Guestbook 9 - The individuality issue

guestbook The onefinestay journal about making yourself at home in the world’s greatest cities The individuality issue

We’re pioneering handmade hospitality. Because there’s nothing better than a real home to stay in while you’re travelling.

The finest homes are made with love and labour, and we seek them out so you can experience onefinestay.

We’d love to welcome you to London, New York, Paris or Los Angeles. onefinestay.com reservations@onefinestay.com +44 800 612 4377 +1 917-383-2182 If you’ve made a home with love and labour, find out more about becoming a member. onefinestay.com/members Follow us @onefinestay ‘onefinestay’ and ‘unhotel’ are registered trademarks of Lifealike Limited, UK company number 06554630. © 2015, all rights reserved

guestbook

Craftsmanship from the British Isles. t h e n e w c r a f t s m e n 34 North Row, Mayfair L ondon w1 k 6 d g thenewcraftsmen . com +44 (0) 207 148 3190

guestbook The individuality issue

Editor Alex Bagner Art Director Thom Bradley Creative Consultant Sonya Dyakova Photography Editor Charlotte Wenman Junior Designer Karine Day Sub Editor LĂŠa Teuscher Director of Brand Marketing Miranda Cresswell onefinestay Co-Founder & CEO Greg Marsh Published by onefinestay onefinestay.com Cover: Robert Nicol Words: Charlotte Abrahams, Liz Armstrong, Stephen Armstrong, Jonathan Bell, Catherine Blyth, Katie Brown, Carrie Buckle, Edwin Heathcote, Jyoti Kumar, Dan Rookwood, Sam Sweet

To read a digital version and past issues visit onefinestay.com/guestbook Follow us @onefinestay

Photography: Chantal Anderson, Kasia Bobula, Steven Brahms, Rita Braz, Claire Cottrell, Edward Park, Atlanta Rascher Illustration: Atelier Bingo, Michael Kirkham, Clara Lacy, Nick White

The beauTy of Travelling.

STOP THE WATER WHILE USING ME! It’s all natural cosmetics.

It’s biodegradable. It’s free from synthetics. It’s the ideal travel companion.

So wherever onefinestay may take you: stop-the-water.com

the salon

30 Bringing it all back home The co-founder of the Brooklyn Flea on how inspiration came from his own brownstone.

Words: Carrie Buckle Photography: Steven Brahms 40 Sense and the city A guide around our cities, whichever sense you choose to put on high alert.

Words: Alex Bagner Illustration: Nick White

the front room

12

Talk of the town London’s new top tables, fiendishly clever new fitness in New York and a celebration of retail heritage in LA – what’s really happening in our cities.

Words: Stephen Armstrong, Dan Rookwood, Sam Sweet Illustration: Michael Kirkham

18

A thoughtful home The founders of Mayfair gallery The New Craftsmen on why they are at the forefront of a quiet retail revolution.

Words: Charlotte Abrahams Photography: Kasia Bobula

24 A plum job A day out with LA chef-ofthe-moment Jessica Koslow is bound to be fruitful.

Words: Liz Armstrong Photography: Claire Cottrell

52

60 Call to the wild A Santa Monica home that offers the perfect mix of culture and nature.

Words: Sam Sweet Photography: Chantal Anderson 71

The moment I wake up…

An ode to this most personal time of day.

Words: Catherine Blyth Photography: Rita Braz

76 In the shadow of

the museum Montague Place is a home with almost as many tales as its imposing neighbour.

Words: Jonathan Bell Photography: Atlanta Rascher 84

Inside track: Ilse Crawford The British designer on why she’s been championing the individual in every one of her interiors.

Words: Edwin Heathcote

Love food, will travel What four chefs cooked up on trips to onefinestay cities.

Photography: Edward Park Food styling: Oliver Rowe

92 Picture perfect A celebration of the revolutionary platform that is Instagram.

Guestbook — contents

the backyard

102 Hearts and crafts We discuss what makes a thoughtful home over a series of Salon Suppers.

103 An American in Paris Author of the Sunday Suppers blog and cookbook Karen Mordechai entertains during her week-long onefinestay at Rue Pétrarque II. 104 A family affair A day of games, jellies and giant giraffes at Macaulay Road in Clapham, London.

