And more companies seem to join the movement each season. Vitra launched a mini version of the famed Panton plastic stacking chair - with precisely the same production methods and materials as the original but 25 percent smaller and available in fun colours such as pink, lime and orange last winter. (This was more than three decades after designer Verner Panton suggested it.) Design Within Reach in the US now has a children's line called DWRjax. And in the UK, furniture and homewares bellwether Habitat has just launched a full collection for older kids, including a "VIP" range designed by the likes of former astronaut Buzz Aldrin (who contributed a white resin pendant lamp that's an exact replica of the moon's surface), model Sophie Dahl (a frilly dressing table) and actress Kate Winslet (a solid oak "secrets" box). Lucy Ryder Richardson, the force behind the Dulwich-based Midcentury Modern furniture sales, is meanwhile planning a 2008 sale with retailer Thorsten van Elten that will feature contemporary and vintage children's furniture and home accessories.

"We've seen a lot of growth in the market because this is what most parents are looking for alternatives to the traditional nursery or children's room; furniture that could work in a modern home and isn't incongruent with the rest of the house," says Kaye Popofsky Kramer, director of Nurseryworks, a three-year-old, US-based range of slick, nursery and kids' bedroom furniture from designers such as Truck Product Architecture.

Popofsky Kramer, who shows at New York's International Contemporary Furniture Fair, says that her company had only one competitor David Netto Design, which specialises in light oak and white laquer nursery and children's furniture when it launched. But now the market is "extremely competitive". "I think it would have taken off a long time ago if there had been someone doing it because there are a lot more young parents like myself who have that aesthetic," she says.

Noreen Marshall of the Victoria & Albert Museum's newly reopened Museum of Childhood notes that the eras that have resulted in high quality children's design have been times of relative prosperity. The years of stability between the first and second world wars, for example, spawned the likes of Heal's in the UK, which pioneered new nursery furniture. And "the late 19th century, in particular, has parallels to now. Many people had made a killing in industry and jumped a social echelon. They wanted to buy things specifically for their children." At other times, she says, people have "historically had a make-do-and-mend approach" to nurseries and children's furniture needs.

Now is as gilded an age as any in history and, thanks to declining birth rates in much of the developed world, many wealthy parents have only one or two children to worry about. In the US, children now influence $500bn worth of retail spending, including more than $6bn in children's furniture, according to Furniture Today market research. It's no surprise then that contemporary design companies which have benefitted from unprecedented interest from adults in the past few decades would try to tap into the market.

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