Are portals the answer?

I'm so new to this I hardly know how to ask the question.... In the absence of our usual programmer, I have to knock up a database for a mail order catalogue, to hold the information for the Curtains pages. It will be used to generate formatted text (in QuarkXPress, I can do that bit!) for the printed catalogue.

Each item has a unique product code (e.g. G1234). Each range of curtains contains up to 20 products - different lengths, different widths, pelmets etc. So I need a main entry for the first item, and the rest should relate to it somehow. That is, when someone does a search on the first item, all the others should automatically pop up too.

I don't really want to put the sub-items in a separate database, I think because i'm a bit scared of it! But is this the answer? Is there any other way to link items which are in the same database? I'm totally self-taught, and there are concepts I just can't get my head around yet!

Thanks for any help, I hope this isn't a totally stupid question.