Style and design: Items and Icons - Pianos etc

Bi-chair: two chairs with a table bolted on vibrantly coloured steel frames (far left) from Bius, a contemporary furniture studio set up by Mary Little and Peter Wheeler. Made to commission, from around pounds 1,900. (0171-924 7724)

Sleek minimalist interiors of the Joseph shops will be the striking backdrop to the opulence of the Oriental Curiosity: 21st Century Chinoiserie exhibition starting on 28 Nov at 74 Sloane St and 77 Fulham Rd, London SW3. Pearl Lam, owner of the Hong Kong Contrasts gallery, briefed leading European designers to reinterpret Oriental themes and styles. Seen left is the Pearl chair. (0171-235 4965)

Time for Bliss: 1960s style returns with asymmetrical Flock Clocks, pounds 39 (below) and cheap and cheerful Fruit Fridge magnet clocks pounds 9.99 (right), from Bliss (01789-400 077).

The world's most expensive piano, and possibly the most garish - a Steinway (left) expected to fetch pounds 600,000-pounds 800,000 at Christie's next Friday (0171 839 9060). Victorian artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was given a sky's-the-limit budget in 1884 to design it for the music salon of the American connoisseur Henry G. Marquand, a founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Hence the conspicuous trappings of semi-precious stones, ivory, ebony, and lid painted with classical figures by Sir Edward Poynter.

Major to minor: this tiny, 12-inch long French musical vanity box in the shape of a piano of about 1840, also with gilt, ivory, ebony and mother- of-pearl fittings, is expected to fetch pounds 400-pounds 600 in Bonhams' furniture auction ( 0171 393 3900) on Wednesday. It contains miniature scissors, a thimble and a scent bottle. Vanity comes in all sizes and all prices, it seems. Plink, plunk.