Javier Jover

Jover + Valls is an exciting modern Spanish furniture brand that seeks to combine traditional production techniques with innovative technologies for furnishings and decor that offer the best of both worlds. The company is primarily known for stylish seating such as stools, chaise lounges and armchairs. Jover + Valls also produces decorative home accessories like candleholders and throw blankets. 

Jover + Valls is the passion project of Javier Jover and Quico Valls. After earning his BFA at Universitat Politècnica de València, Jover gained experience working with leather by creating fashion accessories for Zara, a multi-national retail clothing brand. Valls, meanwhile, was learning about the intricacies of metalwork, including how to form aesthetic shapes while retaining the strength of the material. 

After two decades of working in their respective industries, Jover and Valls joined forces to build a brand that offers handmade luxury furniture and decor for any space. 

The atelier’s minimalist Wanderlust series draws on Bauhaus-level precision and features subtle details that you might miss at first glance, like in the modest-sized hand-turned nuts and bolts that affix the collection’s tanned cowhide leather seats and surfaces to the stool frames of the group’s armchairs, bar stools and ottomans. It was inspired in part by legendary German-American architect and designer Mies van der Rohe and his wisdom that "less is more."

With ergonomics in mind, Jover + Valls's Hug collection focuses more on the organic shapes and curves found in nature. Each light and airy chaise lounge or bar stool, which resemble the work of iconic modernist designer Charlotte Perriand, is inviting and envelops you in soft leather when you sit down. 

On 1stDibs, find Jover + Valls seating, decorative objects, textiles and more.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.

Antique and vintage decorative baskets can lend unique charm to any room. And basketmaking is hardly a lost art.

Evidence of basket weaving dates back tens of thousands of years, with one of the most intact examples found in the Judean Desert from the Neolithic period. Historically, baskets have mainly served utilitarian needs — to carry food, store materials and even hold water — but they could also be ornamental objects or have ceremonial or religious purposes.

Native American baskets come from a tradition steeped in generations of skill. There are new and made-to-order baskets from artisans who put their own spin on the ancient art as well as 21st-century pre-owned decorative baskets to complement any furniture style or design preference.

A metal basket or brass basket can match a modern or industrial-style home and add some contrasting rusticity. Wooden baskets, wicker baskets and natural-fiber baskets can easily harmonize with boho chic and cottagecore interiors.

Ceramic baskets are part of the pottery tradition, a craft with a deep heritage in human history. Ceramics are popular in decor again, and the personalization of handmade craftsmanship has served as a sort of anti-Internet to screen-weary decorators. Depending on a ceramic basket’s style, it can fit in with a more formal, cottage, Asian or Southwestern interior theme.

Browse 1stDibs for a wide selection of decorative baskets to fit any design need.