with one of local company Gallant & Jones’s luxe, light new blankets, made out of velvet-soft, untreated, and undyed virgin wool. Produced and loomed in central Mexico, the blankets have the natural hues of cream, grey, and light taupe. They’re named for some of the coldest spots in the world: we like the subtly diamond-patterned Denali and the thin-striped Vostok ($95 at gallantandjones.com/). But they’re perfectly suited to a city called Vancouver, too: these warmers are just the thing for spring-evening cocktails while sitting on one of G & J’s smart, foldable fabric deck chairs, the English-seaside-inspired creations the company is better-known for.

Silent Ticker

Here’s a grandfather clock that won’t wake you up when it chimes midnight. We like the way IKEA’s cute new Mortorp wall sticker gives you the brief sensation of living in an old Brit-set Disney cartoon—say, 101 Dalmatians or the animated sequences of Mary Poppins. All you need is a round wall clock (it can’t be more than 38 inches in diameter) to complete the look; a sleek moulded chair set nearby wouldn’t hurt either. The old pendulum-style sticker surrounds it, and because it’s made of transparent plastic, it picks up the colour of the wall behind it, playing with notions of 3-D and 2-D, and generally messing with the mind of just about everyone who passes it ($9.99 at various locations).