Postimees · Luxurious Estonia (Luksuslik Eesti) · 2026
Exclusive interior pieces: the price is visible, but the story is what's valuable
English translation of the original Estonian article. Original headline: Eksklusiivsed sisustuselemendid: nähtav on hind, aga väärtuslik on lugu
See the original design in the magazineA bicycle and a luxury car will both take you from one place to another. The difference is not in the destination, but in the comfort and the feeling each of us chooses to experience along the way. Furnishing a home follows the same logic. A branch can go into a vase that costs as much as an ice cream, or into one priced in the thousands. The branch is the same in both; the story of the vase is not. Material, finish, the share of handwork and exclusive qualities tell a story that may not even be guessed from a distance. But the owner knows, and the soul is content. The question is what exactly one is paying a high price for, and why a special object often brings more joy than an ordinary one.
Representatives of two Estonian companies share their views on exclusive interior pieces. Their businesses, however, move in opposite directions. Shishi designs in Tallinn and sells its pieces to the world's grand department stores. Luxor Furniture Salon, on the other hand, has been bringing pieces from around the world into Estonian homes for almost 30 years.
What does the person who pays more actually pay for?
At the Luxor salon, a decorative brass lobster is on sale for 495 euros, next to a tray for 395 euros. Neither of them performs any task better than a similar, cheaper version of the same product would.
"A client doesn't just buy an object from the salon, but design, material, quality, character and emotion. The goal is not to sell to as many people as possible, but to offer the client something special," explains Andrei Dvorjaninov, founder and board member of Luxor Furniture Salon, adding that in almost 30 years of business the company has never once wanted to deal in mass production.
"Our clients usually don't ask why an object costs so much. Rather, they ask whether it is still available," Dvorjaninov notes, pointing out that the partnership with Eichholtz was not born because of a grand international name either. Quite the opposite: the brand suited Luxor because their understanding of luxury, quality and design was similar. The brass lobster itself belongs to Eichholtz's Deco collection and is handmade.
A decorative object is the only thing in a home that doesn't have to do anything. That makes it the most honest example of what a person actually pays for: exclusivity. "That is what matters to us in interiors – an object doesn't just have to be beautiful. Most important is creating emotion in a room by carrying some kind of story," Dvorjaninov sums up.
Quality often hides where nobody looks directly.
With more expensive objects, the hardest part to explain is precisely what cannot be captured in a photo. How should a buyer tell whether an object is of high quality or not? In answer, Mart Haber, CEO and one of the founders of Shishi, sums up the key elements: "What definitely matters is the material the product is made of, the finish and the share of handmade work." These three are not only sales arguments but also cost items. Handwork is someone's dedicated time, and the difference in material quality can be enormous.
In a salon you can check this yourself, and you don't need to be an expert. When you pick up an object, look at its underside, because hardly anyone looks there and that is exactly where you can see how carefully the work was done. With ceramics, examine the edges of the glaze; with metal, the evenness of the finish; with textiles, the inner seams. Another sign of good quality can be an object turning out heavier than expected when you pick it up.
Quiet luxury means less is more.
Interior trends spreading on international social media are currently bringing bold botanical elements into room design. The trendiest is so-called cabbagecore: dishes, vases and other products shaped like cabbage and lettuce leaves, imitating nature in form or pattern. This is not a new idea either. Botanical forms in ceramics are a tradition almost three hundred years old that is now making a vigorous comeback. They are combined with bright colours, country-house vintage frills and flea-market finds, each to their own taste.
At the same time, interior architects name quiet luxury as a keyword for 2026, along with the idea that a material can be what it truly is. Wood looks like wood, and brass is allowed to darken over time. Wear and other changes in natural materials are no longer seen as defects, but as part of an object's life. Strict minimalism is retreating, but it is not being replaced by a cluttered room.
A principle interior architects repeat: buy once rather than often, but with quality in mind. An empty shelf is not an unfinished interior. It is thanks to the emptiness that the beautiful object next to it can be seen better, and when something one day truly wins your heart, it already has a place.
An Estonian vase also suits homes in Hong Kong and Paris.
