Guestbook issue 2

GUESTBOOK A journal about living beautifully – and sharing it

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GUESTBOOK A journal about living beautifully – and sharing it

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onefinestay has been redefining city travel since 2010. Our guests live like locals by staying in distinctive homes while their owners are out of town, enjoying a service which offers all the convenience and comfort of a hotel. And our members benefit financially from a house or apartment which would otherwise stand empty. With more than a thousand members, onefinestay looks after an exclusive, multi-billion dollar portfolio of beautiful homes in London and New York.

Guestbook issue 02 Editor Alex Bagner Art Direction/Design JAMES REID & Tom Watt www.field-projects.com Copy Chief Sara Norrman Junior Designer Thom Bradley Editorial Assistant Sam Webb Publishing Assistant James comyn onefinestay Co-Founder & CEO Greg Marsh Published by onefinestay www.onefinestay.com Cover illustration Matthew Green Words James Casey, Chloe Grimshaw, Edwin Heathcote, Pei-Ru Keh, Sara Norrman, Skye Sherwin, Henrietta Thompson, Rishi Dastidar Photographers (The Salon) Joss McKinley, Atlanta Rascher, Stefan Ruiz, Ben Stockley Photographers (The Gallery) Andrew Beasley, Kate Berry, Nicholas Calcott, Seth Caplan, Inge Clemente, William Eckersley, Gerald Janssen, Marlene Rounds, Iris Thorsteinsdottir, Adam De Silva Illustrators Ken Fallin, Matthew Green, Thibaut Herem, Made by Radio all enquiries or to order more copies of Guestbook please email: guestbook@onefinestay.com

EDITOR‘S LETTER

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f the last issue was our housewarming, a party space bursting with potential and filled with original features, this, our second issue, finds us a little more settled and, after all the wonderful feedback, a lot more house proud.

This issue of Guestbook remains focused on our hosts’ warm and rich lives, we spend time with a visionary artist couple in Hampstead, London, dip into the vivid everyday of a leading fashion entrepreneur in the East Village, New York and drop in on a creative chef and her two young children in Chelsea, London.

That said, since our launch, we’ve also been busy renovating and moving the furniture around somewhat. The Gallery has been pimped up to a brassier, shinier and, we hope, even more tantalising portfolio of homes.

Equally our Environs section has had a makeover and been divided into three features: The Neighbourhood Battle, with Hampstead and Brooklyn Heights fighting it out; Local Heroes, where four of our hosts nominate a superstar in their community; and Pantry Time, a food-focused walk around Williamsburg, led by a Brooklyn native and the creative director of New York food journal, Swallow Magazine.

We’ve also knocked through and expanded The Snug, our peek behind the scenes at what we’ve been up to, in order to accommodate for our more hectic social life; the launch of Sherlock, our key-less entry system; and some more space to let our hosts do not just the talking, but the artwork too.

However, as we know all too well, a real home doesn’t come from building work or picking the perfect furniture, it comes from living in it.

Which is where, dear reader, I turn to you. As always, I would love to hear what you think.

Alex Bagner Editor, Guestbook guestbook@onefinestay.com

CONTRIBUTORS ….and their most treasured object in their home

New York-based creative director James Casey is the founder of Swallow Magazine, a food and travel publication. He also lends his talents to clients such as Nike, HBO, Barneys and Condé Nast, and his work has appeared in Wallpaper*, The Atlantic and The New York Times.

‘Two photographs of male Cantonese opera singers.

They were left on the wall of my studio as I moved in as the space used to be an old Chinese opera club.’

Ken Fallin’s illustrations have featured in The Boston Herald, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the New Yorker. He has also created campaigns for American Express and Belvedere Vodka.

‘An original pen and ink drawing by Al Hirschfeld.

It’s of Liza Minnelli in a 1965 TV musical – I showed it to her a few years ago, and she hated it.

I love it!’

Chloe Grimshaw is a writer, interiors stylist and art consultant who has written three books on contemporary homes and interiors: New Country Style, Ibiza Style and New London Style.

‘My favourite pieces in my home are by my four-year-old daughter, made using her feet, bits of wool or even pasta!’

Edwin Heathcote is the architecture and design critic at The Financial Times. He is the author of about a dozen books including most recently, The Meaning of Home.

‘A cubist painting by my uncle, David Heathcote.’

Journalist Pei-Ru Keh recently swapped her Stoke Newington flat in London for a brownstone in Brooklyn. A writer, editor and stylist, she is currently the New York editor of Wallpaper*.

‘A trio of bird drawings by Berlin artist Frerk Muller.’

Since getting an MA from the London College of Communication, Joss McKinley’s work has been exhibited in The Foam Museum, Amsterdam and the National Portrait Gallery, London. He is regularly commissioned for The New York Times, Intelligent Life, Wire, Nowness, AnOther and PORT. ‘Pierre the Sommelier, a corkscrew I once picked up in New Orleans.’

Born in rural Germany, photographer Atlanta Rascher now lives in London where she works for fashion brands such as Boudicca, Pauric Sweeney and Tim Ryan, as well as contributing to Dazed and Confused.

‘A black and white photograph of flowers my dad took in the 1970s – it’s also completely timeless.’

Henrietta Thompson, former design editor of Wallpaper*, has held senior editing roles at TANK, Blueprint, Dazed and Confused, Winkreative and Phaidon. In September she starts a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph.

‘A Red Apple screen print by Enzo Mari. It is so childlike and innocent, it makes me happy every time I see it.’

CONTENTS

The Salon 8 In Conversation With

Joanna Preston, Chelsea Embankment,

Chelsea, London

Words Chloe Grimshaw

Photography Joss McKinley 16

Living Memory How much do we know about the layers of history and meaning buried within our home?

Words Edwin Heathcote

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The Collector Director of Kettle’s Yard, Andrew Nairne on the advantages of viewing a collection in its original home setting Words Sara Norrman Photography Ben Stockley

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In Conversation With Pamela J Bell, East 12th Street, East Village, New York Words Pei-Ru Keh Photography Stefan Ruiz

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House Style Three female artists find their homes fuel their work Words Skye Sherwin

38 Neighbourhood Battle

Hampstead vs Brooklyn Heights

Illustration Made By Radio 40 Pantry Time

En route to Williamsburg’s finest food stores

Words James Casey 44

Local Heroes onefinestay hosts in London nominate their neighbourhood favourites Illustration Ken Fallin

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In Conversation With Paul and Susanna Delaney, Christchurch Hill, Hampstead, London Words Henrietta Thompson Photography Atlanta Rascher

The Gallery 58 A selection of our onefinestay

members’ homes

London 82 A selection of onefinestay

members’ homes

New York The Snug 106 Home Truths

…straight from the host members’ pens 114

The Riddle of the Keys onefinestay presents Sherlock, the app that abolishes keys Words Rishi Dastidar Illustration Thibaud Herem

116 Our social whirl

From a shin-dig to a soirée, what we’ve

been up to in the last four months 120 A serendipiter‘s journey

A poem by Rishi Dastidar

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IN conversation with

Joanna Preston Chelsea Embankment, London

words Chloe Grimshaw photography JOSS mckinley

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ccasionally we’ve thought about moving,’ says Joanna Preston, peering out at the Thames and a view of Albert Bridge framed in her living-room window, ‘but we just love the river so much that I don’t think we ever would.’ Joanna and her husband both feel very rooted in Chelsea, as he was born and grew up here, and Joanna launched her first business, catering firm Sugar and Spice, just across the river in Battersea.

The couple first met when Joanna cooked for her husband-to-be in 2006. She went on to become something of a mentor to his foodie children from his previous marriage, with his son becoming a regular fixture in the Sugar and Spice kitchen. Joanna reluctantly decided to sell her catering business when her youngest son was born in 2011 but instead launched her blog Larder Saga last year as a creative outlet for her cooking, styling, photography and writing. ‘Nothing gives me more pleasure than cooking,’ explains Joanna, ‘and I do miss the creative side of it.’

Home is a late Victorian redbrick mansion in Chelsea, now converted into apartments, which sits in a triangular plot between Cheyne

Walk and Chelsea Physic Garden. The family have breakfast together almost every morning, Joanna starting the day with a strong coffee and home-made granola. The young children, Walter and Amalfi, have a view of the Embankment from their breakfast bench, with buses, bicycles and motorbikes rushing past below. Joanna’s husband then heads off to work by riverboat, choosing the old-fashioned service, which serves toast and tea on the downstairs deck.

The couple moved from their rental flat on the second floor when the opportunity came up to buy the grand first-floor apartment below, which descends, Tardis-like, to the lower ground floor.

They looked at other places in the neighbourhood but realised that without their view of the river, which is constantly changing with the tide, they simply felt claustrophobic. Living in the centre of London is the perfect foil to their country house, where Joanna has a kitchen garden and brings back trays of vegetables with her every Sunday evening. For their wedding list, much to her husband’s consternation, Joanna requested live animals, such as chickens, sheep and pigs to keep at the farm.

THE SALON

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THE SALON

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The family often has impromptu visits from more,’ explains Joanna, naming Christie’s and friends and family at mealtimes. ‘We are always Dreweatts auction houses as favourite haunts. collecting waifs and strays,’ laughs Joanna, ‘Every room has to have a rug,’ is Joanna and her ‘turning up on our doorstep for a kitchen supper.’ husband’s philosophy, and favourites include ‘the Joanna satisfies her culinary urges by cooking a pale and faded Aubusson in our bedroom, and the starter and main for dinner each night, serving needlepoint in our children’s bedroom, from the it up to whoever might have turned up and early 20th century’. squeezed into the custom-made, built-in bench Before the children were born, the couple seating in the intimate kitchen. travelled extensively, bringing back lacquerware About once a month, the couple hosts a more from Asia and antiques from the market in l’Isleformal dinner party, seating up to eight people sur-la-Sorgue in Provence which now decorate at their round dining table, picked out from a the home, including a stuffed pufferfish which is local interior designer, Justin van Breda. ‘I like one of Joanna’s favourites. balance,’ explains Joanna, ‘perhaps a starter of Perhaps the highlight of living here on the salad or fish, and then if I serve lamb, I would bank of the river, came during the Diamond accompany it with punchy flavours. There needs Jubilee River Pageant in 2012 when the Queen’s to be a smooth transition from course to course, royal barge moored opposite their home. The with nothing jarring.’ family could hardly tear themselves away from The double-height living and dining room watching boats sailing upstream before returning also doubles up as a light-filled gallery for large to salute the royal barge. It’s in hearing Joanna’s abstract canvases bought at Royal Academy passion in describing that day that you start to schools, where Joanna’s husband was a patron understand her fascination with the vivid watery from 2001-2007. The floors are carpeted with tableau outside her window. rugs from an extensive collection. ‘My husband loves rugs and has to be held off from buying THE SALON

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ESSAY

Living Memory A home is more than a roof above your head. Edwin Heathcote says it’s the basis of our civilization, shaping our language and very sense of self words Edwin Heathcote

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ave you ever walked through from one room to another to do something and then forgotten what it was you wanted to do? It is, surely, a familiar feeling to us all. That event now has a name ‘The Doorway Effect’. Recent research from Indiana University suggests that we naturally compartmentalise activities, thoughts, ideas and so on to specific spaces. Passing through a door entails moving into another space which has different associations, where old things are unimportant and new things become priorities.

