Debut: For their new line of outdoor fabrics, Miranda Brooks and Bastien Halard look to the land
During their first winter in the Cotswolds, Miranda Brooks and Bastien Halard were met not by glittering hoarfrost and scenic drifting snow but by one of the wettest seasons on record. Rain poured, their 17th-century stone house was damp, and the freshly graded landscape (a former dairy farm) was mud as far as the eye could see. Despairing that spring would ever come, the AD100 Brooklyn expats—he a French-born designer, she a Hertfordshire lass turned garden guru—fashioned a creative escape: conjuring up flowered fabrics that would be used on their own outdoor furniture.
“I figured that chintz would give me an instant garden whilst waiting for everything to grow,” says Brooks. What they intended for their own use, though, is now being introduced to the public under the couple’s Catswood brand, named for the house where they live with their two teenage daughters. The five patterns offer all the botanical bounty that they hoped for, the motifs and colors adapted from vintage and antique documents. Roses bloom, leaves unfurl, and butterflies flit, joined by coordinating stripes with their roots in ikats and tickings.
“It’s easy to find chic outdoor fabrics, but not decorative ones,” explains Halard, a scion of the family that founded the influential French textile firm Nobilis. Especially, his wife points out, fabrics made of invitingly soft synthetic fibers (stain-proof, mold-proof, and water-resistant) that hold up against the kind of weather that sparked that winter project in the first place. “I wanted natural dyes, not carcinogenic coatings,” Brooks says. “I don’t want to lie on something toxic.” That includes the flouncy skirted sofa that stretches across a wall of their kitchen and is slipcovered in red peonies. It’s the perfect spot for pondering Catswood’s future moves: five additional patterns that are expected to bloom next year. catswooddesign.com —Mitchell Owens
Jewelry: Bulgari celebrates 75 years of the Serpenti
It was in 1948 that a snake first slithered around Bulgari’s elegant wrist, appearing in the Serpenti collection of jewelry watches. Later interpretations followed, often marked by increasingly intricate and stylized feats of craft. Today, in celebration of the motif’s 75th anniversary, the Italian luxury brand has released a series of new Serpenti treasures, among them this glittering bracelet in pink gold, diamonds, and emeralds. Price upon request; bulgari.com —Sam Cochran
Hotel: A new Athenian getaway
In the 1950s and ’60s, the Athenian Riviera came to epitomize Greek glamour thanks to the beach homes that society swans and patrician families strung, jewellike, along this 40-mile stretch of Aegean Sea. While time later swept away much of the region’s charms, the past few years have seen the area’s revival, with sparkling new resorts, beach clubs, restaurants, and parks popping up among the palms and cypresses. The One&Only Aesthesis hotel, opening this winter, leans into that nostalgia. Set in the tony enclave of Glyfada, about 30 minutes from central Athens, the complex spans rectangular bungalows, villas, and a spaceship-like midcentury main building—all set amid fragrant pine trees and vibrant lavender. Nature played a big role when conceptualizing the interiors. (It’s also within a 52-acre forest reserve.) “We used local volcanic stone, oak timber, naturally woven fabrics, and marble quarried from the island of Thásos,” says Inge Moore, cofounder and principal of the London-based studio Muza Lab, which designed all 127 accommodations (rooms, bungalows, residences, and villas) in collaboration with the Greek architecture firms K-Studio, Audo, and A6Architects. Rooms were conceived to maximize natural light, with multiple sliding window walls to let in cool sea breezes. Adds Moore: “It’s all about immersing guests in this spectacular beauty.” oneandonlyresorts.com —John Wogan
Light Hearted: In his new Brooklyn studio, ceramist Jeremy Anderson crafts a series of lovable lamps
"They’re like characters,” says ceramic artist Jeremy Anderson, examining a lively crew of lamps at his new studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Finished in 22-karat yellow gold, one appears dressed in a striped tunic with a matching hat. Another, in gleaming white gold, seems to sport a clay riff on a bearskin cap and a voluminous fringed skirt. The vaguely figurative pieces (each with a name like The Dancer, Star Warrior, and Twins) are all from his latest body of work, which will be officially unveiled with Gallery Fumi at the PAD London and Design Miami fairs.
Anderson, who cofounded the lighting brand Apparatus with Gabriel Hendifar, his now ex-husband, turned a lifelong pottery practice into his full-time gig after the couple amicably parted ways a few years ago. “Working with clay is kind of a lesson in life,” he muses. “You can’t get too attached to anything because something can always go wrong in the process.” Just the day before, he opened the kiln to discover that multiple pieces had fused together or collapsed. But from those failures come lessons and unexpected discoveries.
In Red Hook—where interior designer Casey Kenyon helped him update a sprawling warehouse into a studio and showroom—Anderson’s process unfolds. He starts at the wheel, throwing modular components that can be assembled into lamps and “dressed” in metallic lusters, bespoke beads, and hand-painted lines. Lately he’s been experimenting with pigmented stains that imbue the clay with color. He’s also trying out larger formats like floor lamps and chandeliers. In the front-of-house showroom, finished lights mix with Anderson’s ongoing series of vessels, whose finned shapes resemble mushrooms growing on a tree. Wabi-sabi in vibe, with a ceiling draped in linen, shoji-inspired doors, and rustic wood seating, the studio is a fitting backdrop for Anderson’s intuitive process. “There’s flexibility and freedom in the making,” he explains. “But ultimately all the pieces have to fit together.” jeremy-anderson.com —Hannah Martin
Exhibitions: Kostas Lambridis mines the magic of everyday materials
"We treat everything here with the same respect—or lack of respect,” says Kostas Lambridis, describing the assorted stuff filling his Athens studio. On a given day that might include chairs scavenged from the city streets, hunks of Pentelic marble, and a piece of a beat-up car, all sitting alongside the stained glass and handmade ceramic mosaics that his team painstakingly produces in-house.