106 California dreamy To celebrate LA’s bustling creative scene, we teamed up with three of our favourite brands for a weekend of events at McKinley Avenue.

108 A glowing report LA’s bold and beautiful gather at the sensational Buff and Hensman House with beauty brand How You Glow.

109 High fives We celebrate five years since welcoming our first guests with a drink or two at our London HQ. 110 Address book Find your way in the city thanks to the previous pages’ entrepreneurs, artists, artisans and bon viveurs.

Contributors and their top tips for living well when away from home

Rita Braz, photographer The moment I wake up...

Page 71

Our cover artist Robert Nicol has put his hand to all manner of media including illustration, ceramics and sculpture, and exhibited his work at galleries across the UK and Europe.

When he’s not dreaming up his poetic scenes, the Dundee native teaches the creative arts at Central Saint Martins and Camberwell College of Art in London. His failsafe recipe for making the most of his jaunts away from home is a matter, he says, of leaving his phone behind.

Carrie Buckle, writer Bringing it all back home Page 30 Naomi Watts, Karl Lagerfeld and Madonna have at least one thing in common: having sat down with Carrie Buckle for an interview.

The New York-based writer and editor, who wrote about Brooklyn Flea co-founder Jonathan Butler and his wife Kira von Eichel for this issue, contributes to Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and Tatler, most memorably penning a profile of Debbie Harry after a rainy-day heart-to-heart at the Moonstruck Diner in Chelsea. She says the key to a good trip is to stay in touch with nature with a run around a park. ‘The fresh air, greenery and exercise kick-starts my day with a positive mindset, wherever I am.’

8/9

Illustration: Clara Lacy

Robert Nicol, illustrator The cover

Raised in Lisbon but based in Berlin, art director and photogr­ apher Rita Braz has lent her lively storytelling skills to advertising campaigns and fashion brands.

She’s a coffee addict and self-described morning person, so, naturally, seemed a good fit to shoot our slightly surreal ode to morning rituals. Having lived abroad since leaving home to study in Switzerland, Rita relies on daily routines to keep her grounded when travelling: ‘The muesli and fruit breakfast, the morning swim, the certain pen and certain notebook, the Portuguese recipes, the way-too-early alarm followed by multiple snoozes…’

Adèle Favreau & Maxime Prou, Atelier Bingo Pages 10, 28, 100

Chantal Anderson, photographer Call to the wild Page 60

Based in western France, Atelier Bingo’s Adèle Favreau and Maxime Prou are known for their vibrant, experimental collages – a few of which grace our section openers this issue. Their love of powerful silhouettes to create dynamic abstract scenes, with elements influenced by French Fauvism and Modernism, is shared by publ­ ications as diverse as Vogue, Wanderlust, Wrap and The Plant.

Leaving the creative heart of Paris for the Loire Valley gave them a sense of artistic independence, they say. However, to keep that sense of home when away, they suggest to always surround yourself with great friends.

A photographer and film director who travels up and down America’s West Coast in the line of duty, Chantal Anderson keeps herself balanced by painting and writing.

‘It’s a small meditation that clears my mind, no matter where I am,’ she says. Based in LA, she focuses on scenes with strong, spontan­e­ ous narratives, whether for fashion clients, portraiture or her own documentary films. Our East Rustic Road house in Santa Monica served as her subject in this issue.

Guestbook — contributors

Oliver Rowe, chef Love food, will travel Page 84 Tuscany-trained chef Oliver Rowe opened his London café Kon­stam (and later gastropub Kon­stam at the Prince Albert) in 2004, using ingredients sourced largely within the city limits. He has featured on cooking programmes, worked at Chez Panisse in Calif­or­ nia and written a book about seasonal food, to be published by Faber & Faber next spring. His top tip for living well away from home is, naturally, eating well. ‘I’m always inspired by new food when I’m travelling,’ he says. ‘Food is always drenched in history and culture, so every meal is an education.’