Of course, this is something Roman rhetoricians knew all about. Cicero and Quintilian both explored the idea of the memory palace in which real ideas, thoughts or facts are placed in imagined rooms from what might be a real and remembered house or a fantasy palace. The point was that to aid memory, the mind needed to construct a building to house ideas so that they could be recalled more effectively and efficiently. When the historian Tony Judt wrote his final memoir, his mind tethered to a body immobile from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, he reconstructed the Swiss mountain chalet in which his family used to stay during skiing holidays each winter. His thoughts were stored in the nooks and corners of the Alpine cabin.

Our brains are, it seems, conditioned to use our houses as mnemonics, our homes become inscribed into our minds, inseparable from our thoughts.

My book The Meaning of Home is intended as an exploration of quite how the elements of the house or the home have permeated our consciousness.

The memory palace is a vehicle to contain abstract thoughts but the actual home is itself a repository of incredible and often unexpected symbolism, ritual and myth, spanning everything from ritual sacrifice and psychoanalysis to the roots of our culture in tents and caves. It is a complex system of meaning and cultural signs, from the mouldings to the carpets, the door handles to the roof tiles, each element has a meaning and a history which can reveal almost endless stories. We have the homes we have lived in and the homes of others we know, we have homes from the movies and from novels, we have the imagined dreamhouses we would like to live in and the slightly improved houses we think we might one day get around to doing.

The idea of the home is deeply entwined not only with our language but in its very building blocks – the alphabet. The ‘Aleph’ to the Cretans was an ox (turn the capital ‘A’ upside down and you can see a head with two horns).

The second component of the word ‘alphabet’ however, ‘Beta’ derives directly from the word Beth, or house, a word which survives in Hebrew.

The Cretan pictograph depicts a house with a simple triangular pitched roof, the kind drawn by almost any child. The early Greeks abstracted this

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Our brains are, it seems, conditioned to use our houses as mnemonics, our homes become inscribed into our minds, inseparable from our thoughts.

symbol so that it became a double roof, upon its side which, in turn, became the familiar double dome on our ‘B’. Delta meanwhile, a triangle, represented a door (‘Daleth’ in the early Semitic languages, ‘Delet’ is a door in modern Hebrew). The triangle presumably depicts an opening in a tent. Meanwhile the Semitic ‘He’ which became Epsilon, our ‘E’, represented a latticed window.

Add a vertical line to the right of the letter and you can see the familiar shape of a sash window – a simplification but a useful one. Then there is ‘Waw’ or ‘Vav’ which evolved into our ‘F’, the pictograph was a tent-peg or hook the form of which can still be seen in our letter, just as we can still see the form of a section of fence in our ‘H’, which derives from the Semitic ‘Heth’, a fence or barrier – it is also incidentally related to the Phoenician ‘Hasir’ our courtyard.

The centrality of the house to the development of language indicates the depth to which the form of the dwelling is embedded in our culture and in our most basic tools of communication. Our houses and homes, no matter what style they are realised in, no matter how modest their architecture, are perhaps the last repositories of a language of symbol and collective memory that ties us to our ancestors, to profound and ancient threads of meaning. We may not know where these symbols come from, what they mean or how they came to look the way they do but their presence enriches the landscape of our lives.

The idea, that our lives can be ‘read’ through our homes, through their decoration, their design and their contents, infiltrates popular culture. But it is present rather in an attitude to building and dwelling than in architecture as a container of occult knowledge. Roman and medieval builders had a very different attitude to the construction of a house. A building was seen as a living, organic thing. If you’re ever passing a building site and there are some workers celebrating on the roof, around a spindly tree, that will probably be a “topping out” ceremony. This old ritual marks the moment a building becomes watertight. The tree is a symbol of the beginning of its new life and it is a sacrifice.

The domestic equivalent is the housewarming and the gift of a bottle of wine or champagne.

Historically, buildings were not only considered magical in themselves, they also sheltered spirits who needed to be placated. We may still put a wreath on our doors at Christmas but, in earlier times, living sacrifices were made to appease evil spirits. Once mummified cats might be buried beneath the floor or chickens slaughtered so that their blood spilled onto the threshold. Those animal sacrifices transmuted over time to a coin buried under the building; you can still find old pennies beneath Victorian doorways, which is a good luck sacrifice. The spurious ‘time capsules’ buried in gardens by children can be seen as a successor to the sacrifice to place, to an idea of continuity.

As well as the tenacious and surprising survival of these arcane rituals, there is the role of the home as the projection of self. The façade is, quite literally, the face, the expression with windows for eyes and a door for a mouth and, once inside, each room has its role in the representation of a part of our inner lives. The hall represents an echo of the time when a home was a single living space containing every activity; it announces arrival and departure. The kitchen is a space of transformation and alchemy, of raw materials into sustenance, but it is also the space of the mother and of refuge, the warm, secure womb. The bedroom is fraught with a complex symbolism of birth, sleep, sex, dreams and death. The cellar represents the dark recesses of the subconscious upon which our public lives are precariously built; its counterpart is the attic with memories and secrets of the past.

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The house is the one field of expression and freedom open to the contemporary homeowner. It is our way of making our mark on the world.

If we take a simple, archetypal element, the front door for instance, we find extraordinary riches of meaning left intact in its symbols and its expression. Think of a standard panelled front door, the type you can see anywhere from Washington DC to Downing Street. The door is a crossing, a junction marking the divide between the realm of the public and the private and as such it represents a profoundly symbolic moment which needs to be marked.

The doors of temples or grand houses used to be oriented towards the rising sun to catch the morning rays (that’s where the word ‘orientation’, towards the east, comes from). It was a kind of sacred awakening and opening the door, a mini-ritual, welcoming in the sun and the light of the new day. The primal fear of pre-enlightenment societies was that the sun wouldn’t rise anew the next morning. The Egyptians envisaged the passage of the sun through the underworld as a journey between two gates beneath us. The door became the earthly equivalent of those sun gates. Each time the sun rose again it was a cause for small celebration and thanksgiving.

Later this significance became translated into symbolic, material form. The temple doors of Rome were clad in gilt bronze, the arches above Byzantine doorways of Venice are adorned with golden mosaics or carvings of the sun and moon. This tribute transmogrified into a more modest brass threshold which would be polished each morning to reflect the light. These can still be seen in the most modest Victorian terrace. Brass is the quotidian version of gold, the material manifestation of the sun. Now take a look at that familiar door. It might be adorned with a lion’s head door knocker (in brass, of course). The lion was similarly the symbol of the sun, his golden mane a plume of flame. Above the door a fan light with radiating glazing bars once again symbolically represents the rising sun. So the door becomes a symbol of dwelling, of our early sun worship, of light and of entry.

Yet almost all of this is invisible to almost all of us.

The house is also a museum, an exhibition of the changes in the way life has been lived. Historians strip back layers of wallpaper in old houses to discover the successions of strata of colours but it can also absorb radical change whilst only adding to its meaning Extensions and attics, cellars dug below, conservatories added on, houses are constantly being adapted to meet the needs of changing lifestyles.

Kitchens, once functional and mean are now representational spaces, expansive, light and airy, filled with expensive equipment over-specified for an age of takeaways, pizza deliveries and microwaves. Bathrooms have sprung up all over the house and another once functional, cold space has become a room for pampering and luxury. Each subsequent change maps the presence, the taste and the life of the occupier, becomes a manifestation of identity. DIY and the will to shape the house becomes a substitute for a life which we might often feel is beyond our control. Oppressed by work, by commitments, by family and financial obligations the contemporary homeowner can feel that the house is the one field of expression and freedom open to them. It is our way of making our mark on the world.

Which then makes it all the more surprising that so many homes end up looking exactly the same. Flip through a London estate agent’s brochure and you’ll see endless variations of Victorian terraces extended and renovated using the same palette of materials and spaces, a bland modernity imposed on the rear of every stock brick back extension.

Of course, just as the revolving fashionable tropes of contemporary renovation and extension display wealth and the ability to keep up with, or ahead of, the neighbours, so decline indicates a deeper existential despair.

The crumbling houses of Detroit are synonymous with the wider US urban malaise. The peeling paint and mouldy curtains, spalling plaster and unkempt state of a property suggests the inhabitant has lost the will the engage with the world. In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, the ‘house’ is both the family and the physical dwelling. With windows like eyes and a huge, dark fissure opening up its front wall, the gothic house represents the disturbed mental state of the narrator’s old friend Roderick Usher. In the same way Miss Havisham’s dusty, decrepit house in Dickens’ Great Expectations is a metaphor for madness.

We are profoundly sensitive to the sights, smells, textures and sensations of homes. We pick up the slightest changes, we recognise the odours of individual homes – each of which is delicately, subtly different, a blend of cooking, cleaning, damp, age and myriad other factors. Each room within a house will have its own smell, its own temperature, its own feel. The comedian Steven Wright used to tell a gag about everything in his apartment having been stolen and replaced with an exact replica. This touches on a sense of the uncanny, a heightened sensitivity of awareness about our own homes in which things feel right – or wrong.