This nonhierarchical approach is central to Lambridis’s art and design practice, in which odds and ends plucked from across the value spectrum coalesce into functional sculptures. One new table, for example, started with slabs of Greek and American walnut but grew to incorporate, among other timber flourishes, the decorative base of a lamp, the top of a kitschy cocktail table, and a handful of finials. “I wanted to show the full range of the material, from the raw to the super processed,” he says of the all-wood piece, which stars in “Reverse Fireworks in Slow Motion,” his first American solo exhibition, on view through November 23 at New York’s Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
Lambridis first garnered attention for his 2017 graduation project at Design Academy Eindhoven. In that feat, Lambridis riffed on the legendary Badminton cabinet, an 18th-century treasure that broke auction records for a work of decorative art when it sold for $36.6 million at Christie’s in 2004. His radical rendition comprised an unconventional medley of minerals, metals, woods, plastics, and electronics, arranged by weight from heaviest to lightest. Carpenters Workshop included it in a show of student work that year.
Lambridis’s latest body of work further refines that approach, now focusing on a different material for each piece. A metal bar incorporates both the fender of a friend’s Volkswagen Beetle and doors from a Citroën 2CV. A console, meanwhile, is made of recycled and new plastic. And a cocktail table is totally mineral, with volcanic rock purchased from a garden store, cast glass, and terra-cotta bricks. “That white marble comes from a sink in an Athenian apartment,” Lambridis says of the hunk embedded in the base. “This is the same marble as the Acropolis. But for some reason when people renovate their apartments, this is one of the first things they remove.” kostaslambridis.com —Hannah Martin
Craft: A father and daughter's fresh take on traditional Japanese woodworking
Japanese woodworker Toshio Tokunaga likes to say that if more people practiced Kanna, a traditional carving method, it would bring world peace. “When a maker understands the wood and makes things with love, it’s contagious,” his daughter, Yuriko, explains of the slow process, which involves using handmade iron planes, avoiding power tools and sanding of any kind. Historically, Kanna was employed to finish the pillars of temples and shrines, but for the past 15 years, her father has been harnessing the technique to create exquisite pieces of furniture. In one series, he has reimagined a ritual chair from Kyoto’s Imperial Palace using black persimmon logs so precious that they were available only to the emperor’s own family during the eighth-century Nara period. Meanwhile, a medallion-back chair, reminiscent of the Louis XVI style, is made from a 250-year-old zelkova tree harvested at Mount Rokkō. Age creates what Toshio calls “good wood,” which is strong, radiant, and warp-resistant even after it has been carved and finished with his proprietary Hassui Ceramic coating. These days, the duo works together in Hyogo prefecture to realize each wonder. (The furniture is represented exclusively by Manhattan’s Radnor gallery, whose founder, Susan Clark, discovered it while researching Japanese woodworking.) Father might carve a frame from centuries-old maple, while daughter crochets a seat and back using ink-dyed washi paper. The pair are now buying abandoned rice fields to source their wood, replanting what they use so that a new crop will be ready in 100 years. radnor.co –Hannah Martin
Craft: Jamb releases a line of mirrors
Jamb, the British purveyor of antique and reproduction chimneypieces, lighting, and furniture, appreciates a good patina. So naturally its new line of mirrors had to shine just so. Set in aged frames—some based on early-19th-century English examples, others after Queen Anne originals—the glass has been distressed to replicate the mottled foxing of timeworn panes. Above a mantel, they’ll sparkle all the brighter. jamb.co.uk —Sam Cochran
Debut: Banana Republic expands its reach with BR Home
Exploration has always been at the heart of the Banana Republic brand. Founded in 1978, the fashion label got its start re-imagining expedition staples as everyday attire, later evolving into the ready-to-wear wardrobe of choice for stylish professionals. Today, the company is expanding upon that peripatetic legacy with the launch of BR Home, a new furnishings line that celebrates natural materials, a global spirit, and local handcraft. Tactile wool rugs, for instance, are knotted by weavers in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Sculptural teak furniture is carved by wood-workers on the Indonesian island of Java. And handsome upholstered seating is made by expert artisans in North Carolina and Virginia. Styles, all the while, range from clean-lined and modern to refined and traditional. “We have vast archives of ideas and influences,” says president and CEO Sandra Stangl of the mix, which spans case goods, bedding, lighting, and more. “Every single piece has incredible attention to details and a story to tell.” bananarepublic.com —Sam Cochran
Fabrics: Tory Burch and Robert Kime Studio extend their hit textile collection
Three years after Tory Burch and Robert Kime launched their hit Nara collection, the fashion icon and the late AD100 maestro’s studio have revealed a follow-up array of Japanese-inspired textiles and wallpapers. All, Burch says, are an ode to a man who “made everything look perfectly imperfect.” robertkime.com —Hannah Martin