Editor’s letter

We are all curators of our lives.

We decide how we eat, cook, shop, socialise, dress and exercise.

It’s what makes us individuals. It’s also what makes how we travel an implicitly personal experience.

Following up on our D&AD award-winning adventure issue, this instalment of Guestbook celebrates the stamp of individuality we bring to our lives, and the natural desire to experience elements of our crafted lives even when we’re on the move. That’s the secret to the art of travelling well.

10 / 11

It’s a topic we’ve been exploring over the past few months on the onefinestay blog. As part of our #LiveWellTravelWell series, we’ve been asking some of our globetrotting guests for tips on maintaining their quality of life even while on the move. From creative director Alex Eagle’s resolution to always bring her own goose-down pillow, to supermodel Amber Valletta’s ritual of a long, luxurious bath, it was the individuality in the answers that captivated us.

It also fascinated Berlinbased photographer Rita Braz, whose photo essay The moment I wake up... (page 71) studies the morning habits and rituals people cherish. Meanwhile, in Love food, will travel (page 84), we asked four chefs to share a personal culinary discovery: one dish that hit the spot on a recent trip to a onefinestay city.

Food also served as the basis for a flurry of recent onefinestay events, all documented in our Backyard section (page 100). These included a series of ‘Salon Suppers’ at Mayfair gallery The New Craftsmen (see our interview with the founders on page 18). And there was a weekend at the impressive Los Angeles onefinestay home McKinley Avenue, kicking off with an artists’ dinner co-hosted

by Berlin magazine Freunde von Freunden and cooked by LA chefof-the-moment Jessica Koslow of Sqirl (see our report on page 24).

While our idiosyncrasies may becomes even more potent when we’re on the move, that doesn’t have to hinder us from encountering the new. How we choose to discover the city is simply up to each individual. With this in mind we’ve put together Sense and the city (page 40): five local experts, each with their own meticulously attuned sense, guide you round their home towns.

Finally, in Picture perfect (page 92) we look at the most arresting snaps from the revoluti­ onary photography platform Instagram. Finely curated by us, of course. Happy travelling.

Alex Bagner Editor, Guestbook guestbook@onefinestay.com

front room the

Print by Atelier Bingo

In any city, whether you want to secure an unbookable table, track down a one-of-a-kind store or get fit the fun way, it’s local knowledge you need. Here, three writers, from London, Los Angeles and New York, share their insider tips on the hot and the happening, as discussed around the dining tables of their neighbourhoods.

Talk of the town Illustration: Michael Kirkham

12 / 13

Turning the tables

by Stephen Armstrong In London, a new app could be your ‘in’ to dinner at the top tables in town, with the taxi ride and payment taken care of at a swipe.

Arriving in a new city and looking for a table at the hot­test restaurant in town has trad­ itionally been tricky for those travellers lacking a movie deal, a catwalk career or membership of an acceptable royal family.

Cramming into London’s Comptoir Gascon, Salt Yard or Dehesa is an especially tricky proposition since, by the particular physics of hip, more people will have claimed to have eaten in these places last weekend than the buildings can seat in a fortnight.

You could try the wide boys’ favoured ‘losing the stake, winning the steak’ approach – where you pitch up on the night palming a wad of notes and bet the head waiter £75 they can’t find you a seat. As you shake the man’s hand, whisper, ‘And I don’t mind losing.’ But this is not an ideal long-term strategy.

And yet, like tantalisingly lowhanging fruit on a tree guarded by leopards, there will be cancellations and no-shows at these places every single day.

If only there was some way you could round up all the lastminute tables at all the hottest restaurants in London in one place – maybe even an app…

Which is pretty much exactly what the founders of the recently launched Uncover dining app are offering. Suitably, they were inspired by a night struggling around London trying to get a decent dinner.

David Saenz, Dan Ziv and Chris Steinau met whilst studying for an MBA at London Business School and were drawn together by a shared foodie obsession.

