Middleby Residential Showroom Launch

How do your products and services enhance interior design projects?

The product range from La Cornue is designed to be flexible and versatile. The use of colour, the wide selection of trims and the numerous size options available all make it easy for the customer to transform their home and tell a design story through its interior. As well as its iconic ranges, La Cornue also makes kitchen islands and cabinetry. In fact, we have just launched new cabinetry designs that allow for greater symmetry in kitchen design and the lining up of horizontal surfaces for a cleaner look. The breadth of La Cornue’s offering means the consumer can achieve a stylishly pared-back, look or an opulent kitchen with a real sense of drama.

What value does your specialist sector add to the industry?

The kitchen is generally seen as the heart of the home and the cooker the centrepiece of that space. La Cornue is an artisan brand which, for more than a century, has offered luxury ovens that are hand-crafted, designed for performance and are utterly beautiful. Our products are investment pieces, once-in-a-generation purchases that come with a long history of French culinary savoir-faire as standard.

How do you work with interior designers?

La Cornue works with some of the world’s most renowned interior designers and does so in a spirit of true partnership. We see ourselves as an extension of their in-house teams, working directly with them and their clients. We usually begin with a virtual consultation during which we explore every aspect of the brief, and pinpoint what is most important to the designer. We then interpret the brief to provide either a quotation or an initial design concept. The starting point can either be an interior designer’s ideas and how we work within that or, more usually, we begin with the La Cornue cooker and they build around that.

What has been your most significant company highlight or success from the past year?

One of the highlights of the past year was the launch of the gorgeous Castel 60. A brilliant small space design solution, the award-winning 60cm model is our very first cooker with a touch-sensitive induction hob, offering a range of functions and it is a joy to use. It’s also been a year of hugely successful exhibitions for La Cornue, including KBIS – the largest kitchen industry show in North America – EuroCucina in Milan, and our first-ever appearance at kbb at the NEC in Birmingham. Over the past 12 months, we’ve also been involved in many significant and truly exciting (but sadly secret) client projects.

What are the latest trends you’ve noticed in your client’s requests?

There’s a real move towards adding more personality everywhere in the home and this is particularly true in the kitchen. People are moving away from the idea that everything should be neutral and are embracing colour and pattern more and we are seeing the same thing. We’ve been able to help clients make a real statement in kitchens where budgets have been tighter. For example, we’ve been able to meet investment level expectations – while still achieving an ultra-high-end look – by using two 90cm Cornufé models side by side to create a dramatic statement making focal point in the kitchen. Colour, too, has become more popular with designers taking advantage of La Cornue’s extensive colour palette, bespoke colours and our hugely accurate colour-matching service.

How do you see the interior design industry evolving in the year ahead?

Homes are becoming more personalised, with many of us wanting somewhere they feel at home in, more than one that is simply super-fashionable for a short time. We see people looking for buy-once investment pieces, subscribing to a more sustainable, longer-term approach based on high-quality pieces that will stay with them for a long period. It is the opposite of fast fashion.

Is there anything new you are excited to be working on?

We have been working with internationally renowned artists and designers to create stunning re-imaginings of three of our most iconic cookers. Ferris Rafauli is best known for seamlessly integrating timeless architecture and sumptuous interior designs into each project, with a masterful attention to detail. To create his exclusive reworking of the iconic Château Suprême collection for La Cornue, Rafauli considered and revised elements of the range to bring out its most quintessential qualities, taking the precision of the lines and exquisite details to a whole new level. Matthew Quinn – an international figure in design and architecture – has created the Château Moderne to offer contemporary styling and a new aesthetic symmetry. Finally, the French jeweller Tournaire has created a series of intricate bas-relief sculptures in bronze to further enhance the controls, handles, brackets and trims on the La Cornue collections. We have also launched a new range of sumptuous gold-plated and silver-plated trims, as well as Blue Velvet, a gorgeous navy blue satin finish, and two new bronze trims. Our smaller projects, too, are also very satisfying. It is so rewarding when you work directly with the client and provide something really special that makes a huge difference within a smaller kitchen project. Equally, we are seeing projects getting bigger and bigger and ever more elaborate.

