The Beal deal February 19, 2015 Figures hang suspended and exposed in vague landscapes of coloured panels and platforms. Bartholomew Beal’s paintings are dark and light, disturbing and beautiful, rich with meaning yet unnervingly ambiguous. There’s the horror of Francis Bacon, and the colourful exuberance of Peter Doig. Anyone who visited last year’s solo show at the Fine Art Society will [...]
Brick by brick February 19, 2015 A new coffee-table book celebrates the enduring appeal of the ultimate building material Age has not withered the humble brick, but nor has it afforded it much prestige. More than any other material, bricks have enshrined civilisation, protected it, provided space for it to grow, yet they’re seen as the humdrum standard, little more than [...]
Art of brass February 19, 2015 Make storage stylish with these handcrafted stacking vessels Storage is a vital, but throughly mundane, fact of life. Fortunately, the brother and sister team behind Utopia & Utility have come up with a solution that’s both functional and fashionable. These stacking vessels are actually three different containers made by three European craftsmen to form one [...]
Easel does it February 19, 2015 Samsung’s 85 inch S9 TV will turn your living room into a cinema If watching television is less a pastime and more a second job, then perhaps you should consider investing in one of these. Samsung’s 85 inch behemoth isn’t just something to watch the new season of House of Cards on – it’s a [...]
Beautiful things: Brass vessels, Samsung’s easel TV and Tom Dixon furniture February 19, 2015 Make storage stylish with these handcrafted stacking vessels Storage is a vital, but throughly mundane, fact of life. Fortunately, the brother and sister team behind Utopia & Utility have come up with a solution that’s both functional and fashionable. These stacking vessels are actually three different containers made by three European craftsmen to form one [...]
Kelly Hoppen reveals how she re-invented luxury in Mauritius while growing a global design empire February 19, 2015 Kelly Hoppen is an internationally renowned designer, the empress of all things taupe and beige, an entrepreneur, and a business ambassador for the UK. She was even a fixture on the BBC’s Dragons Den for two years, but she recently left “due to a packed schedule”. Juggling so many roles sounds like it requires time [...]
God save McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition celebrating Alexander McQueen comes home February 19, 2015 Duck feather dress from McQueen’s 2009 Horn of Plenty show A world beholden to mercantile concerns, where in follows out with bewildering arbitrariness and where genius gets distorted, compressed and subsumed into the commercial vortex that is the retail industry – fashion is no place for an artist. But an artist is what Alexander McQueen [...]
Return to Utopia: The desire to live where you work harks back to the industrial towns of yesteryear February 19, 2015 On frosty, damp mornings like the ones London has seen of late, the morning commute is worse than ever. Biting winds followed by packed, sweltering trains, followed by more wind – it’s as if the commute was specifically designed to make you as ill-prepared as possible for the day ahead. Yet it’s accepted by millions [...]
A room with a view: Why Brits are flocking back to Italy’s Lake Como February 19, 2015 It was the Romans who discovered Lake Como, and built their villas overlooking its stunning scenery. Today, the Mediterranean microclimate created by the lake’s waters is enjoyed as much as ever, though many now prefer an apartment in place of a villa. Aside from the views across the lake, and the uniquely benign climate it [...]
A very big house in the country: Whitestaunton Manor is a Grade-I listed estate with a very textured history February 19, 2015 Nestled in a quiet country village on the outskirts of Somerset lies a house with architecture so rare the only other place you’ll see anything like it is in the Houses of Parliament. In fact, most of Whitestaunton Manor, listed Grade-I for architectural or historical interest, is older than that venerable institution; it’s even namechecked [...]