‘One evening we were out in Soho and decided to go for a meal on a whim,’ explains Steinau, now head of marketing for Uncover. ‘Even though we all knew the London restaurant scene really well, we ended up walking round for an hour looking for something interesting that wasn’t fully booked and we got turned away by nine restaurants before someone let us in. But we knew that top-end restaurants phone to confirm reservations a day in advance these days – and they easily get 20-30% cancellations, which can mean the difference between a profit and a loss on the night – so we figured there must be a way.’

Guestbook — the front room

Uncover launched in Feb­ruary and has some 275 restaurant partners to date, including Lima, Lima Floral, Salt Yard, Opera Tavern, Dehesa, Ember Yard, Opso, Comptoir Gascon, Salmontini and Chisou. The principle is simple: on the day, restaurants offer up available cancellations on a first come, first served basis – Steinau rec­ ommends checking around 10am for the biggest range, and with 100,000 registered users that may be wise – and you can book with a swipe.

Looking to match every step of the full five-star concierge experience, Uncover has tied up a deal with Uber – which means you can immediately book a car to carry you there.

And the app recently introduced a full payment option, meaning you can pay or even split the bill via PayPal or a registered card on a MyCheck account, so you can book the table and the ride and then settle up without reaching into your wallet.

Steinau is keen to stress that a team of professional di­ners, whose experience is tallied with reviews and Michelin recommendations, checks out each restaurant. It adds up to a heady mix of human cur­­a­­tion, and programmed algo­rithms – clearly the key to a good dinner.

Fit for purpose

by Dan Rookwood The ability to join any exercise class, any time, anywhere – why New Yorkers, and city dwellers worldwide, are subscribing to a fiendishly clever new fitness model.

Yesterday I did boxing. This morning I did Pilates. Tomorrow I’ve got an hour’s TRX (a body­ weight workout). I’ve just booked my classes for the next few days via the app on my phone: spinning, rowing and bootcamp.

My wife, Sam, does yoga, Pilates or barre (a ballet-based toning workout) pretty much every day of the week before breakfast.

I can guess what you’re thinking.

We sound like ‘one of those cou­ ples’: hateful people, bouncing around in colour-coordinating Nike Dri-Fits, running on endor­ phins, green juice and punchable self-satisfaction. But please don’t judge us, this is New York in 2015. We’re relative newbies just trying to keep up.

When we first moved to the Big Apple from London 18 months ago, we couldn’t help but notice that lots of people seemed to be hanging out in gym gear all weekend so they could smugly indicate to everyone that they’d just done/were about to do some exercise. They’d still be in their workout kit at brunch. I like to keep fit as much as the next guy, but I do not wish to see his spandex-sheathed bits while I’m eating my breakfast sausage.

In New York it is no longer enough to hit the gym or go for a run: the craze is group fitness classes like SoulCycle or Barry’s Bootcamp, mostly conducted by a trainer-cum-

14 / 15

motivational speaker barking orders on the beat through a Madonna mic from a candlelit platform in a darkened boutique studio.

Where there is Lycra, there is lucre. At an average of $34 a class, working out this way can be an expensive habit. Which is why a start-up called ClassPass has really taken off in the last 12 months to become the most hyped fitness movement in New York and LA right now.

Sam and I have been ClassPass members for the last ten months and I think we’re probably the fittest we have ever been.

Absolutely bloody knackered, but fit.

For a monthly fee of $125, this all-you-can-sweat subscrip­ tion model allows you to take as many classes as you want from the thousands on offer. It has been likened to Netflix for the fit­ ness world. It’s spreading across America and earlier this year it launched in London with a view to rapidly expanding internationally.

The ClassPass app shows you the vast array of possibil­ ities which you can search by time, date or location, and you sign up for the ones that take your fancy. A little bit like find­ ing a secret speakeasy bar behind an unmarked door, the ClassPass map will pinpoint a surpris­ ingly high number of cool little boutique studios in your neigh­ bourhood which you never knew were there.

Most of us soon get tired of repet­ itive workout routines and that’s when we give up. Gyms make most of their money from mem­ bers who never go. By changing your style of training throughout the week, your body is constantly fighting to adapt, so you’ll keep seeing results.

