Familiarity is comforting. It’s what deputy editor Natasha Radmehr experienced as she sampled the tasting menu at Aizle, each mouthful transporting her back to childhood.

Familiarity is what we witness at McLean Quinlan’s masterful contemporary interpretation of a barn, as the architects’ references to the Arts & Crafts movement inspire a connection between old and new. This house welcomes its owners, shows them something they might recognise, and offers them the opportunity to feel, well, at home.

This sort of nostalgia has the power to take us to places we feel attached to; that’s why, when I see my kids choosing the same trainers I had the first time round in the ’90s (now styled ‘vintage’), I feel a warm pang of happiness. It’s why Natasha Raskin Sharp is on a neverending hunt for an elusive 1970 Camaleonda sofa.

Here, in our annual Collector’s Issue, we celebrate the beauty and ingenuity of what has gone before, and lay out the ways we can connect those skills and crafts with designers who are creating for the present.

Read all about a new generation of makers immersing themselves in centuries-old techniques at Tom Fraser’s Chippendale School of Furniture and see it for yourself in Phoebe Hollond’s country-house refurb that brings the best of the past into view for today.

And once you’ve finished, add this edition to your own collection. It’s a keeper.