Having said that though, we have also undergone a transformation in the way we regard out homes. They were once the centres of almost every important event in our lives, its rooms marked the rites of passage involved in being born and giving birth, in growing up and in work, in getting married, getting old and dying. The medicalization of birth, death and illness and the honeymoon holiday have now taken all of the major rites of passage out of the home. Our homes have become dormitories, places to sleep and perhaps relax but they are still the venues for certain rituals, for Christmas or the celebration of religious holidays, for occasions on which families get together and so on. But perhaps the most alienating aspect of contemporary existence and the one that has most radically changed the nature of our relationship to home is the perception of a dwelling as an asset.

Houses are viewed as potential development projects, changes are made not to accommodate the rituals of daily life but to add value – financial rather than existential. As our homes account for such a huge proportion of our income this is understandable but it does not help us to see them in terms of meaning but rather in value and in fashion. The value of houses can go down as well as up.

I suggest that we ignore the symbolism and significance of the elements of domestic architecture to our own detriment. Homes might collapse in financial value just as they might rise and it is unwise for us to see them as utilitarian investment vehicles to the exclusion of everything else. Instead we should see them as receptacles of both personal and collective memory, a link to our history. That way, even if their financial value collapses we will be left with something almost unimaginably rich in meaning.

Edwin Heathcote is the architecture and design editor at the Financial Times. His latest book, The Meaning of Home is published by Frances Lincoln, www.francislincoln.com.

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INTERVIEW

The Collector Home-turned-gallery Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, England (45 minutes by train from Kings Cross, London) is an intimate and spell-binding showcase. Director Andrew Nairne reveals the advantages of viewing a collection in its original domestic setting interview Sara Norrman photography BEN STOCKLEY

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riginally the home of Jim Ede, Tate Gallery curator 1921 – 1935, and his wife Helen, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge was where he collected his remarkable works of art. It was part of his philosophy to share art in an intimate environment and to this end often held ‘open house’, guiding visitors personally around his home.

In 1966 Ede donated the house and its contents to Cambridge University, and as a result the house remains perfectly preserved exactly as Ede requested it, not ‘as an art gallery or museum, nor… simply a collection of art reflecting my taste. But rather a continuing way of life…, in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and in space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability’.

Today, each afternoon (apart from Mondays) visitors can ring the bell and ask to look around.

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SN

You returned to Kettle’s Yard in 2011 as director, having started your career here.

What made you take this position and what makes it such a special place for you?

AN

I had my absolute first job here, in 1984, and I’m thrilled to be back. I did a bit of everything back then, had a set of keys and opened up for visitors, set the alarms at the end of the evening and so on. It is an intimate experience seeing how people interact with the art here, telling them where to be extra careful as some of the items are rather old. So it’s great to be back as director, and see what possibilities and opportunities Kettle’s Yard has for the future.

SN

You seem to have quite strong emotional ties with the gallery?

AN

Maybe not emotional ties, but I care about the philosophy and feelings behind the gallery, created by Jim Ede. I met him before his death in 1990, and in Kettle’s Yard he has created an extraordinary work of art as a whole.

The way he arranges an 18th-century chair next to a 4,000-year-old axe head, the juxtaposition of old and modern, is a work of art in itself.

GUESTBOOK

SN

What would you like visitors to take away with them after a visit to Kettle’s Yard?

AN

I want them to make the experience their own.

The cottages were meant to be lived in, and many of the paintings were hung at knee-height, for example, so they could be enjoyed sitting down rather than people striding around looking at them. One visitor recently rather surprised me by saying that the home underwhelmed him. But it actually sneaks up on you, the personal, generous take on this place – Jim gets inside you. This is not a collective experience, but a set of stories that Jim has left behind.

SN

Is there a difference in how visitors experience art in a home setting, rather than in a gallery or museum?

AN

Yes, as you have more interplay with light and homely objects like potted plants and cut flowers.

But it's important to remember that this art was very radical and forward-looking. The artists like Ben Nicholson and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were dealing with the aftermath of world wars and the complications of the 20th century, so the art was both shocking and avant-garde.

SN

Does the curating and positioning of the objects in the home lend the art another level of meaning?

AN

The absence of labels can make you look differently at the art, and the clever clustering of objects definitely adds to them. Jim, together with people like ceramicist Edmund de Vaal, believe in the power of objects. For example, the famous door handles designed

by Arne Jacobsen are sculptures in your hand that you need to touch to get in and out of a room, sending signals down your arm.

SN

Can some objects lose power, while others gain them? Would some of the art be appreciated better in a white gallery setting?

AN

Maybe, but they feel comfortable here – the juxtaposition is what feels special. Some of the pieces might breathe better on a white gallery wall, but you’d lose the feeling of home and where they are meant to be that actually brings out the art’s radical edge.

SN

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Tell me a bit about the non artworks in the house, like the pebbles arranged in a spiral by Jim and placed on a table in the bedroom.

Do visitors take them for the work of an artist?

GUESTBOOK

above from top: Light streams into The Dancer room upstairs.

Bronze statue by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, 1913; Beach find displayed in front of Crown Derby plate, on the fireplace in the downstairs dining room opposite: Vase on the floor of the dining room is a Moroccan earthenware piece from 1900s far right: Dining table with painting

by William Congdon, Istanbul no.2, from 1953

‘Some pieces might breathe better on a white gallery wall, but you’d lose the feeling of home’

AN

Absolutely, but it somehow becomes art because of the arrangement. Being creative at home, placing the right object on the right shelf, in the right light, is a creative act. It’s important to let the history of the objects have a presence and be themselves – they shouldn’t feel alienating, but welcoming.

SN

Would you say Kettle’s Yard is an artwork in itself?

AN

Jim Ede felt strongly that it matters how you arrange the environment and the rooms you live in. It’s not about the money spent, he used natural materials like stones and shells – the pebble spiral we talked about for example, was collected from Norfolk beaches, and while free must have taken him many months to find exactly the right size and roundness.

Jim fought in the First World War trenches and suffered to some extent from shell shock. Kettle’s Yard is very much a response to that. He felt the way you arrange objects and invite light into your home impacts on your behaviour in the world. It sounds idealistic, but if everybody thought through how they live in their space, it might make the world a better place.

SN

What kind of ambience do the artworks work best in?

AN

The rooms in the inter-linked cottages that make up Kettle’s Yard can be perceived as quite pared-back, with a simple colour scheme that feels modern compared to when it was created in 1957.

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AN

It was very ahead of its time, for example the light switches are made of glass without backing boards so you can see all the wiring. And the armchairs, upholstered in simple linen rather than colourful patterns, always face each other in pairs – it was meant to be a place for contemplation, creating, relaxation, ever since Jim opened it up for Cambridge students to come around and look at modern art and have a cup of tea.

Music seems to be an important component, both in the past and now. What kind of music programme do you have at the moment?

SN

AN

SN

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Helen Ede played piano beautifully, and the couple often held musical evenings. It is proof of Jim’s tenacity that the musicians that played on the opening night in May 1970 were none other than Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim, who at this period were the most glamorous couple in classical music. There are some lovely pictures of the event, with Prince Charles loitering in the background as he was studying art at the university at the time. We now continue the theme of chamber music with concerts every Thursday evening, when guests can listen surrounded by all this fantastic art.

How are you tying in Kettle’s Yard with Cambridge University?

GUESTBOOK

below from left: The simple bedroom belonged to Helen Ede, Jim's wife; On the piano lies Constantin Brancusi's sculpture, Prometheus, from 1912.

AN

SN

We are part of the university group of museums, there are eight of us, but most of them are embedded within the departments. But we try to connect all these collections, which makes the quality of Kettle’s Yard unique – we can connect this heritage with the global, forwardlooking world of research here at the university for some really radical change.

AN Do you know of any collectors at present doing what Jim Ede did, leaving such a long-lasting legacy behind in their homes?

SN

AN

That’s a very good question, I’m not really sure. There are collectors like David Roberts who has amassed an amazing group of work, but he isn’t showing them in a home setting.

Perhaps it’s the case that a lot of contemporary art needs giant gallery spaces.

Would you like to see a movement for an Open Art day, in the same way there is an Open House architectural day, when private collectors let visitors into their homes?

above: View of the plants as seen through the suspended Disc

by Gregorio Vardanega below: Painting by Christopher Wood, Flowers, from 1930

That's a brilliant idea! We did Open House once, in our London home, and loads of people came in and looked at the architrave and the kitchen layout, when I really wanted them to ask me about the art on my walls – someone should do it!

Kettle’s Yard is open Tuesday to Sunday, 1.30pm to 4.30pm. It is located on Castle Street, Cambridge. Trains to Cambridge run approximately every 30 minutes from King’s Cross and take 45 minutes.

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IN conversation with

Pamela J. Bell East 12th Street, East Village, New York words Pei-Ru Keh photography stefan ruiz

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amela J Bell has little difficulty filling the Californian nun-turned-artist, Sister Corita her sweeping, four-floor Manhattan Kent, sits alongside Justine Kurland photographs, townhouse with eclectic objects. While an oversized Michael Scoggins illustration which your typical house-proud homeowner might have the artist gave to one of her daughters on her 15th chosen a designer sofa or an untouchable antique birthday, and a large self-portrait that her son as the focal point to the airy living room, Bell has produced in kindergarten. had a full-sized table-tennis table installed. ‘We Pamela has been a fixture in the East Village play all the time. I take the net off sometimes, for years. ‘I first lived on the Bowery and 4th turn it sideways and have dinner parties with it,’ Street in a house that we built on top of an old Pamela explains. building. It was super modern, and the complete Bell is no stranger to the notion of quirky opposite of this house,’ she said. ‘When I got chic. As a founding partner of accessories label divorced and sold that, I rented a house up the Kate Spade, she has played a huge part in shaping street while I was obsessively looking online. that particular type of kooky glamour that has I literally saw this house at midnight one night. become such a cornerstone of American style I came to see it the next morning, and I brought today. It’s reassuring that her home, which she my contractor and my architect in that afternoon,’ shares with her children (Elenore, 18, Anabel, 15 she remembers. ‘The woman who lived here had and Will, 12) and dog (Simba), is no different. been here for 45 years. The whole place was Apart from the aforementioned table, the broken up into units; it was kind of a wreck. living room, which was originally a sickly I made an offer, which she eventually accepted light blue and covered in thick stucco, is today – I think she was freaked out by the number of a colourful mishmash of contemporary and people I had brought in.’ vintage pieces. The white walls hold a wondrous Pamela first met Kate and Andy Spade in assortment of art; a graphic silk-screened print by 1993 during a studio share for the summer. She

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was working on her own accessories’ line when they asked her to jump on board. ‘I said I could start in a month, I had to wrap up a few things, and Katie said, “No, no, no. This offer is for tomorrow,” and I said, “Ok…?” So I did it for 16 years,’ she recalls. ‘We sold the business in 2007.’