For those who travel reg­ ularly, the company now offers ClassPass Flex, enabling sub­ scribers to use their membership wherever they are. This means that if you like Barry’s Bootcamp in London, you can sign up to do it in New York or LA too.

In New York, weekends used to be all about brunch. Now it’s ‘Let’s go to a class and then get brunch.’ Fitness classes have become a social event; fitness clothing has become socially acceptable. Working out may once have been more of a solitary experience, a personal routine.

ClassPass is helping to change all that.

Guestbook — the front room

More in store

An octogenarian, he still works six days a week and up to 13 hours at a stretch. The most common request he fields is from women who purchased shoes that don’t fit and want to magically turn them into a different size – a feat Arturo can usually fulfil for a fraction of the cost of a new pair.

At Rip City Skates, Jim McDowell gestures to the scuffs on the linoleum, left there from when the store owned a row of pinball machines. ‘There were guys that could come in with a quarter and play until dinner,’

by Sam Sweet An incomparable cobbler, a skate legend and a die-hard hardware holdout – the one-off stores where Angeleno shoppers are buying into heritage and local character.

Shoppers in Los Angeles thrive on newness, but even in a land­scape of ruthless retail suc­cession, a few businesses prosper through their refusal to change. Singular owneroperators cultivate loyalty with humble expertise and person-­ alised service. Against all odds, these proprietors are always in-house, year after year, slowly contributing to the layers of lived-in character. Now these stores are becoming destinations for shoppers in search of some­thing more authentic than the latest fashions.

On a stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard jammed with Audis, Porsches and Ferraris, one encounters a little storefront with a plain green awning. The unpretentious interior of Arturo’s Shoe & Handbag Fixx contradicts every elitist cliché of Beverly Hills. Precariously stacked boxes of shoes fill the room, while highend handbags waiting for pick-up hang from hooks, each tagged with a neon receipt. A native of Buenos Aires, Arturo Azinian has been repairing luxury accessories since 1957. His grandson, Ari, attends to customers in the front, while Arturo sits in a back room, performing delicate surgeries on Louboutins and Manolos with his ancient whirring machinery.

16 / 17

says McDowell. He and a partner set up shop in 1978 and Rip City has been a Santa Monica land­ mark ever since. Its walls and ceiling are plastered with decks autographed by the most famous skaters in history, many of whom grew up in the shop’s vicinity.

On a recent afternoon, McDowell traded stories with a tall, weath­ ered local who was browsing with his seven-year-old daugh­ ter. McDowell had sold him his first board back in 1981. They were reminiscing about all the local businesses that had come and gone in the intervening years when the little girl started tug­ ging on her dad’s heavily tattooed arm. He bought her a black Rip City beanie, and told McDowell they would return for a board as soon as she got the hang of her soft-wheeled mini model.

Meanwhile, in a narrow, high-ceilinged storefront in Little Tokyo, Nori Takatani sits

quietly behind a glass counter filled with an assortment of Takayuki knives. Takatani is 75 but looks younger. He started working at Anzen Hardware as a teenager. It was 1954, and local Nisei were repopulating the city after being forcibly removed during the war. A loyal Japanese clientele has kept him in business ever since, though a variety of customers may pass through on a given afternoon: an artist replacing his hammer; a lessor with keys to duplicate; a chef in need of a sharper knife.

(Currently, there are 68 knives on Takatani’s waiting list.)

Upon entering Anzen, the store feels uncluttered, even sparse, but as one walks towards the back, slowly perusing the items, singularly useful implements reveal themselves. Miniature pruning shears; bamboo steamers; wooden mallets in incremental sizes. There is

Guestbook — the front room

nothing in the store that Takatani doesn’t know intimately and he patiently imparts the purpose of each item to every curious customer. Selecting something for purchase never quite feels like shopping, but rather like finding something you never knew you needed while passing time in the home of a long-lost neighbour.

For decades, Los Angeles was synonymous with the latest trends. Now, Angelenos are more interested in rediscovering the unique character that has always been lurking beneath the surface of the city. It’s an ingredient that can’t be purchased at a pop-up. The legacy storefronts are in luck, because for the first time, integrity is on trend.