Shishi is an Estonian company whose designs are sold not only in shops at home but in renowned department stores in Scandinavia and elsewhere in the world: for example Harrods and Fortnum & Mason in London, Galeries Lafayette, Printemps and Samaritaine in Paris, Rinascente in Italy and Lane Crawford in Hong Kong.
Buyers in more distant markets do not choose any differently from those here. According to Haber, the products are the same and the choices fairly similar; what differs is rather the size: "Estonian homes more often buy the smaller versions, and buyers sometimes seem to have less courage."
Which piece could a homeowner with discerning taste choose for their home this season? Mart Haber's advice is simple: "Every home should have one larger ceramic vase that you can easily put autumn branches in. That way you bring the mood of nature indoors."
A maple branch costs nothing, yet one object can change how alive a whole room feels. The vase holding the branch decides whether it is a random composition on the kitchen table or something the eye keeps returning to.
The more exclusive the object, the longer its story.
An object's longer, venerable story comes through most clearly when the space is historic. Luxor, for example, furnished Keila-Joa Castle, which Dvorjaninov also owns. The new furniture had to fit the castle's architecture, history and dignity.
Some pieces were chosen from the special Althorp Living History collection. These are officially licensed reproductions from Althorp House, made by Theodore Alexander. The collection was created in cooperation with Princess Diana's brother Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer. According to Dvorjaninov, Luxor also had the opportunity to communicate with the Spencer family personally.
Exclusivity is added, for example, by another strong brand, Eichholtz, through its collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which produced a separate collection inspired by objects in the museum's holdings. As Dvorjaninov explains, history and artistic heritage thus also reach the interiors of contemporary Estonian homes, since Luxor is Eichholtz's official partner in Estonia.
Both the Althorp collection and the world-famous museum's collection take the same approach: a new object modelled on an old one. What is bought is a form that has already proved itself over centuries. "The question is not which piece of furniture suits a castle, but rather which piece carries enough history, character and dignity to belong in such an environment," Dvorjaninov explains.
Most of us, of course, do not have a castle's worth of walls at home, nor any need to fill them. But the principle carries over: an object with a story behind it is felt differently in a room than one that was merely a good bargain. And the story does not always have to be sought far away. A coffee grinder inherited from your grandmother, along with its memories, can do exactly the same job in a room if it is placed in a carefully chosen spot. With a purchased object it is simply that you pay for the story, because someone else's work and time have already gone into it.
Only two things are certain.
Timelessness is talked about so often with luxury goods that the word has almost worn out. In retail, things can be seen from a slightly different angle, and there are two certainties.
First: trends pass. Not long ago, for example, palm leaves were suddenly everywhere – on wallpaper, cushions and trays, in budget shops and expensive salons alike. Today you no longer see them so much. Social media has made the cycle even faster: an idea used to take years to move into shops and from there into homes; now it takes months.
Second, it is worth remembering that a client who values exclusivity and quality wants to stand out. According to Dvorjaninov, this fact has stayed the same for 30 years even as everything else has changed. That is exactly why a shop's range cannot stand still either. Luxor does not keep the same goods on sale for years; collections are constantly renewed to offer more unique products.
The desire to stand out and the fashion currents therefore move in different directions. Which to follow more depends on whether an object is bought for a season and is less exclusive, or with the wish to admire it for longer.
Being special really needs no justification.
An autumn maple branch looks equally good in a ten-euro vase and in a thousand-euro vase. In both cases the purpose is fulfilled, but the difference lies in what the owner feels when seeing the arrangement on the kitchen table in the morning. They know what material the vase is made of, how much of it is handwork and why they chose exactly that one. This specialness often cannot be seen in a photo, and it doesn't need to be explained to anyone; it simply is.
An exclusive object will not necessarily make anyone happy. But a carefully chosen interior piece, into whose making and selection more time has gone than one might think at first glance, brings joy again and again. Especially when there are few such things, each object has room to show itself. When decorating a home with special interior pieces, the winner is not the one who dies with the most things. The phrase "less is more" does not mean an empty room, but that every item in the room has been carefully chosen. That is all that matters.