What does being an SBID Accredited Industry Partner mean to you?

We love working with designers and value hugely the creative conversations that come from being a member of a body like the SBID. We are also excited to see what others are doing. Every project is so very different and, having a bespoke product range, we are always challenging ourselves to realise the look and feel interior designers are striving to achieve. It is amazing how a 360º vision can be achieved through creative partnership.

If you’d like to feature your news or stories on SBID.org, get in touch to find out more. 

If you’d like to become SBID Accredited, click here for more information.

La Cornue is proud to unveil the Castel 60, the latest addition to its celebrated Château range. The smallest La Cornue model ever, the Castel 60 features all the classic – and prestigious – elements of the brand’s iconic cookers. The Castel 60 is designed with today’s lifestyles very much in mind and has been crafted to fit perfectly into modern houses, holiday homes or urban apartments, as well as in more traditional settings.

It has an electric version of the renowned vaulted oven to guarantee delicious, evenly cooked food. The Castel 60 is also the first La Cornue cooker to be fitted with a four-zone touch-control induction hob. The Castel 60 features the hallmark La Cornue details, such as the towel rail, snail knob and engraved five-star plate.

The cooker is available in all 40 Château colours and 16 trim options too, ensuring it blends seamlessly with the full range of La Cornue cookers. There’s even the option to have your own bespoke colour. With the Castel 60, then, culinary performance and elegance meet in a cooker designed to ensure every minute spent in the kitchen is an absolute pleasure.

The Château Range

Created in 1964 by the second generation of the Dupuy family and considered to be the jewel in the La Cornue crown, the Château range showcases the brand’s unrivalled expertise. The result of more than 100 years of research and development, each Château cooker is entirely hand-assembled by craftsmen in a production workshop in Saint-Ouen l’Aumône. Their knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation, resulting in a cooker that offers outstanding culinary performance and elegance. A masterpiece with every single detail designed to make your kitchen unique…

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If you’d like to become SBID Accredited, click here for more information.

ERA is a mix of evolution and revolution. It’s where technology meets design and where heritage meets modernity.

And it’s where glass is used extensively for the first time to create a striking, unified aesthetic that is beautiful, contemporary and fits perfectly into a modern kitchen.

When David Fisher, Chief Design Consultant to AGA, was asked to consider how a new, disruptive and mould-breaking cooker from AGA might look and feel, he responded with the tantalising question: why not a glass AGA?

David says: “The use of glass lends ERA a liquid quality as the sleek black glass cascades down from the top. The design is clean, cohesive and beautiful while also functionally brilliantly capable. It is modern and progressive while also faithful to a heritage stretching back more than 100 years.”

With a design, then, that is both discreet and striking, this exceptional, unexpected cooker has a natural place in today’s kitchen.

Each element of ERA – including the pristine lines of the glass-fronted oven doors and the ergonomically designed handles – has been carefully considered to create an appliance with premium design values, honest, hard-working materials and a quietly assertive aesthetic.

With engaging tactility and mindful detailing, life with ERA from AGA offers the best of both worlds – from a quick weeknight dinner through to the meditative practice that helps us unwind.

ERA offers an all-in-one solution. It takes a sensory approach to cooking, with every feature touch-screen controlled. There are details so cleverly designed they go unnoticed, but it is these touches that ensure you get the very best from the ingredients you choose to cook.

On top there is an induction hob beside a cast-iron hotplate. Alongside a fan oven, ERA also has two cast-iron ovens which cook using radiant heat. This offers an intuitive, kind-to-food way of cooking. It’s natural and elemental.

We think of it as akin to sunshine through a window. It’s a warm and penetrating heat made possible due to the thermal properties of cast iron. Food cooked this way tastes better because it has been treated gently. Radiant heat cooking is an effective, efficient and effortless way to roast, bake, grill, steam, fry and slow-cook and to get the most succulent, nutritious dishes.

ERA, then, is a cook’s cooker, created to fit seamlessly into your kitchen and to effortlessly integrate into your life.

Expect the unexpected with ERA. The new glass AGA.

If you’d like to feature your news or stories on SBID.org, get in touch to find out more. 

If you’d like to become SBID Accredited, click here for more information.