•

Read more recommendations from locals in our neighbourhood guides on the onefinestay blog.

The thoughtful home Words: Charlotte Abrahams Photography: Kasia Bobula

Based in Mayfair and surrounded by every luxury label you care to name, The New Craftsmen is a store/gallery at the forefront of a quiet retail revolution — one where clients are not simply encouraged to buy goods, but to feel a connection with their lovingly produced purchases. As an introduction to our co-hosted Salon Suppers, we asked the founders to talk us through their concept.

‘Provenance’, ‘authen­ticity’, ‘luxury’ are certainly the buzz words of the contemporary retail landscape. But at The New Craftsmen, the shopcum-gallery set up in 2012 by Mark Henderson, Catherine Lock and Natalie Melton, those words find their real meaning.

This is a place where makers (the store currently represents a network of over 75), materials, method and design matter; a place filled with exquisitely beautiful objects that are deeply connected to culture and place.

What was the thinking behind the launch of The New Craftsmen?

We all come from different backgrounds, but we share a real passion and enthusiasm for craft and we felt that people who NM:

make beautiful things lacked the opportunity to show their work in a way that really valued it.

MH: I was also keen to restore craft in the context of luxury, and vice versa.

Is that why you set up shop in Mayfair?

Absolutely. Historically, Mayfair is a place where crafts­ men and the wealthy come together, and we’re renewing that tradition. We’re in a new era of appreciation of craftsmanship that’s allowing patronage to exist in the best possible way.

1

The New Craftsmen co-founders, from left, Mark Henderson, Natalie Melton and Catherine Lock.

2

Ceramics by Iva Polachova.

3

The Makers’ Drawers – mini vitrines containing swatches and samples, tools and sketches that provide an insight into the materials and processes of various makers.

4

Visitors to the gallery are encouraged to feel, hold and explore the work.

5

London Life Tile Mural by Laura Carlin.

MH:

Is that part of your mission for The New Craftsmen?

NM: Yes. We’re all about connecting people with makers and

1

20 / 21

2

3

4

5

Guestbook — the front room

‘For me, real luxury is about an appreciation of materials and of people who excel in what they do.’

Natalie Melton

revealing the person behind the object. We demon­strate that in a very visible way by asking our craftspeople to come and make in the store – there’s something incredibly potent about seeing how long someone can take to produce a single object.

CL: And we help people commission work.

That’s important; commissioning not only results in a very personal object that you have seen come to life from scratch, it also provides a unique opportunity to help a craftsperson make something wonderful.

MH:

CL: Which makes everyone feel good. There is a real sense here that our customers are trying to do something bigger than themselves.

So it’s much more than a shop full of lovely things?

CL: Oh yes, this is a space where discoveries can be made.

The narrative behind the work is more important to some customers than others, but everyone

comes to us with an understanding of the richness of what we sell and every object is sold with a card about the maker, the materials and the process.

But hasn’t craft itself become homogenised? You can’t move for handcrafted crisps these days.

NM: Yes. For me, real luxury is about an appreciation of materials and of people who excel in what they do.

MH: That is intensely irritating, but you could say the appropriation of the word ‘craft’ by the mass market underlines the fact that there is a value to the work, should you care to delve deeper.

What we do is concentrate on holding up examples of what craft really is; for me it is the mastery of material.

CL: And scarcity, both literally, in the sense that the materials are often naturally limited, and also in that you’ve had to track objects down, to search for them.

CL: It’s also a creative expression of the human need to make.

True craft has a humanity because it’s an extension of who the maker is.

NM: But of course, what we’ve done here by bringing makers to central London is make that process of discovery very simple.

thenewcraftsmen.com

Is an appreciation of skill and an awareness of the history of an object what true luxury is about these days?

And why is this sense of having discovered something so important?

CL: Because we have such a homogenised retail landscape.

People are looking for uniqueness, for authentic objects they can connect with.

