I've been infatuated with the French design team Ibride (pronounced "ee-breed") ever since I saw their deer tray hanging on the wall of an apartment in Seattle. There was nothing else hanging on that wall, which had been painted a gorgeous, soft dove gray in VOC-free paint. About seven feet away from the tray was an unadorned window overlooking a clump of trees. Beyond the line of trees were the distant rooftops of Seattle high-rises, and in my peaceful, half-asleep state, the curves and shapes of the leaves and the strong lines of the high-rises melded together into a single plane.

It was one of those rare moments when I saw harmony in everything — the same harmony contained in the scene on the tray. A doe in the foreground, a buck in the midground, mist and green forest stretching for miles and miles around and behind them, trees lacing their branches into the air. In the natural world, I realized, foreground and background are all just part of endless, infinite space. Either the recent changes I'd made to my life were even healthier than I'd thought, or someone had dosed my coffee. Even organic, free-trade mocha java was never this good.

My West Coast hostess said she completely understood. We sat next to each other on the couch, our hands curled around our cups of coffee, staring at the Ibride tray on the wall. "I think it casts, like, this bucolic spell," she said. "It's like that Henri Rousseau painting, The Dream. Totally surreal and kind of wild, but so obviously just natural." (I ought to mention that my hostess is an art teacher.) She'd bought the tray from Velocity Art and Design, the online site of the wonderful store in Seattle.

Started by John and Lara Tusher in 1999, Velocity Art and Design just opened a new 3,000-square-foot store in an up-and-coming Seattle neighborhood. In a few short years the Tushers have earned well-deserved respect for their impeccable eye and forward thinking. They call their aesthetic Organic Modernism, and believe that what they do can be a progressive influence far beyond a room. Proof of their place in the new design establishment: They were just featured in this week's New York Times Home & Garden piece on the "Bestsellers and Bombs" in home furnishings stores. What's a bestseller for them? An Ibride tray: the very colorful, whimsical owl in front of burgundy flowers (possibly hydrangeas), as trippy as a night I once spent on mushrooms, ages ago.

Ibride was created by three members of the same family (this comes from Velocity's helpful, engaging website). The name is a playful Francophication of the word "hybrid." Their own website, in French, is full of rich visuals you'll enjoy even if you don't read a word of their mother tongue. It features a marvelous, dreamy movie that reminds me of a sepia-toned, minimalist version of A Midsummer Night's Dream with a track of humming, guitar lines, whispers, and psychedelic-tinged bird calls (get the picture)?

They make furniture as well: a bookcase in the shape of a bear; tables that look like dogs or deer. They have taken the idea of hybrid to its most imaginative limits, full of that double-entendre that French art and design have often done so well: 1) Everything they make is completely functional, but so whimsical you just want to sit back and stare; 2) They are enamored of flora and fauna and pull from the natural world, but most of their objects go indoors; 3) Layered and ornate, the trays both lean back in time like an old antique, oval-framed portrait of an ancestor, and look forward in an unabashed, modern way. (On one tray, the picture itself extends all over the frame. On another, there is a very modern, global-warming-era blend of hope and warning.)

If only deer could rule the earth, everything would look so much better. In the meantime, buy a tray.

Jana Martin is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Fashion & Design.