{"id":677018,"date":"2026-07-06T17:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/677018\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T17:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:04:14","slug":"can-this-new-online-tool-transform-us-all-into-confident-art-collectors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/677018\/","title":{"rendered":"Can this new online tool transform us all into confident art collectors?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For interior designers, that tethering is the whole point. Amy Jenkinson of Studio Five Interiors counts herself a convert. \u2018Sourcing art is the part of a scheme clients agonise over most, and it\u2019s usually the last thing to land,\u2019 she says. \u2018With the interior-design tool, you can photograph a client\u2019s inherited console and the app pulls up a tonal landscape whose greys mirror the veins in the marble exactly. That used to take me three art fairs and a fortnight of research.\u2019 The tool she means is Echo, a reverse-image search that recommends artworks that share a room’s visual DNA. There is voice search too: murmur \u2018a quiet coastal abstract with pinks and blues, and a little texture\u2019 and the app obliges, no art-historical vocabulary required.<\/p>\n

That ease is convincing some designers, though rarely without a caveat \u2013 and the debate it stirs is, in its way, the truest measure of the thing. The team at Studio Five is drawn less to the cleverness than to the calm. Their clients want their homes \u2018to feel gathered over time, never bought in an afternoon\u2019, and what they prize is the way the app \u2018widens the net beyond the same dozen names everyone uses\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"new<\/p>\n

The Performance, 2023, by Peggy Kuiper takes centre stage in this sitting room designed by Stella Weatherall<\/a>. She eschewed technology for the human touch, working with Lizzie Dixey at The Art Register to find the perfect pieces.<\/p>\n

Christopher Horwood<\/p>\n

Not every designer will hand over the reins so readily, and nor should they. Designer Wilf Lytton \u2013 who trained under Colefax legend Roger Jones, and who now oversees Scawen Interiors \u2013 sounds a thoughtful note of caution. \u2018I\u2019d consider using it research purposes,\u2019 he says, \u2018but I\u2019d be sorry to lose the part of this job that comes from getting lost in a gallery and being surprised. An algorithm, by its nature, tends to lean towards what you already like.\u2019 It is a fair point, and one Ben seems glad to concede: the app, he insists, is a beginning rather than an oracle \u2013 a way in, not a replacement for the eye.<\/p>\n

The practicalities \u2013 so often where good intentions come unstuck \u2013 are handled with the same lightness of touch; mock-ups, payment, shipping and even import duty are sorted by the team at NALA, and the work is sent straight from the studio to the buyer. But what finally won me over was the question of who profits. Artists keep their full listed price \u2013 the platform takes its 11.5 per cent fee (a fraction of a gallery\u2019s commission) from the buyer, not from the maker \u2013 so a purchase feels closer to patronage than to a transaction strained through the usual layers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For interior designers, that tethering is the whole point. Amy Jenkinson of Studio Five Interiors counts herself a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1897,6225,6485,6486,1120,96,226188,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-677018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-how-to-start-your-own-collection","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}