22 / 23

•

Read about our series of co-hosted salon suppers with The New Craftsmen in Events, p102.

travel dose

YOUR PRESCRIPTION FOR DISCOVERY

W W W.T R AV E L D O . S E @T R AV E L D O . S E

P H OTO : G A B R I E L M E N D E S

A plum job Sqirl is a contemporary Los Angeles fairy tale. In just over two years, Jessica Koslow has transformed a jam foundry into a restaurant that’s had critics beaming and locals queuing. The chef at Freunde von Freunden’s LA dinner, co-hosted with onefinestay, we took the opportunity to spend the day with Koslow and find out what really goes into those jams.

Words: Liz Armstrong Photography: Claire Cottrell

24 / 25

‘Maybe most restaurants aren’t like this,’ says Jessica Koslow, chef and owner of Sqirl – the name combines ‘squirrel’ (as in ‘squirrel away’) and ‘girl’. She’s considering the way the front of her 800-square-foot space is packed with illustrators, musicians, astrologers and many other types of a creative or eccentric bent.

It’s a much-loved spot that’s run like a cross between a bohemian coffee shop, a foraged food lab and a precision bakery, with a 24-hour production schedule that requires nightly jam-making and treat-baking sessions.

At 6.30am every weekday (and a bit later on weekends), Sqirl opens its doors, breads and pastries piled high: cardamom tea cakes, fig and pumpkin seed brioche, apricot sponge cake

set with molten pudding, scones crusted with sugar, rosewater and pistachio cake, and other delights that go perfectly with morning coffee or tea – and jam.

Koslow began the oper­ at­ion in 2012 as a small jam foundry, using techniques dev­ eloped in the 1500s, copper pans and seasonal, local ingredients.

After a restaurant pop-up – based on the same reverence for Californian produce – Koslow opened her permanent outpost on the edge of LA’s Silver Lake.

Now there’s consistently a line winding around the building and up the street, an adjacent takeaway dinner spot (Sqirl Away) opening in November, two cookbooks in the works and a fine dining restaurant in the pipeline.

Early one morning, at the point in summer when fruit is in hedonic abundance, I head out

Guestbook — the front room

with Koslow to the Santa Monica farmers’ market. We’re there hours before it’s open to the pu­blic, and the only ones in atten­dance are farmers, pantry stockists and chefs. The produce hasn’t even fully hit the stands.

Koslow immediately procures a dozen crates of Ele­ phant Heart plums, a staple in her luscious yet not overly sweet jams, plus a run of Honey Punch pluots (a plum-apricot cross), a variety with crisp, ruby-red flesh. After depositing them in her car, we head back in for more.

‘It gets a little crazy,’ says Koslow of the summer produce.

‘I spend all my money.’ While she will forage for sorrel and fennel near Sqirl, ‘I’ll buy a Chanel purse worth of fruit today’, she says.

We taste yellow nectarines, white peaches and greengages.

Of the latter, Koslow buys the lot.

She schools us on acids and tannins, debating how long to let one variety sit out to ripen and the virtues of another that’s younger and has more crunch.

The market begins to fill up. Ari Taymor, James Beard rising chef nominee 2015, reaches into Koslow’s stash of greengages, acknowledging that she got her hands on some primo fruit.

Sara Kramer, chef at Grand Central Market’s Madcapra and onefinestay chef-in-residence last year (see Guestbook 8 - the adventure issue), waves to her from across crates of greens.

Bruce Kalman from Pasadena’s Union gives her a friendly nod and a hello. We spot the produce buyer from Venice’s Gjelina.

Everyone’s on a hunt for the best of the best, but there’s a friendliness to the rivalry.

‘The competition is all about

application,’ Koslow says. ‘It’s exciting to see what someone does with what they get.’

Leaving the market is a process. Everyone wants Koslow to taste something, to weigh in with her thoughts.

The producers recording a food show for a local station pull her in to comment on Gravenstein apples, from which she makes her famous apple butter.

On our way back to the east side of town, Koslow receives a voicemail informing her that a convection oven has been repaired and is ready for pick-up. ‘The reality is that Sqirl doesn’t have a fancy baking oven,’ she says, driving to the repair shop. ‘We have small con­ vection ovens, and one broke.’