Since then, Pamela has enjoyed the benefits of a non-compete agreement, while sitting on the board of numerous non-profits, including Project Renewal and the American Theatre Wing. ‘After 16 years of growing a business, I wanted to relax and take care of the kids.’ This summer, she plans to launch her new venture, Prinkshop, a graphic line of T-shirts, notebooks and tote bags that highlights 9/11 charitable causes.

The house is filled with whimsical details that speak of happy childhoods. The kitchen, which features a giant Isamu Noguchi paper lantern hanging from the ceiling, boasts blackboardpainted walls. Pamela regularly writes out words of the day, and the children also leave messages for each other here. The children’s rooms are located on two floors; the upper floor is occupied by both girls and also houses the playroom

that contains a John Derian chaise covered in boisterous scrawlings, created during one child’s party. Pamela shares the next floor down with her son. Each space is a liberated assemblage of statement wallpaper (often sourced from vintage specialists, Secondhand Rose), vintage desks and chairs found at the antique fair, Brimfield, in Massachusetts, combined with personal touches from the children. In Anabel’s room, a built-in bookcase that she designed stands against rose-printed wallpaper. Instead of cupboards, Bell installed each room with low-cost clothing rails, which are then hidden from view with sumptuous fabrics.

‘I haven’t exactly decorated the house,’ she muses, as she points to a painting of a bear (rescued from a neighbour’s rubbish), a large glittering foil ball (an old Christmas decoration from a Kate Spade boutique) and decorative doorknobs on each of the room doors. ‘It’s more about having our favourite things and making them fit.’

She admits, ‘the kids would actually prefer to have a more modern, clean space. They go to their dad’s and say, “Oh, it’s so clean and cool,”

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FEATURE

House Style Debunking myths and deciphering our very existence through our homes is the aim of three very different artists, spanning three generations

g words Skye sherwin

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or artists, home isn’t a retreat where you shut the door on life. Rumpled beds tell the story of love and desire. Kitchen appliances dictate the extent of our culinary ambition. The co-ordinated décor speaks of social aspirations.

As explored in the work of three generations of artists, Laurie Simmons, Andrea Zittel and Jessica Jackson Hutchins, this is the place where the important stuff happens.

For 35 years, Laurie Simmons’ photographs have captured a dollhouse world that can be unnerving, funny and seductive, often all at once. Her photography repertoire has seen her place a cast of dolls, ventriloquists dummies and paper cut-outs within environments drawing on everything from chic contemporary design to exuberant explosions of kitsch.

The results channel consumer fantasies and gender stereotypes from movies, ads and magazines in a way that’s playful, not preachy.

‘I start with an emotional tenor and conceptual idea and the props fill in afterwards,’ she says of her working method.

‘The Instant Decorator’, a series of photographed collages from 2001, is her most buzzy work to date, with images of women cut from old magazines, hanging out in rooms whose lurid, bubblegum colours are enough to give anyone a sugar rush. The starting point was a 1970s interiors book, enabling the prospective home decorator to put her wallpaper or fabric sample beneath its clear plastic pages, and get a sense of what her dream room would look like. Yet as

Courtesy of the artist, and Salon 94, New York

Simmons points out, ‘once you put a herringbone tweed on these small pages, it looked like it was a man-eating print’.

Not all Simmons works look back.

Kaleidoscope House, which features the Plexiglass sliding-doors dollhouse she created for Bozart Toys with architect Peter Wheelwright, saw her probe designer desires from the turn of the 21st century. ‘It still looks good to me,’ she says of its early Naughties vibe. ‘But it’s a toy.

I wouldn’t want to live in that house.’

Conversely her dream home came up a few years later. Together with her husband, the painter Caroll Dunham, she bought a Georgian pile in Connecticut, which has since become a huge source of inspiration. Her recent work has seen her transform it into a kind of giant dollhouse. ‘The Love Doll’ series rescues an incredibly realistic, life-size Japanese sex doll from its seedy connotations. Whether playing dress-up in a wedding gown or simply unwinding on the couch, thanks to Simmons’ careful staging and lighting, the doll seems to have an inner life.

‘The whole process of treating a house like a big doll house is much easier than I ever imagined,’ she reflects. ‘Though it’s really difficult to move a love doll around compared to a two-inch one.’ opposite: Cut-out paper dolls are put in domestic settings and photographed in Laurie Simmons’ ‘Long House’ series (2004) left: Day 4 (Red Dog) from ‘The Love Doll’ photography series (2009-2011) which saw Laurie Simmons placing a life-size sex doll in various everyday settings around her own Connecticut home

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above: Yellow Dining Room 1, from Laurie Simmons’ ‘The Instant Decorator’ (2001) a series of photographed collages with images of people cut from old magazines, hanging out in room sets inspired by 1970s interiors books

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essentials into trunk-like holders. Indy Island was commissioned by Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2010, and is a fully inhabitable living structure that examines the daily needs of contemporary human beings

photo: Gabriel Szabo / Guzelian. © The Hepworth Wakefield

JESSICA Jackson Hutchins

‘What I say about my home life is that it is absolutely profound and it is just like yours’ above: Jessica Jackson Hutchins with her work Lascaux at her recent exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield, which will travel to the Venice Biennale in June

opposite from top: Andrea Zittel's A-Z series encompasses all aspects of day-to-day living, A-Z Escape Vehicles, resembles 1970s caravans and are customised to the users’ particular wants. The A-Z Living Units, 1993, pack life’s

A more recent artist to garner international acclaim with her domestic-inspired work is Jessica Jackson Hutchins. Her sculptures and prints draw directly on her experiences as a mother, lover and artist and suggest co-dependency and connectivity between objects, ideas and, of course, people. Battered furniture whose worn fabric, dents and missing limbs are testament to the rough and tumble of family life, often serves as supports for her beguiling, eccentric hand-moulded ceramics with beautiful glazes. She’s made prints from her scored dining table and the lid of her old piano, used her children’s drawings and her and her husband’s clothes in her work.

‘What I say about my home life is that it is absolutely profound and it is just like yours,’ she reflects. ‘Here is this experience that we share as people and isn’t it horrific and unrelenting and gorgeous. This is at the core of our humanity – these loves and daily house work.’

Jackson Hutchins has always made art with what’s immediately to hand. While earlier works frequently used her own family’s furniture, including the couch her parents were given when they married, since moving from Portland to Berlin with her brood last autumn, more street finds have been appearing as supports.

One such work is Lascaux, included in her recent show at the Hepworth Wakefield, which will travel to the Venice Biennale this summer.

It features an armchair upholstered in an intricate floral pattern in dark peaches and blues, which she rescued from the street outside her studio.

The colours are picked up in the glaze of the long swollen ceramic that appears to have been draped across the back of the chair like a cloak. ‘I made that piece specifically to sit on that chair with the idea that someone could take it off and wear it,’ she says. ‘The chair is a stand-in [for a person].’

Andrea Zittel, who made her name in the 1990s, is equally concerned with how our home reflects who we are. Working from her Brooklyn studio, her A-Z East enterprise fused art, design and social research, while, in the last decade, working from her base in the Mojave Desert, A-Z West fashioned inventions-come-artworks that adapt furniture, shelters, clothing and domestic appliances to modern life.

These include A-Z Escape Vehicles, metal pods resembling 1970s caravans for use indoors, which enable her clients to close the door on the world and have a lie down in an environment customised to their particular wants, from a grotto to a flotation tank; A-Z Living Units compress domestic needs like bathing, cooking and leisure time into an easily manageable space in steel and wood with a modernist look, which can be packed up and transported; and uniforms designed to meet any social situation, for wearing every day.

‘What makes us feel liberated is not total freedom,’ she writes in a series of paintings on wooden panels, ‘Prototypes for Billboards’, ‘but rather living in a set of limitations, which we have created and prescribed for ourselves.’ Zittel’s inventions up-end established domestic categories, finding ways to duck housework and free up time. See her ‘dishless dining table’, whose round-grooves eliminate the need for plates, or her chamber pot, liberating users from pipes and plumbing.

Zittel rethinks the limitations of the home explored by Simmons’ dolls, boxed in by the dreams prescribed by a sexist culture. As she writes in another painting, it’s the very place to, ‘find new ways to position yourself in the world’.

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neighbo r (u)

Two cities, two locales. Which comes out on top? illustration Made by Radio

HAmPstead Long the haunt of leather-elbowed scholars, cerebral actors and continental savants, Hampstead’s redbrick high street and quiet side alleys exude an air of refined thinking and cultured money. Perhaps it is the area’s exalted location, high above the noxious sounds and fumes of central London, which lends it this astral aspect, but also the appealing mix of people – cashmered Italians on Vespas roar past flat-capped antique dealers, while thirdgeneration locals, retired from top positions in the arts, load a picnic basket to feed the grandchildren by one of the verdant ponds on the Heath. Big-brand names throng the High Street while on Parliament Hill kites soar above one of London’s best views, offering something for everyone in this most imposing of neighbourhoods.

Reading material du jour London Review of Books, latest Hilary Mantel Looking down on...

The historic diversity of the London skyline from Parliament Hill Picnic hamper essentials Wild rice salad from Melrose & Morgan; Duchy oat cakes; Homemade hummus á la Ottolenghi Favourite app ‘Apropos of what?’

