Maison Balzac was created in Australia in 2012 by French-born Elise Pioch Balzac to express her endless imagination.
 
What started as a collection of five perfumed candles has become a homeware world of its own, exploring the beauty of hand-blown coloured glassware, trompe l'oeil linen, colourful platters and unusual fragrances. The brand invent intriguing and playful objects to trigger emotions around the dining table, transforming the everyday act of eating or drinking into quirky, memorable moments.

Maison Balzac

Pomponette Milk Jug

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Pomponette Mug

Pomponette Sugar Pot

Pomponette Teapot

Pomponette Teacup & Saucer

Le Citrus Decanter Lid

Le Soleil Decanter Lid

Bordeaux Decanter Lid

Bisous Decanter Lid

Crispy Chilli Oil Jar

Bisous Decanter

J'ai Soif Carafe & Glass | Rouge

2 Perle Wine Glasses | Clear & Rouge

4 Large Gobelets | Rouge

The Citrus Orchard

4 Large Gobelets- Winter Set

2 Volute Wine Glasses

2 Pomponette Flutes- Clear & White

2 Pomponette Coupes- Clear & White

Margarita Glass

2 Le Soleil Wine Glasses

L'Espresso Martini Cocktail Glass

L'Escargot Dessert Spoons

Cutlery Set L'Escargot

The Everything Bottle- Clear, White

The Everything Bottle- Amber, Black

Bordeaux Double Candle Holder

Bloody Mary Glass

2 Black Bow Coupes

The Balsamic Bottle

2 Apéritif Gobelets

Le Citrus Decanter

Le Soleil Wine Decanter

Le Soleil Tablecloth | Ivory & Yellow

J'ai Soif Carafe & Glass | Azure

J'ai Soif Carafe & Glass | Pink

J'ai Soif Carafe & Glass | Smoke

J'ai Soif Carafe & Glass | Amber

Aperitif Jug

Swan Napkins, Set of 2

Bisous Napkins, Set of Four

Lobster Apron

A Little Bird Told Me Vase

Pomponette Vase

Pomponette Vase | Amber

The Chilli Bottle

The drinks matter. The room matters more than anyone likes to admit.
A good bar is a piece of set design. The lighting is low, the seating is arranged so everyone can see everyone else, and the bartender stands where the eye naturally lands. Here are seven rooms that would hold up with the lights on. Nobody has checked.

Some of the World's Most Beautiful Cocktail Bars

Introducing Restaurant People, a new series about the people who open restaurants, and everything they decide before you ever sit down.
Every restaurant is a list of decisions. What colour the woodwork gets painted. Which table goes to the couple who booked six weeks ago. What plays when the first guests arrive, and what plays when the last ones won't leave. You feel all of it and notice almost none of it. Restaurant People is where we ask the people who made those calls to talk us through them - the building, the room, the menu, the wine list, the record that opens the night.
We're starting with Cassette, which opens to the public tomorrow at 42 Maiden Lane.
Mark Gurney and Matthew Bushnell have spent two decades in South London, Salon in Brixton, then Levan in Peckham since 2018, and have resisted going central for most of it. Cassette is the first time they've said yes: 56 covers inside, 20 on a terrace on a quiet pedestrianised street, in a building where Turner was born and Voltaire spent a year in exile, and which spent the 19th century as a furniture and stained glass workshop. It is French, deliberately and unfashionably so. Deep aubergine woodwork, art from Kempton Market, a 360-degree curtain, and a pair of Grundig Audiorama 8000 speakers playing disco. Essa Fakhry is in the kitchen, Madeleine Fawcett is front of house, and there is a serious commitment to calvados.
Mark talked us through all of it.

Restaurant People with Cassette

The café is the one part of a museum nobody was obliged to make beautiful. It exists because people get tired, and for a century most institutions treated it accordingly. A counter by the cloakroom, a tray, a scone under plastic. The ones worth crossing a city for were built on the opposite assumption: that the room where you stop should be as considered as the rooms you came to see. Here are 8 of the most beautiful.

