July 11, 2012

Full Bloom

Growing up on an Arabian-horse farm in Pennsylvania in the 1970s and ’80s, David Leaser honed his photography skills at an early age, taking pictures of champion horses for their owners. After finishing school he worked in the technology field for co...
July 10, 2012

Fantastic Voyage

Most honeymoons blend relaxation and romance. For American heiress Doris Duke, however, a 1935 globe-trotting trip with groom James H.R. Cromwell made a strong impression not only on her heart but also on her tastes. Brought face-to-face with the Islam...
June 26, 2012

Antiques dealer Mallett’s chic new location

Eighteenth-century British prelate Edmund Keene, Bishop of Ely, was a man of style as well as of the cloth, constructing palaces and planting gardens with arguably as much zeal as he brought to saving souls. Considering his pursuit of the finer things,...
June 25, 2012

Well Said: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on furniture designed by architects

Well Said: “A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.” So stated the German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) in a February 1957 article in Time magazine about furnitur...
June 25, 2012

Swede Spot

After operating out of a modest temporary space in New York’s SoHo neighborhood for four years, the Swedish fashion collective Acne has opened a 4,000-square-foot flagship store a block away, on the corner of Greene and Grand streets. It’s the firs...
June 25, 2012

Knot Now

While on a sailing trip in Nantucket in 2010, Sophie Aschauer, an Austrian-born, New York-based artist, happened upon a book of traditional nautical knots. The illustrations inspired her to create SerpentSea, a collection of woven floor mats made of re...
June 22, 2012

Three inspiring landscape design books hit the shelves

Three lavishly illustrated new titles reveal the rich diversity of contemporary landscape design. Separated into thematic chapters, The Private Oasis (Grayson, $50) features architecturally responsive projects by Edmund D. Hollander’s noted Manhattan...
June 22, 2012

Backstage Pass

This year’s Tony Awards, honoring the best of Broadway, were held for the second time at New York’s Beacon Theatre. Outside, a full traffic lane was cordoned off and the street was upholstered with red carpet for the stars entering the Art Deco the...
June 22, 2012

Birdkage debuts Sand & Surf, its latest line of stylishly classic aprons, towels, and totes

Former fashion editor Courtney Kivela Robinson conceived her company, Birdkage, one afternoon while she was painting. She found herself admiring the colorful patterns that accidental splatters left on her apron, and a business idea was born. Although t...
June 20, 2012

A survey of Josiah McElheny’s dazzling work opens at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art

Design lovers should recognize familiar forms in the work of Josiah McElheny, a Brooklyn artist who uses a modernist visual vocabulary to explore some of the more head-scratching concepts of the cosmos. Twenty-one pieces have been gathered for his firs...