The Beat That My Heart Skipped – A blog dedicated to daily design inspirations. By Rohini Wahi.

We haven’t had an Inside Life feature for a really long time so I’m pleased to kick start them again with someone who has been on my radar for a while. Blaire Dessent is the founder of beautifully curated online design store The Vitrine. Based in Paris The Vitrine operates online and also holds occasional pop up storesthat presents a selection of housewares, editions, & personal accessories from artists and designers.

I really love Blaire’s aesthetic of handcrafted pieces using natural materials mixed with contrasting bright neon shades. Fresh and modern I think she’s got it just right. Over to Blair…

Before The Vitrine I worked in the contemporary art world in New York City so I have tried to present work that reflects the crossover and the relationships between art, design, craft and handmade.

I live in Paris now with my husband, (who was living here when we met), but I often travel to the United States for Vitrine related work. I currently have a 6-month shop called Product Porch with Brooks Hudson Thomas of Specific Merchandise at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego (my hometown actually), that is a combination of work on The Vitrine, as well as handcrafted furniture and art books.

I collect… works on paper (mostly drawings) with my husband

I cant live without… good face lotion

My guilty pleasure is… The TV series Weeds.

Our house is filled with… Books

I treasure my… pendant necklace recently inherited from my grandmother.

Right now I can’t stop thinking about… cooking. I think it’s a winter nesting thing but I am obsessed with food site these days like Food52 and Let There be Bite.

Currently I am reading… Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit about the history of walking.

My favourite item of clothing is… A grey and black knit Vena Cava dress I bought at Tenoversix this year.

At the top of my furniture wish list is... A new sofa.

The last thing that really inspired me was… Being in Joshua Tree, California for the High Desert Test Sites weekend in October. Great people, amazing art and installations, and in stunning landscape.

My comfort food is… cookies of any sort

On my desk are… Adonde’s stationary boxes, my Mac laptop, and too many post-it notes

This weekend I will… Go to the flea markets. It’s been too long.

Tonight I must… buy my plane tickets for the holidays! So late.

I love what I do because… I love working with such talented artists and designers and seeing so much great work.

Beautiful online boutique Bodie and Fou have recently launched a truly inspiring new online catalogue. Designed like a mini-interiors magazine, the catalogue is filled with exquisitely styled imagery with click through links to product and snippets of stylish information. The first issue features Karine and Elodie’s [the founding sisters] London and Paris style files.

I really love these ladies and their style, they have worked so hard to bring Bodie and Fou to the forefront of online shopping and constantly have their finger on the pulse of online media. They are super clever business women and I think merging online and an easy to relate to editorial format is definitely the way to move forward with online selling. It makes me want to click and buy everything!

Go here to take a look and request a hard copy from here.

I think I have found the perfect Christmas gift… Great Food is a collection of 20 charming tomes from Penguin charting the  “the sharpest, funniest, most delicious writing about food from the past 400 years,” The books offer a mouth-watering selection of food writing fare from which to choose, with authors ranging from the classic – Victorian ‘domestic goddess’ Isabella Beeton and that wonderfully intelligent food writer Elizabeth David – to the less familiar – eighteenth century innkeeper William Verrall, Pellegrino Artusi.

The delicious looking covers were designed by Penguin’s senior cover designer Coralie Bickford-Smith each one drawing on a decorative ceramic style of dish relevant to the period of the writing concerned. For further insight check out Pen’s Great Food Club, a food blog by a Penguin employee cooking their way through the 20 books. A humorous  and charming account the blog has hints of the Julie and Julia about it with success stories as well as disasters documented in the attempt to translate 18th century recipes to the modern day table!

I feel like there is a shift in interiors where homeware is beginning to gravitate towards the transient and alchemical… using delicate materials and ethereal finishes.

An example that I can’t get out of my head is a series of delicate mirrors by Dutch designer David Derksen. Called Transcience the project shows the beauty of the natural oxidizing process of mirrors. By accelerating and manipulating this process, the mirrors show various stages of oxidation in three different geometrical patterns. Depending on the time that the silver is reacting with sulphur, different colour tones can be achieved, ranging from gold to brown, to purple to blue. I love the silhouettes and ghostly outlines…

The Beat That My Heart Skipped was featured in this weekend’s Telegraph’s 20 Best Interiors Blogs!  Very excited and honoured to be featured alongside greats  Apartment Therapy, Decor8 and The Selby! Wow!