Spring shades A classic horn rim Most famous residents, past and present Lord Byron, Sigmund Freud, John Keats, George Michael, George Orwell

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hood BATTLE Brooklyn Heights This is the other New York, away from the Times Square neon, but an equally strongly branded slice of the Big Apple. Brooklyn Heights is the place of blintzes and brownstones, its leafy streets with friendly steps leading up to row houses as iconic as a yellow cab. Proudly tagging itself America’s first suburb, the area attracts artists who have arrived and bearded young entrepreneurs in search of Walt Whitman. Foodstuffs are kept raw and local, while the offerings in the charity shop lean more towards last season Marc Jacobs and Chloé than cast-offs.

Evenings are spent nursing an artisan homebrew at Pete’s Waterfront Ale House or tucking into hake sashimi at Hibino, spreading the message of this iconic enclave far beyond the city borders.

Reading material du jour n+1 magazine, The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus Looking down on...

The glittering lights of Lower Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights Promenade Picnic hamper essentials Lebanese mezze from the deli counter at Sahadi’s, red velvet cupcakes from Lassen & Hennigs Favourite app Hipstamatic, Instapaper, Spotify, The Room, Virtuoso, Paper…

Spring shades Over-sized Prada Most famous residents, past and present W H Auden, Truman Capote, Arthur Miller, The Huxtable family from The Cosby Show, Lena Dunham

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ENVIRONS

Marlow & Daughters 95 Broadway

Pantry Time With Brooklyn fast branding itself as a bucolic utopia, Williamsburg is ground zero for the foodie set. Here’s where they stock up words James Casey

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S

et against the right shore of the East River, Williamsburg's grid contains artisans of all stripes, and has far more going for it than just the butchers and the bakers – hell, it's even got its own chocolate makers. Its remarkable transition from outlier badlands to a self-sustaining ecosystem is thanks in no small part to its entrepreneurial DIY spirit. What started as a back-to-basics trend in opposition to an increasingly digital world, seems to be catching. Weekend fairs, such as the spectacularly successful Smorgasburg, peddle all sorts of on-trend signifiers – ‘heritage’ this, ‘local’ that – alongside food and drink that often feels more 1913 than 2013. And while Williamsburg is at the epicentre, evidence of Brand Brooklyn’s influence transcends not just through the borough itself, but has morphed into a global phenomenon touching other hipster enclaves in US cities and beyond.

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UVA Wines 199 Bedford Avenue

Mast Brothers 111 North 3rd Street

Ignoring the massive industrial monolith that is the Williamsburg bridge, this South Williamsburg gembox of a general store wouldn't look too out of place in a small Cotswolds village.

Marlow & Daughters began life in 2008 as a diminutive offshoot of beloved coffee and croissant joint Marlow & Sons across the road (which itself is an offshoot of the excellent Diner restaurant next door). Specialising in whole animal butchery and cuts of meat not likely to be found in your local supermarket, Marlow & Daughters also has a small selection of artisanal cheese, cured meats, fresh vegetables, and assorted sundries lining the shelves. All in, a food lover’s paradise in miniature. www.marlowanddaughters.com

While the neighbourhood’s victual vendors predominantly cater to a beer-drinking demographic, some shops have sprung forth offering a selection of carefully curated libations from around the globe.

Enter UVA, a boîte with a natural wine section up to speed with the area’s ecological obsessions, and a spirit selection second to none. Most curious, though, is the collection of Brooklyn hooch that runs the gamut from vodka and gin, through rum and whiskey.

While the bearded boys in flannel might look like Appalachian moonshiners, distillation is a rather new game in these parts.

Founded in 2010, Kings County Distillery was the borough’s first in over 100 years and while posing little threat to Kentucky's finest, Brooklyn bourbon ain't half as bad as you might think.

In a nondescript warehouse space on North 3rd, bearded brothers Rick and Michael Mast make stupefyingly good bars of chocolate in their Willy Wonkaesque atelier. While the premise of local chocolate is somewhat of a misnomer – the beans are trucked in from further afield, naturally – the bars themselves are as Brooklyn as it gets. The dark chocolate with coffee contains beans supplied

by Portland pioneer Stumptown, while the sea salt is sourced from the Maine coast. The cacao itself comes from single estate farms in the Dominican Republic (prior to Williamsburg’s transformation, the neighbourhood was a Dominican stronghold).

After production, each bar is then wrapped in beautifully stiff patterned paper, with illustrations inspired by vintage wallpapers.

www.uvawines.com www.mastbrothers.com

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The Meat Hook 100 Frost Street

ACME Smoked Fish 30 Gem Street

Owner Tom Mylan opened his butcher's shop in the industrial shadows of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway back in 2009. And while certainly noisy, the uninviting location hasn't stopped hordes of carnivores from seeking out his cuts of humanely raised farm meat. The Meat Hook specialises in alternative cuts, and takes a very nose-to-tail approach.

In addition, they sell staples such as tortillas from Queen's famed Nixtamal factory, and a limited supply of fresh dairy and vegetables. Sharing the vast space is Brooklyn Kitchen, a cookeryshop-cum-emporium filled with any gewgaw the home cook might need. In the evenings (and make sure to book in advance), Mylan offers butchery lessons in the cooking studio out back.

While not strictly in Williamsburg, Acme Smoked Fish is a secret too good to leave unmentioned.

Housed in a drab warehouse on the Greenpoint border, this fishsmoking factory supplies most of the city's best purveyors (the Lower East Side’s Russ & Daughters, and Upper East’s Zabar’s to mention only two). On Friday mornings only, the space opens up to the public, and slabs of salmon, sturgeon, and all other swimming creatures you can hold a flame to are sold at a healthy discount.

Staffed by a retinue of glum grannies, your spoils are wrapped in a sheet of butcher’s paper and then stuffed into a plastic bag. As you step outside and return to real life, it’s a clandestine experience worth trying. www.acmesmokedfish.com

www.the-meathook.com

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Bedford Cheese Shop 67 Irving Place

Bedford Cheese is a superlative outlet for dairy deliciousness.

The shop was originally located across the street in the Northside Micro-mall, an incubator space for many of the neighbourhood's successful endeavours. The cheese selection in its more recent digs is unparalleled and features wheels, blocks and slices from around the globe. The main draw is sampling some of the finest American options available (and no, not all American cheese comes in single slices). Start by requesting a sliver of Cato Corner Hooligan, a washed-rind bad boy bearing some similarity to the old-world raclette, and make sure to snap up some Winnimere by Jasper Hill Farm, an oozy unctuous mess of a cheese, and worth the stink on the way home. www.bedfordcheeseshop.com

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ENVIRONS

Local Heroes Four London hosts nominate a character they believe adds that certain something to their neighbourhood portraits ken fallin

Ludovic Femenia Co-founder, L’Atelier, Stoke Newington It was a dank January morning and I was on my well-trodden route between home in Dalston and my studio when I noticed a new café had popped up on the Stoke Newington Road. After buying a much-needed caffeine hit I huddled under the awning outside, and started chatting to the charming owner. Ludovic had recently arrived from Marseille, and with his partner Benjamin had transformed a dreary retail unit into the magic hub of vintage furniture, avocado-salmon toast and prime flat whites it is today. Needless to say, it is now part of my workday routine.

Recommended by Lydia, host at St Mark’s Rise www.latelier-dalston.co.uk

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Philly Gammell Masseuse/healer, Chelsea I met Philly at a wedding in Cortina, Italy, about six years ago. I have had massages all around the world, from Morocco to the Maldives, but having experienced the melt-away qualities of Philly’s treatments in my own home, there’s no need to go anywhere else. Her approach is one of reducing stress and imparting strength to take on the world, which really works. Once a month, I now look forward to her turning up at my door, fluffy towels, massage bed and all, leaving me completely cleansed, recharged and with a smile on my face.

Recommended by Lucinda, host at Queen’s Gate Terrace www.phillygammell.com

Paul Gibson Manager of The Butchers Hook, Fulham I moved into my Fulham pad in 2005, around the same time as Paul and his team at The Butcher’s Hook swung open their doors. The corner gastropub quickly became like a second home to me, and I sometimes go there up to five times a week, for business and with friends and family.

Nothing is ever too much trouble for Paul, and he's a fabulous host to anyone who walks in – I have had visitors over from Bali, Mongolia, Spain and Norfolk, and The Butcher’s Hook is always the first place they want to go.

Recommended by Adrianna, host at Hilary Close www.thebutchershook.co.uk

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Adam Hills and Maria Speake Reclamation yard owners and interior designers, Kensal Rise It was the third time after I’d asked where my friends had found a particularly spectacular piece of furniture that I decided to make my first trip to Retrouvious in Kensal Green. There I met the noble salvagers themselves, Adam and Maria. Reclamation experts, interior designers and mind readers, they have perfected the art of making you feel like you’re having a good old rummage of discovery, while you’re actually being gently steered towards just the right product in their treasure trove of vintage and reclaimed finds.

Recommended by Emma, host at Queensdale Road www.retrouvius.com

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IN conversation with

Paul & Susanna DelaneY Christchurch Hill, Hampstead, London words Henrietta Thompson photography ATLANTA RASCHER

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hen Susanna and Paul Delaney sanded them, and luckily he’s happy with that inherited her parents’ home in now – they are beautiful – but had the budget Hampstead just over a year ago, they been bigger he might have won...’ never imagined they would end up moving As a new light flooded through the house it in. The whole place was full: of stuff, but also began to take on a completely different feel. ‘And of memories. that was when we thought, “actually this is a very It hadn’t been decorated for a long time, says nice place to live”,’ laughs Paul. They moved in Susanna. ‘My parents were great collectors and last November. they lived here for 40 years. My mother was The process, however, has not been with a a painter and every single wall was covered in view to annihilating memories – on the contrary, her paintings, there were bits and pieces and this is a house in which every item of furniture, books everywhere. And it all had to be gone every picture on the wall and every object has through extremely carefully – we found the a story to tell. There’s the collection of exoticmost amazing treasures. My mum’s father was an looking figures lined up on the mantelpiece: antiquarian book dealer, so she inherited quite a ‘The papier mâché ones are from Spain,’ says lot of valuable books from him, and she collected Susanna. ‘My parents used to go there every summer and bring us one back. Some are the herself as well.’ ones they gave to us, some are ones that they For Paul and Susanna, who had up till then been leading their stylish lives in had here – now they are all together.’ And Buckinghamshire and before that in New York, there’s the coffee table, a very 1960s piece that this kick-started a process of renewal that would was bought by Paul in Toronto when he was last a year. ‘We took out the fitted bookshelves, 21 and had shipped back to London. ‘It’s been the fitted carpets. We had a huge battle over the everywhere – it must be very robust, as it’s had floors, I really wanted to sand them, and Paul nieces and nephews jumping on it over the years,’ wanted to put new wooden floors down. We says Susanna.

