It’s 80 years since Richard Hinton’s grandfather decided it would be a good idea to sell really excellent homewares. And, with the odd tweak here and there, that’s exactly what Richard does now.

You may not have heard of Hintons Home, the Poole-based internet retailer, but that is about to change as it is acquiring a growing reputation as a purveyor of unusual, well-made design that won’t fall apart after you’ve used it or stuck it in the washing machine.

Stuff like the intricate, cut-ware patterns of the paper artist Rob Ryan, available on mugs, plates and notebooks. Or stuff like the zingy orange fox and Carnaby coaster sets by the massively on-trend Jonathan Adler. Or a nice, Cyberman apron or a Tardis tea-towel from the new Dr Who range.

“Linking up with the BBC was exciting because although they are a big brand this stuff is only being sold in the BBC shop, our shop, and some other selected retailers,” says Richard. “It was quite a wow for us to get accepted and tested, to sell this range.”

This is why Robert can be seen pouring tea from a Dalek tea-pot, drying up with his Tardis tea-towel and occasionally ‘doing a robot dance’ because he’s wearing his Cyberman apron.

With a great respect for retailers like John Lewis, he believes in the personal touch; your Hintons purchase will likely as not contain a personal note to you in the packaging, and he also believes in buying quality.

“I’m a bit of a fan of Vivienne Westwood’s Climate Revolution initiative,” he says.

“It’s about choosing well, buying to keep and investing in well-designed clothing or homewares that you’ll want to hold on to because they’ll look good and serve their purpose.”

He says he is happy to pay £80 for bedding: “Because I know it’s been well made by people who have received a reasonable wage and it will look good even in four years’ time.”

He prefers natural materials for the goods they sell but when they do work with plastics, the company: “Tries to work with suppliers who have a bit of an ethos behind them, like the designer of our salad-bowl and the bird servers.”

Things which are ‘thicker and more durable’ will last, he says: “So in the end they won’t have such a horrendous impact on the environment.”

He knows we always want to upgrade our homes, especially now that spring is in the air so what should we look out for?

“Introduce lots of splashes of colour; Jonathan Adler is very good for this, in the bedroom you could invest in our Esssenza bedding; there’s a beautiful violet design and a flower-bomb pattern,” he says.

“Anything with birds is flying off the shelves and we’ve noticed that orange and red are really big for spring.”