8 of the World's Most Beautiful Museum Cafés

The pharmacy is an unlikely candidate for great interiors. It is a shop that exists to hand over paracetamol. And yet for several centuries it was where a town put its money: the ceramics were commissioned, the cabinetry was made to measure, the ceiling was painted with allegories of healing by someone who had also done a church.
Then the twentieth century arrived with strip lighting. What follows survived it.

9 of the World's Most Beautiful Pharmacies

Tonight, 12 August, a total solar eclipse crosses Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain. Britain isn't in the path of totality, and never gets the full blackout drama this time round. What we get instead is a partial eclipse, low in the west, right around sunset. That sounds like a consolation prize. It isn't. A sun sliced into a crescent and sinking into the sea is its own kind of spectacle, and the further west and south you are, the more dramatic it looks. Bring eclipse glasses (sunglasses will not do), a clear western horizon, and low expectations of the British weather. Timings shift by several minutes across the country, and the sun sets earlier the further east you are - check local start times and sunset for your exact spot before you head out.

The Best Places in the UK to View the Solar Eclipse

The listening bar has been having its moment - low lights, drinks, someone earnest behind the turntable. Now the ritual is moving home, and the hi-fi evening has become something you host rather than book. Think a turntable given pride of place, records shelved to be seen, seating arranged around the speakers rather than the television. It's hosting at its most generous: one album, played properly, start to finish. We've curated the room - the music, mercifully, remains yours. Below, everything but the B-sides. 

Trending Now: The Home Listening Room

The English pub garden is a specific kind of pleasure - part institution, part accident. Nobody designed most of them; they simply accumulated, a few benches at a time, until they became the reason you went. The 10 here are the ones the Glassette team keep going back to: a three-storey treehouse in north London, a stone terrace above the Channel where the beer arrives through a hatch, a Dales garden lit by gaslight, a lawn with a Victorian viaduct for a backdrop. Some do serious food, some do pasties and nothing else. All of them reward staying longer than you meant to.

Our Favourite Pub Gardens

Glassette's first seasonal trend report is here. For summer 2026, we've been watching the things quietly gathering momentum across interiors, homeware and food that haven't made headlines yet, but will.

2026 Summer Trend Report

Since welcoming his first child a year ago, Glassette co-founder Daniel Crow finds a deeper meaning in the rhythm of fatherhood. “I used to imagine it as something more dramatic than it is,” he says, reflecting on life with his daughter. In recent months, he comes to value routine and repetition, where it’s in the small, ordinary moments that rich memories are built. “Now, I think it's mostly about being present and available.”
For Dan, who was raised in Nottingham, his first shining example of fatherhood stems from his relationship with his father, Allan, who he cites as having “never missed one of my football matches, despite not being a fan of the sport”. Today, he still treasures that relationship and doesn’t hesitate to call him for practical advice and menial life tasks – and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
To celebrate Father’s Day and one year of being a father, Dan talks through singalongs with his daughter to Alicia Keys, turning her into an R&B enthusiast, his ultimate TV dad, and how the beauty of being a dad is shaped by embracing the unknown and soaking up joy in the quiet.

A Dad’s first year journey

With a heatwave on the horizon, the pièce de résistance is the Summer Solstice. If you've found yourself thinking the sun's been hanging around a little longer lately, you'd be right – it's the longest day of the year, with more daylight than any other. So whether you're planning a BBQ, gathering friends for an impromptu movie night, or simply looking for an excuse to stay outside that bit later, there's never been a better time to make the most of it.
While Stonehenge remains one of the most famous places to mark the occasion, the Summer Solstice is celebrated in all sorts of ways across the world. In Sweden, Midsummer is practically a national institution, with people heading to the countryside to wear flower crowns, feast on strawberries, dance around maypoles and sing well into the evening (thankfully, nothing like the events of the 2019 horror Midsommar). In Mexico, crowds gather at Chichén Itzá to see the ancient sun-drenched El Castillo pyramid, while in Austria, huge bonfires light up the Alps as communities come together to usher in the year's longest day.
Whether you're joining an age-old tradition or just enjoying an extra few hours in the garden, it’s well worth joining in on the celebrations.