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Susanna, a graphic designer, and Paul, an advertising creative director and copywriter, no longer work full time and spend much of their lives now travelling – in particular to their barn in mid-west France, a favourite place for years.

‘And every time we would drive down there we would pootle through all these villages and stop in every single antiques shop we came across.’

The pair is hesitant to describe themselves as collectors, though. ‘That would imply we knew something about what we’re buying,’ says Paul.

‘It’s ephemera rather than collecting...’ And it undoubtedly looks brilliant – groupings here and there include a series of astonishing clocks adorning the stairs to the kitchen, where a raft of wooden ducks swim above the old stove. The couple readily admit their fondness for a nice clock. ‘There’s a huge one in the bedroom which Paul bought in Liberty’s after a big celebration lunch when his firm had just finished a major campaign,’ remembers Susanna.

The only thing that was bought specifically for the house is the Anni Albers rug in the living room. ‘We went to the Barbican’s Bauhaus exhibition and saw it in the shop and just knew

it would be perfect.’ Otherwise the furniture is an eclectic mix of periods and styles amassed over the years that – one suspects – works so well together only because Paul and Susanna have an eye for a fantastic layout. And whether by accident (they claim) or design, a singular colour palette of grey, red, black, white and wood runs throughout the home.

It’s all charmingly effortless. ‘Everything is almost exactly as it was at the end of the first day we moved everything in. We just started putting things down as they came into the house and they’ve stayed there ever since.’

For all that the media and estate agents often try to depict Hampstead as being the settling place for millionaires, it’s not at all like that, Paul insists. ‘It’s incredibly pretty, it’s got local charm and real character,’ Susanna adds.

In Hampstead it is easy to feel part of the community. ‘We are quite self-contained and have never been pub goers in the past, but we love the local here,’ says Paul, ‘the first week after we moved in we ended up inviting everyone back here.’

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1

Penfold Street St John’s Wood

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Ebury Street

10 Belgravia

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Springcroft Avenue

onefinestay members’ homes in LONDON

Highgate

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Holland Park Avenue Holland Park

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Tower Bridge Road Shad Thames

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Rothwell Street Primrose Hill

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Old Nichol St 2 Shoreditch

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St Peter’s Street Islington

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Vernon Yard Notting Hill

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Portobello Road 2 Westbourne Grove

Once, Spitfires were assembled under these high ceilings, soon to whizz off into the skies. Nowadays, however, everything is calm – and coolly bohemian with it. Exposed metal beams span the spaces overhead while spotlights gleam off polished antiques.

Vintage chairs perch beside shelves groaning with books, Asian artefacts excite the eye and a spiral staircase dating from the 19th century (when it was part of a tube station), leads to the mezzanine and master bedroom. This home is bigger than a barrage balloon, and no reconnaissance will be required to find London’s unique whirr nearby.

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Penfold Street St John’s Wood

The scale and panache of this home will be obvious even to those lacking a head for heights

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Ebury Street Belgravia

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The grandeur of Belgravia's streets continue into this five-storey home, filled with sublime antiques and just the right amount of British eccentricity.

Located midway between Buckingham Palace and Sloane Square, there is some superior shopping to be had virtually around the corner, and the verdant triumvirate of Green Park, Hyde Park and St James’s are all within a very short walk.

There’s a decadence to the polished woods and sumptuous textiles in this Ebury Street home, and, amidst all the tradition, a welcome note of do-as-youplease spontaneity. The kitchen is country and quaint, while the bedrooms boast furnishings that wouldn’t look out of place in a five-star hotel.

Your host, when she’s not travelling the world, divides her time between Ebury Street and her country retreat in Oxfordshire. She’s friendly, creative and charming – one in a million – just like her home.

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clockwise from left: Ebury Street’s sitting room invites to elegant lounging in the classic-with-an-edge decor. Bedrooms are opulent in their hand-blocked wallpaper and moodenhancing lighting. The kitchen is country and quaint, with a dainty breakfast room.

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Tower Bridge Road Shad Thames

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This is a home very much in touch with its roots. Exposed wood is everywhere, from the original floorboards to the smooth kitchen worktop and the much-loved dining room table. Your hosts met at an art fair in Miami before returning together to London. She’s a shoe designer while he’s an art consultant, and their home is imbued with history and personality, with a fascinating tangle of original artwork and antique furniture.

Outside lie the foggy alleyways and cobbled lanes of Shad Thames waiting to be explored, while Tate Modern, Borough Market and The Globe theatre are all within a short walk from the front door.

clockwise from left: The kitchen contains a seamless blend of antique furniture with brand new appliances.

A touch of the holy spirit. An antique Egyptian trunk takes centre stage in the sitting room.

The dining room doubles up as a library.

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Springcroft Avenue Highgate

Here in one of the most genteel suburbs of North London, where delis and coffee shops rub shoulders with art galleries, book shops and gastro pubs, lies Springcroft Avenue: a spacious three-bedroom family house with a large, grassy garden, and an architectural glass extension that will make aesthetes gasp with delight and make that morning coffee so much brighter.

Your hosts are an Anglo-Australian family with almost half a century of roots in North London. Now retired, he worked as a management consultant while she has worked as a psychologist, university lecturer and personal trainer. With two sons about to enter the world of work, the couple spend a lot of time in their second home in Italy, but love Springcroft Avenue for its juxtaposition of country walks and cosmopolitan restaurants.

clockwise from left: There’s nothing conservative about this conservatory.

The top floor is entirely given to the master suite. The huge modern room out back houses the kitchen, dining room and low seating area, with still plenty of space to host a yoga class.

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Holland Park Avenue Holland Park

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opposite, clockwise from top: spoilt for choice for a place to recline.

Bedrooms are filled with carefully chosen antiques. A warm glow fills the master bedroom. The staircase has been lovingly restored to its former glory.

A miniature library is nestled at the end of the corridor below: The sitting room on the ground floor is plush and welcoming with old masters, ornaments and objets trouvĂŠ

Your host is an architect, and his wife a bookbinder. They discovered Holland Park Avenue in a somewhat shambolic state, and have worked hard to restore all four floors to its present splendour.

Dating from 1827, every window, every door and that spectacular staircase have all been painstakingly revived. Today, there are lustrous oil paintings, shelves of vellum volumes and exquisite antiques, in a home that is nonetheless right up to date. Entirely in tune with its genteel West London surroundings, this is a true modern classic.

The peaceful West London environs are dotted with gardens and squares, cafĂŠs, artisan butchers and delis, and both Notting Hill and Kensington High Street are within easy walking distance.

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Rothwell Street Primrose Hill

Here’s one for those who like to do things a little differently. Yellow stripes on the ceiling and extraordinary contemporary artwork – this is a home with personality. There’s a jungle feel to the patio garden, with its enormous, luscious fronds, and where else can you meet an oversized fairground bunny?

There's a three-minutes walk to the park, and Primrose Hill’s gorgeous shops and cafes are on the doorstep.

Your hostess runs a bakery, and there's a number of her cookbooks in the kitchen. Your host, meanwhile, is a film producer, spending his days among A-list celebs, many of whom are near neighbours. When they’re not sampling buttercream, the couple are at the ballet, or nipping into the West End.

below: The main sitting room with that incredible ceiling – and one lucky boy’s got his name in lights opposite: The master bedroom is large and airily chic with a super king-sized bed. Bright, charming and full of surprises, the living room opens out onto the verdant garden

Say goodnight to Manhattan’s twinkling lights from the roof terrace before you bunker down.

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Old Nichol St 2 Shoreditch

The dapper bathroom, dazzlingly lit through a glass ceiling

Tell the Shoreditch set it’s time to ditch their sunnies – here’s a home which puts the rest in the shade.

Built and flat-packed in Germany, the home was shipped to London and reassembled on the top floor of this rather raffish building.

Sunlight streams through windows the size of walls, ceilings stretch skyward and solar panels harvest the day’s brightest rays. But no one need squint to savour those giddying views of the City, and in a home futuristically controlled by computer, there’s a nifty new meaning for ‘the cloud’. Exposed brickwork, calm blonde woods and a serenely glass-roofed bathroom put the zen in zenith, but should the heat become a tad too much, just pop downstairs for a dose of Shoreditch’s glacial cool.

Floor-to-ceiling windows let in oodles of light

Styled like a cosy wood cabin, there’s happily no lumber here – only a sleek, minimalist design and a neat peephole onto the sitting room below

opposite: Warmly clad in wood which runs from the ceiling down to the stone underfoot, each space flows into the next

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Vernon Yard Notting Hill Dazzlingly pretty in pale whites and the most gorgeous hue of blue, three-bedroomed Vernon Yard is a rare find. The chandeliers, a fourposter bed, wrought-iron staircase and roof terrace provide the setting for a few days of secluded romance, while the setting, a charming mews just off Portobello Road, is far enough from the hustle and bustle to feel perfectly private. Your hostess is a freelance jewellery designer, with a knack for realising many women's dream home. She seeks inspiration in architecture, and travels the world with her sketchbook – but she’s always keen to return home to her adorable dog, too.

Magpies will wish to rise early and flit between the stalls of Portobello Road Market, discovering vintage clothing and all sorts of bric-a-brac. Notting Hill’s filled with funky cafes and hip bars, and those who prefer to buy new will delight in some very fabulous boutiques.

clockwise from top right: Two peaceful double bedrooms decked out in your host’s signature blue-and-white palate. A rooftop terrace to make you high.

A fairy tale bathroom complete with vintage tiles and traditional copper bath.

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St Peter’s Street Islington Walking the streets in Angel is like stepping back in time, so pristine are its Georgian terraces. St Peter’s Street itself is a perfect example, and even more intriguingly, this four-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse, built in 1848, is one of only eight designed in Islington by architect Samuel Angell. Your French host, who is director of an eco-lodge company in Thailand, has recently renovated this four storey sanctuary with all her French sophistication.

