Our Market Editor, Victoria de la Camara, has an eye for well made, high style design. She edits our Holiday Gift Guides, each issue’s market pages, and is our office’s go-to editor for all things product. Based in Madrid, Spain, she has one foot in Europe and the other in the US helping bridge that gap, knowing what’s the best design coming out of both industries. She shares with us one of her current obsessions.

Here in Madrid I live in a 900 square foot loft (I know, when I was living in New York that would have been considered a mansion), and while it has both lovely historical and modern bones, it’s quite limited in space. For example, I don’t have a place for guests to stay over (there isn’t much privacy even if they are ok with sleeping on the sofa), and I don’t have an entryway. You enter my apartment through the kitchen. For a while we made do with just my desk to place things like keys, odds and ends, etc, it became a clutter-fest, and more importantly, we felt like our space was lacking a homey quality. The true sign of a designer is to notice those sorts of issues and try to find a solution (but not just any solution, the solution).

Low and behold, the Dutch brand HK Living came out with their gorgeous wooden bench — immediately attractive to me for its shaker style and waxed wood finish. Not to mention that it’s good for indoors and outdoors — so no worries about keeping it looking new over the years. Coffee mugs are welcome. We placed it just in between our living room and staircase to fake the existence of an entryway. Now, we have the perfect place to put on shoes, place our things right before we jet out, and so on. The best thing, though, as a renter, is that if we do move, I know we’ll definitely have a place for it since it would work wonderfully at the table with a sheepskin throw, or on a terrace for outdoor entertaining. When I research which new piece we will bring into our home, I always contemplate longevity: “Is it timeless? Is it versatile? Does it exude quality?” After over two years on the hunt, I think we’ve found our piece!