Summer Solstice Traditions

Pull up a stool at Three Sheets and you'll quickly understand why it's lasted a decade. Max Venning opened the Dalston bar in a matter of weeks - keys on a Wednesday, doors open by Friday - and what started as a makeshift cocktail station and a coat of paint has quietly grown into one of the most respected names in London hospitality.
Now with a second site in Soho and a Dirty Martini that's become something close to legendary, Max reflects on what it actually takes to build a bar people keep coming back to, why regulars are everything, and the drink he'd happily order for the rest of his life.

London's Best Dirty Martini

Eurovision is the one night a year when maximum effort is not only acceptable but essentially mandatory, so your party should match the energy. Start with a ballot sheet for every guest, and a snack spread loosely themed around the competing countries. Dress code is sequins or go home. Have a signature cocktail, pick your favourites before the voting opens, and prepare to be completely wrong about who wins. Chaotic, communal, and completely unmissable - exactly as intended.

Hosting a Eurovision Party

Pinterest's 2026 wedding trends guide is here. In 2026, weddings are feeling less traditional and far more personal. Couples are moving away from polished perfection in favour of atmosphere, individuality and spaces that feel layered with character. Think candlelit pubs over formal venues, sculptural cakes, undone florals, analogue entertainment and tablescapes that borrow from intimate dinner parties rather than classic receptions. The modern wedding is becoming an exercise in world-building: expressive, cinematic and deeply reflective of personal taste, where every detail, from glassware to styling, feels curated rather than conventional.

Pinterest 2026 Wedding Trends

A pairing that shouldn't work as well as it does, cherry and turquoise operate on pure contrast. Saturated warmth against electric cool, the richness of a deep red-toned cherry meeting the clarity of an almost Mediterranean turquoise.
Cherry anchors the combination, bringing depth, drama, and a sense of the deeply considered. Turquoise cuts through it with energy and lightness, stopping the whole thing from taking itself too seriously. Together they create something that feels simultaneously bold and balanced, the kind of colour story that looks instinctive but is anything but.

Cherry & Turquoise

Dopamine Dressing, Dark Romanticism, and the Return of Maximalism. The 2026 Met Gala looks as the interior trends we're seeing right now. The theme was fashion as fine art, but every look told us something about the rooms we're craving right now.

Met Gala As Interiors

For easy, elevated entertaining this season. Think colourful glassware, playful table linens, and effortless serveware that makes even a simple spread feel considered. From sunny garden lunches to last-minute drinks, these are the under-£50 pieces we’ve spotted for hosting in style.

Hosting Finds Under £50

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is finally here, and we're taking the OG characters and imagining the homes they'd live in. So, which one are you?

Devil Wears Prada Characters

Flowers don't need to be arranged so much as considered. The vase, the stem count, where you put them in a room - small decisions that add up to something that feels intentional rather than just bought. We've pulled together five creative ideas for styling cut flowers at home.

Creative Ideas For Flower Arranging

There are the things you buy because you need them, and then there are the things you buy because they deserve to exist in your life. Megan Elizabeth makes the case for the latter - specifically, the cutlery drawer as the most quietly satisfying upgrade you're not yet taking seriously enough. From a brushed silver canteen with Parisian bones to vintage Laguiole sourced from the eBay gods, this is a celebration of the unsung heroes of the table: the daily tools that set the tone before a single dish arrives.

The Case for a Cutlery Upgrade

Whether you’re refreshing the table with a new set of napkins or upgrading your toast with a butter dish, here’s our breakfast tableware edit. Think egg cups for slow mornings, side plates for your croissant, and bowls made for yoghurt, granola, and fruit. Add glass coasters, salt and pepper shakers, and gingham table linens and the little extras that pull it all together.