In the huge sitting room, eclectic artwork fill the walls and two conceptual chandeliers hang above overflowing bookcases and an irresistibly-patterned Svenskt Tenn sofa. As the day draws to a close four generous bedrooms – two doubles, a single and a king – each decorated with the same lux playfulness as the rest of the home await, unless the buzz from Upper Street keeps sleep at bay a while longer.

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clockwise from top right: The pristine marble kitchen and dining room. The spacious master bedroom is cherry-topped with designer pieces. A rich heritage-colour palette pervades the home. Antique tiles lead the way to the spa-like bathroom.

Rooms are large and drenched in sunlight from the sash windows

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Portobello Road 2 Westbourne Grove

This unusual home is surely the very essence of Portobello Road. There’s a fabulously playful atmosphere to its airy rooms, filled with treasures from the antiques stalls below. A hundred years ago this home was a space between two shops, and up on the landing, some original Victorian lettering still remains. This is one of the most fascinating spots in town – there’s the market, of course, with its vintage fashion and dusty gold, and, on Westbourne Grove itself, all sorts of boutiques and quirky cafes.

Your host, a young architect, has carefully preserved this building’s history, with its old floorboards, high ceilings and wooden shutters.

But such respect is tinged with a healthy dose of irreverence, as is manifested in the mirror ball and the oversized candelabra. Next door to the airy and fresh living space is the chrome kitchen, with a grand mirror, antique dresser and industrial breakfast bar. All three bedrooms are doubles, and all are furnished simply, with fresh white walls, and, of course, acres of crisp luxury bed linen.

below from left: Original Victorian lettering lines the staircase. Shelf-assured displays.

Umbrella coverage

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opposite: Original features are tinged with a healthy dose of irreverence, manifested in the mirror ball and oversized candelabra. A chrome kitchen with industrial breakfast bar is softened with an antique dresser

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BLEECKER Street Noho

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The BowerY Noho

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Astor Place Noho

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Thompson Street Soho

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Prospect Place 2 Prospect Heights

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State Street 2 Brooklyn Heights

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Gallery Loft Noho

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onefinestay members’ homes in NEW YORK

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Spring Street 2 Soho

Carlton Avenue 2 Prospect Heights

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West 12th Street West Village

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The BowerY Noho Once the epicentre of New York’s punk scene and the definition of the city’s rugged yet storied past, the Bowery has transformed itself into a destination for food and culture. Arcadian by day, bacchanalian by night, a stay here is sure to initiate a New York love affair.

This home might be a converted industrial space, but there’s nothing Spartan about this three-bedroom loft, decorated by your host, who is in finance, and his muse (who happens to be his wife). The original exposed cast-iron columns throughout the home give it a classic atmosphere but the décor balances the past with an elegant present. Dinner is served under the globe-like chandeliers over the dining-room table and post-prandial drinks in the gilt-finished white sofas. In the master bedroom, a silver wing represents a tribute to Hermes and all the ingenuity this new york enclave entails.

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clockwise from top: A serene four-poster bed contrasts with one of this home’s original towering cast-iron columns. The family room, with its wall of black and white photographs and minimalist furniture.

The children’s room takes a bough. Preparing food is a pleasure in this all-white kitchen

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Bleecker Street 2 Noho

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clockwise from below: A private rooftop from which to take in Manhattan. Dig into one of many tomes stored in the platform bed.

The power to emit Eames

They say you can’t always get what you want – but in this Noho aerie, you pretty much can.

Cook up a storm in the sleek grey kitchen and serve it in the private outdoor space, with the whole of the Manhattan skyline at your feet, finishing up the evening in the Eames chairs in front of a roaring sitting-room fire. If the pulse of the city seduces, this part of New York comes alive at night, with bars and music venues spilling their flawlessly put-together guests onto the pavements.

Your host works in medicine, but has a passion for music, art and fine mid-century modern furniture, making for a fine melange of energy and refinement.

opposite: The spotlight shines on mid-century modern pieces and contemporary style

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3

Astor Place Noho

Meet Astor Place, a home of magnificent proportions.

This space-is-no-object, two bedroom, two bathroom loft has a floor large enough to rollerblade around.

Your hosts are lifelong New Yorkers, who chose a clever city location with Houston Street as their home parallel. Noho is famous for its gustatory goods, while Soho is peerless for scouring chic boutiques.

The two bedrooms are dressed in cool neutrals and offer a perfect night’s sleep, after a soak in a clawfooted tub, in a marble-clad bathroom.

clockwise from above: The living room area is dotted with huge floor cushions and giant potted plants. The horizonbending open plan of Astor Place.

The bedrooms are both calm and collected

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Prospect Place 2 Prospect Heights

If this home were a film, it would open on a picturesque Prospect Heights street shaded with trees and lined with Italianate row houses. The pivotal characters are a filmmaker from New York, an artist from Los Angeles, and their three children living in a modern three-storey home with three bedrooms, two balconies and a spacious private garden. Exquisite wood doors open onto a space of milky whites, natural textures and lovely ambient light. The dining area holds a vintage Danish modern table that can extend and contract to fit a whole cast of characters.

The sprawling garden is the ideal backdrop for an intimate alfresco dinner or simply watching the little ones re-enact an old Western in front of the teepee.

Locals go for a run in Prospect Park, explore the art at the Brooklyn Museum or dine with a rustic barnyard flourish at Flatbush Farm. When the script calls for a Manhattan jaunt, four subway lines are within walking distance.

from top: An all-metal staircase and exposed brick lend a modern touch to a traditional townhouse. Big architectural features are softened with classic wood furniture.

A stately tufted sofa, fireplace and piano set a welcoming tone in the sitting room opposite: A home of first glass proportions

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Thompson Street Soho

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In a city of star-strewn acts, theatre is king, and this 1,200 square foot Soho loft dating to the 1860s certainly sets the stage. Your host is an accomplished and travelled entertainment industry professional, and this home has been recently renovated top to bottom with painstaking care.

A dramatic, age-worn solid steel door leads into a hallway lined with vintage vinyl and the modern living area overlooks Soho’s roofscape. Culinary treats can be prepared in the all-white kitchen, and eaten at the generous dining table. The bathroom is all grittyglamorous brick, glass, and burnished concrete bath, with the bedroom adding mystery in the shape of an expertly concealed pull-down bed.

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clockwise from left: The brightly lit open-plan living space.

Gather your songbirds around the scene-stealing solid mahogany Steinway.

The effervescent all-white kitchen.

Decades of entertainment history line the shelves in the hallway in the form of books, magazines and vinyl

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State Street 2 Brooklyn Heights

A stacked library of enlightened tomes lead the way to the dining room

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In historic Brooklyn Heights where the classic seamlessly blends with the modern, the Renaissance spirit lives on.

Here stands a beautiful six-bedroom home within a quintessential brownstone, filled with antiques and modern classics. Your hosts are a scholar and teacher of the classics, and a financier. They and their brood of four are voracious readers, art lovers, sports enthusiasts, and avid learners – a Renaissance family through and through.

The living room boasts intricate rugs, boldly printed cushions and lofty bookshelves stacked with enlightened tomes. In the dining room, a breathtaking Pluma Cubic pendant lamp made of feathers illuminates an intimate setting where families can break bread, and there’s a lush manicured backyard.

Leaving this haven may be both agony and ecstasy, but just a short walk away there’s beautiful Nouveau American fare at Colonie, and avant-garde finds at the Barney’s Co-op.

clockwise from left: Stop and stair at this modern iron and teak masterpiece. Armchairs draped with seafaring ropes face floor-to-ceiling glass windows, inviting further exploration.

The kitchen, all honey-hued wood, shiny white cabinets and top-of-the-line stainless steel accoutrements. The lush manicured backyard

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Gallery Loft Noho

A vision in experimental living customised by its architect owner, this two-bedroom loft deliberately upends the quotidian: appliances are encased in glass and steel frames, pipes and circuitry are exposed, and the kitchen can be rearranged on casters. An antique robot here, a knight's armour there, a heady mix of curios decorates this museum of the future, while access to a roof deck garden offers a breath of fresh air. Located in the centre of Lower Manhattan, this exceptional space offers access to the city with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine.

clockwise from below: The guest bedroom, where a modified Airstream trailer serves as a partition.

Even the shower is on wheels.

Walls can be opened and closed as needed. All the furniture is custombuilt by the architect owner, to reveal the inner workings of everyday things. A glass closet forms the centerpiece of the master bedroom and the headboard of the cushy bed

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Carlton Avenue 2 Prospect Heights

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This spacious four-storey classic brownstone home has knickknack-filled, prettily patterned rooms aplenty. Your hosts came from the south and northeast to New York City, ultimately meeting each other through a stint at the Whitney. They’ve settled in Brooklyn with their two boys, a wizened Pomeranian pup, and a pair of fire-bellied toads.

The first floor is pleasantly eclectic, filled with carpets from India, ottomans from Morocco and mementos of the rainforest, the savannah and the seashore, creating a global gallery. A hi-spec television is waiting to be watched from an inviting tufted cream sofa, and an ornamental fireplace gently juxtaposes the contemporary art work that adorns the home. The international feel continues outside, by taking in a film from Iran or an opera from Italy in the beaux-arts splendour of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, or people-watching with a picnic in Fort Greene Park.

clockwise from left: The blue-trimmed dining room.

A-head of the game in the hallway.

Bold floral wallpaper in the master suite. Lush and leafy outside

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Spring Street 2 Soho

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There’s a mood of reflection in this crisp, clean threebedroom haven. The elevator opens up into the home, where chrome fixtures, dark wood, and white walls are illuminated by the floor to ceiling windows.

Your hosts are architects who have designed beautiful, unparalleled spaces across the city. Their love of learning and travel can be seen in the wellstocked bookshelves, as well as the maps decorating the children’s room.

Not-to-miss local features include the cast-iron façades of Greene Street, the art deco Western Union Building on Hudson Street, and the 19th-century Harrison Street Houses. Tribeca and Hudson River Park are a five-minute walk away.

