Husband-and-wife team Peter Lapsley and Andrea Sundt will tomorrow launch a new store — with a stunning array of designer takes on everyday items.

The couple are to open &Partners, in the former Otto Wurtz storage area at the bottom of Par la Ville Road.

Mr Lapsley, former director of the Bermuda Society of Arts, said: “We’re both creative people, artists and designers in our own right. It’s a bit of a labour of love for us in that respect.”

He added: “We had been living in New York and we knew a lot of people who make a lot of things — household things, so we sourced better designed versions familiar products.

“It’s well-designed, well-crafted products that are better-designed versions of things you see every day.”

The store features a range of items, from Skultuna, a centuries-old Swedish foundry that makes brass and silver items like vases and cufflinks and goods from HAY, a Danish design firm that is featured in the prestigious Museum of Modern Art gift shop in New York.

Mr Lapsley, who both studied and worked at the city’s Parsons School of Design before returning home with Ms Sundt last year, said: “They are handmade by craftsmen in their foundry, the way they have been doing it for 400 years.”

In addition, the store features all natural Bermuda beeswax candles from Bermuda Bee Lovers Beekeeping and Alex Davidson’s hand-carved Bermuda cedar, spice and cypress wooden spoons, as well as items like brightly coloured geometric nests of trays that slot into each other, scissors, rulers, pens and pencils from Danish design company HAY.

The store also features designer watches from US firm Throne and clean-lined jewellery in silver and gold from Still House Jewellery in New York.

Mr Lapsley said: “They are all really simple, but considered ideas. We want handmade local and international products and to put them all in one space.”

Ms Sundt, a costume designer for the stage and film in New York, added: “Moving from the big city where there is a lot of that type of work, we both knew we had to do something without that film industry here.”

The pair were speaking in the store, which has a minimalist feel with light walls and blond wood modular display shelves the couple made themselves.

Mr Lapsley said he was convinced there was a healthy market for good design on the island.

He added: “If the response we have had so far from people who have seen what we bring in, I think there is.

“People assume that well-designed, well-crafted things are either fragile, not up to the rigours of everyday life or are priced out of the grasp of people. That’s not the case.”

And he said: “There’s a sense of discovery and things for people to pick through. It’s got touch and feel and there are a lot of textures and different materials.”

Mr Lapsley added: “We are looking at bringing in other local designers as well and put them together with international ones and show that when you put them together, they stand up well with each other.”