Glass for sale in Habitat stores

I popped in a Habitat store over Christmas having been drawn in by a display of coloured glass vases in the window - I was more than a bit surprised to see an array of Riihimaki lookalike lantern vases (too close to the originals for comfort in my opinion) and several Holmegaard Carnaby lookalikes. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some of these vases come up for ID here or elsewhere so we need to be vigilant!

That's useful info. do you think they are actually Scandinavian or copies made in China or Poland? John Lewis tends to sell a lot of Polish glassware(LSA). Interestingly, I have an old Habit catalogue from 1972 and noticed that they did originally sell Finnish domestic glass (Nuutajarvi) and lots of other Scandinavian designed products. These old catalogues are great source of reference for mid-C stuff.

Another observation. I have noticed lots of 60s/70s ceramics, glassware & even a Pool Pottery style tiled table in my local White Stuff shop. They use it to stage the clothes etc. When I asked them they said they just got it from charity shops...wondering if anyone has noticed this in their local shops?

I don't know where they're made - they didn't have anything other than the Habitat price labels on them - they had a few pottery items too that, to the novice collectors, could appear to be mid-century Scandi originals. I'm sure their origin could be found out somehow.

I used to work in Habitat as a Saturday girl in the early 1980s (the same store I went into over Christmas) but it was the era of red teapots, bagna caudas, fondue sets, chicken bricks and plastic record holders - nothing that I can remember as so obviously derivative in a design sense as the things I saw there the other day.

Re: the furniture - what's a White Stuff shop, it's not a term I've come across before? There is definitely a huge wealth of great mid-century furniture in charity shops - we don't have a big house so can only buy furniture that we can use, there's no room to store any. Having said that we do have a 1950s mosaic tiled top table and a Gordon Russell yew wood coffee table stored in our bedroom! The Gordon Russell table is a beauty and it was for sale in a charity shop for £10 - we just couldn't leave the shop without it and worried about where to put it afterwards! I haven't seen any original furniture being used in shops in the way you mention though. We do wonder though why young couples spend silly amounts of money on shoddily made ugly DFS type furniture when there are some beautifully made design classics knocking around going cheap.

I noticed a few London highstreet fashion stores decorated with vintage clutter in alcoves around this time last year. Seemed to dwindle out as a trend, though.

Probably just as well - I spent more time either cooing at or deriding the clutter than I did looking at the clothes.

White Stuff is a chain 20s-40s age group fashion shop similar to Fat Face. http://www.whitestuff.com/storelocator.asp?storefinder=1 take a look inside one to see if others have retro ceramics and glass props.

I know Fat Face but I must be very unobservant because I've never noticed the White Stuff shop in Kingston. I'll nip in there next week, take a gander at their staging and report back :-)