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clockwise from left: Floor-to-ceiling windows shed light on the inviting bed, which fits into a warmly carpeted recess in the wall. Hudson River Park is a fiveminute walk away. The kitchen gleams with stainless steel and white cabinets. An oversized white sofa, wicker chairs and tall windows add up to the perfect place to admire the view

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West 12th Street West Village

This is an artisanal city sanctuary – spacious and airy, generously unfolding across five floors and rosy with natural light seeping in from a sweet, leafy cobblestone side street of the West Village.

The balcony off the master bedroom, garden, rooftop terrace with a hot tub and kitchen that extends over the greenery of the floor below all add up to a property above the ordinary. A self-made entrepreneur, your host’s love of international travel is showcased through painstakingly curated keepsakes and relics.

The West Village is easily among the most desirable of all New York City neighbourhoods.

Even its footprint is exclusive: it runs famously at odds with the rest of the city grid. Locals enjoy the neighbourhood’s fine dining and colourful boutiques, or simply take in the romance, rain or shine, of its tranquil cobbled streets.

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clockwise from left: The first floor unfolds over hardwood into an interlocking, open-plan great room. A gourmet kitchen bathed floor to ceiling in natural light. The harmonious back garden. One of the three perfectly poised bedrooms

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Home Truths We hand over the Guestbook reins to a selection of our London and New York hosts to uncover the real local secrets, background stories and quirky traits of their homes

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First name

Home

Occupation

What do you love most about your home?

Tell us a bit about the history of your home?

What’s your most treasured object in your home?

Where do you go when you have onefinestay guests?

What’s your best-kept local secret?

What is your favourite street and why?

Is there another onefinestay home you covet?

If you could have someone famous stay in your house, who would it be and why?

Thankyou

First name

Home

Occupation

What do you love most about your home?

Tell us a bit about the history of your home?

What’s your most treasured object in your home?

Where do you go when you have onefinestay guests?

What’s your best-kept local secret?

What is your favourite street and why?

Is there another onefinestay home you covet?

If you could have someone famous stay in your house, who would it be and why?

Thankyou

First name

Home

Occupation

What do you love most about your home?

Tell us a bit about the history of your home?

What’s your most treasured object in your home?

Where do you go when you have onefinestay guests?

What’s your best-kept local secret?

What is your favourite street and why?

Is there another onefinestay home you covet?

If you could have someone famous stay in your house, who would it be and why?

Thankyou

First name

Home

Occupation

What do you love most about your home?

Tell us a bit about the history of your home?

What’s your most treasured object in your home?

Where do you go when you have onefinestay guests?

What’s your best-kept local secret?

What is your favourite street and why?

Is there another onefinestay home you covet?

If you could have someone famous stay in your house, who would it be and why?

Thankyou

First name

Home

Occupation

What do you love most about your home?

Tell us a bit about the history of your home?

What’s your most treasured object in your home?

Where do you go when you have onefinestay guests?

What’s your best-kept local secret?

What is your favourite street and why?

Is there another onefinestay home you covet?

If you could have someone famous stay in your house, who would it be and why?

Thankyou

First name

Home

Occupation

What do you love most about your home?

Tell us a bit about the history of your home?

What’s your most treasured object in your home?

Where do you go when you have onefinestay guests?

What’s your best-kept local secret?

What is your favourite street and why?

Is there another onefinestay home you covet?

If you could have someone famous stay in your house, who would it be and why?

Thankyou

First name

Home

Occupation

What do you love most about your home?

Tell us a bit about the history of your home?

What’s your most treasured object in your home?

Where do you go when you have onefinestay guests?

What’s your best-kept local secret?

What is your favourite street and why?

Is there another onefinestay home you covet?

If you could have someone famous stay in your house, who would it be and why?

Thankyou

Sherlock

The riddle of the keys It’s the perennial mystery – how to get into a locked room with no key.

The world’s best sleuth has the answer, using a touch of app magic

illustration thibaud herem

I

t was while hailing a cab to Baker Street from attending a doctor’s conference at St Bartholomew’s that the text from Holmes reached me.

‘I was under the strongest impression that you would remain indoors this morning Watson, as I have left my keys. No matter, I shall make my own arrangements to enter our lodgings.’

Urging the most haste upon the cabbie, I arrived outside 221B, expecting to see a familiar figure in deerstalker and cape, ruminatively smoking a pipe. Instead, my phone vibrated with another message. ‘Dear Watson, I am already inside!’ To myself, I spluttered, but how? As if he had heard this exposition, I received another text: ‘I have solved the riddle of the keys.’

I was about to dash up the stairs, only to see the front door open and Holmes emerge, and resolutely shut the door behind him. ‘But why have you done that – you don’t have your keys!’ I expostulated.

‘That is of no matter Watson! I have created a new technology that means that forgetting ones keys will be a problem no more. And I shall no longer have to ask you or Mrs Hudson to stay in on my account. Look!’

He whipped out his smartphone from his pocket, and opened an app which shared his name. He tapped on another button that said ‘Unlock’, and as if Scheherazade herself had said ‘Open sesame!’ the front door sprang open. ‘But how the devil did you do that?’ I asked. ‘All the matter of a cunning wireless device and an electric strike,’ he replied, a glint in his eyes, as we went in and up the stairs. ‘In your haste to leave this morning, you failed to notice the small box, no bigger than a pack of playing cards, sitting by our entryphone. This box of wonders talks to the electric strike in the entryphone, and I installed a similar strike in the door to our lodgings, so this happens.’

He paused as we stood outside our own apartment door. There was a satisfying click and then it sprung open, again without the intervention of human hands. ‘Holmes, this is marvellous stuff indeed!’ I exclaimed. ‘No more need to wait in for the postman or delivery boys. No more worry if we leave in haste and do not take keys. And clearly this is much more secure

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than copying keys to your network of underground informers.’ ‘Exactly so, Watson! I can issue single-use keys via text, so suddenly our rendezvous with them need not be so onerous.’

And with that, he swept into his study, where soon I heard the sonorous sounds of his violin, while I marvelled that my companion could come up with such a life-enhancing invention whilst solving so many other riddles.

For more information about the key-free app, visit www.onefinestay.com/sherlock THE SNUG

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View from the bridge For our staff Christmas celebrations we had to wait until the busy holiday period was over – it comes with the territory. But, luckily for us, this year’s pop-up venue was less concerned with which month it was, as which century it belonged in. So in January we all followed cryptic clues down to an immersive world in the Victorian tunnels under London Bridge. Cobbled streets, a cosy pub, hog roast and performers: the team thronged into the music hall for a speech, raucous entertainment and wild dancing as the night grew late.

Our Social Whirl

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Hot off the press On a crisp, cold night in February, a glittering army of London’s leading creatives joined onefinestay to celebrate the launch of Guestbook. The impressive venue was pertinent: a living space that doubles as design Gallery FUMI in Shoreditch. All our friends from the worlds of art, architecture, design and fashion were there, along with the renowned Guestbook cat Onslow who took the opportunity to mingle with the crowds – he told us that while the prosecco wasn’t to his taste, the Norwegian smoked salmon buns were divine.

Ye Olde Christmas bash Filled with Christmas cheer, onefinestay invited our hosts to Brunswick House, a Georgian house of grand rooms and curious alcoves in Vauxhall. Normally serving as a wonderful antiques emporium, that particular night we wanted to be transported back in time. Thus our hosts arrived at ‘The House Where Time Stood Still’ to be greeted by the onefinestay team and the rather eccentric family Brunswick, who, as we discovered, were talented performers. The cellar and the larder were poured and piled into glasses and onto platters, and it didn’t take long before the family Brunswick to everybody’s delight began to make a Christmas scene and fill us all with festive spirit.

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Long live the Salon In March we co-hosted an intimate gathering with our new partner Gertrude in the private home and studio of famed fashion photographer Antoine Verglas. Gertrude is a recently established club in New York, inspired by Gertrude Stein’s famous Paris Salons, where an artist’s work is presented in a home setting for discussion and acquisition. On this occasion contemporary artist Erik Parker was in the limelight. He sat down with Whitewall Magazine’s editor-in-chief Katy Donoghue to talk about his work and newest paintings. Six paintings and a drawing by Parker were on view, some from his recent ‘Still Lifes’ and his past ‘Heads’ and ‘Hydroglyphs’ series.

Then we took Berlin In the first week of March we went to ITB Berlin, the world's biggest travel fair, with Onslow the Guestbook cat and a rather stylish stand. With over 10,000 exhibitors from 188 countries, our team invited travel agents, journalists, as well as the Berlin public to join us in our cosy living-room stand to learn all about onefinestay the way we always like to do things – over a cup of tea.

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Come on, Vogue In aid of The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, onefinestay helped sponsor a supper club-style event held at the west London Brompton Club. After enjoying dinner and fine wine, we were treated to a very special guest speaker, the editor of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman. Alexandra gave open, honest and witty responses to probing questions on current fashion trends and how she copes juggling being a mum, the UK editor of Vogue and now a novelist. It was a great chance to both support a very worthwhile cause and introduce onefinestay to London’s fashion and designer elite.

Traveller's tale We teamed up with destination experts Cazenove & Loyd to put on a lecture at the renowned Royal Geographical Society – a mecca for travel and discovery. Robert Gordon, CMG OBE and former British Ambassador to Burma, was the perfect speaker to regale a majestic traveller’s tale specifically focusing on Rangoon and the Ayeyarwady River. Mingling with the Cazenove & Loyd guests it was clear that they crave a sense of adventure and curated travel experiences as much as onefinestay members.

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ENDNOTE

A Serendipiter’s Journey (for, and after, Gay Talese) words Rishi Dastidar

Ready to seek out stories, thrills?

Close the door and then embark with no direction. Your first steps will gently kindle curiosity’s spark.

Hail well the god Serendipity and his uncanny ability to guide you to destinations new, where eyes, ears, noses can accrue sensations delightful, unexpected – a walk becomes a rhapsodic dance with memories made by chance, that planned trips would’ve rejected.

Most of all, you will have found the city is the ultimate playground.

Rishi Dastidar is a member of Malika's poetry kitchen, and part of The Compete Works II, a national development programme for Black and Asian poets in the UK. He was a runner-up in the 2011 Cardiff International Poetry Competition, and featured in the 2012 anthologies 'Lung Jazz' and 'Adventures in Form'.

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