As we retrieve her equip­ment from the shop an understanding of her ethos hits. Koslow is

26 / 27

dedicated to using whatever’s available to make things work, everything from the produce to the tools used to cook it. It’s an honest break from the glossy hype often associated with artisanal food. It’s not always glamorous, sometimes it’s just real.

•

Sqirl is open every day, 8am-4pm. 720 Virgil Avenue. sqirlla.com Read about the Freunde von Freunden ‘Friends’ dinner, cooked by Jessica Koslow, at the onefinestay LA home, McKinley Avenue, p106.

Above left, Jessica Koslow; opposite, top, Sqirl’s famed burnt brioche toast with house ricotta and topped with jam; opposite, bottom right, the unassuming storefront of Sqirl in Silver Lake

Guestbook — the front room

salon the

Print by Atelier Bingo

Grand Avenue Townhouse, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

Bringing it all back home

The co-founder of Brooklyn Flea, Smorgasburg food market and Berg’n beer hall, Jonathan Butler has helped turn Brooklyn into New York’s hottest hood. Of course, he lives at the heart of it all, in a 1870s brownstone he and his wife, Kira von Eichel, have filled with vintage finds and second-hand treasures.

Words: Carrie Buckle Photography: Steven Brahms

When Jonathan and Kira met in New York in their early 20s, they came from different worlds: Jonathan from the Upper East Side and Kira from a rock ’n’ roll German-Canadian family. ‘There was sort of a sophistication and a wildness about her that I was drawn to,’ reflects Jonathan on a balmy summer evening, sitting on the garden deck of their five-storey townhouse in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. ‘Both of us were looking for something to balance us out,’ says Kira, looking chic in a white shirt, blue jeans and red lipstick. ‘I grew up between Washington DC and Munich,

so it was a bit nomadic, with a sense of never really belonging anywhere. I was drawn to Jonathan’s very stable upbringing. I also thought he was the cutest guy in the universe. I think he was looking for wild and creative and risk-taking…’

Jonathan nods: ‘Yeah, just a way to bust out.’

Twenty-two years later, there is no doubt that Jonathan, 45, has busted out. Having quit his Wall Street career, he now runs a flourishing empire from his office on nearby Dean Street.

The co-founder of Brooklyn Flea, Smorgasburg food market and

32 / 33

Berg’n beer hall, the entrepreneur is credited with transforming Brooklyn and building it into an international brand. When it launched in 2011, the food market alone attracted 20,000 visitors – over just one day. While Kira isn’t an official employee, Jonathan says, ‘she’s the world’s greatest advisor and supporter.

Early on, a lot of uncertainty and risk-taking was necessary and she was unflinching.’

Of course, the original Brooklyn hotspot is the couple’s 1870s brownstone, into which they moved a decade ago and which is now the family home for children Bella, 12, and Sevi, ten, and Siberian cat, Tuesday.

Inspired by his experience of renovating the property, Jonat­­han launched a blog called Brownstoner.com about the real estate explosion happening then. ‘My life has become very Brooklyn-centric and I think that none of that stuff would have happened if we hadn’t bought this house,’ says Jonathan.

A love of interesting objects created a bond between Jonathan and Kira early on. ‘When we first got together we would always go to flea markets,’ says Kira, 42, who worked in the art world before having children. ‘Both of us like to discover things on our own and not necessarily through a magazine or someone telling you it’s on trend.’ She continues: ‘Buying a house that was falling apart and filling it with treasures from flea markets felt very right for us.’

When the couple bought the townhouse in 2004, it was chopped up into about 13 apartments, ‘but I knew instantly it was the right house for us,’ says Kira. They spent a year installing a new kitchen, bathrooms, windows, plumbing and

Guestbook — the salon

Guestbook — the salon

electricity, but the biggest challenge was craning a huge porcelain bath through the window into the bathroom.

‘We found it in a salvage yard, but it was impossible to lift even for five men. I’m tall, so I need a big bath to soak in,’ says Kira.

‘We both have an appreciation of the old and wanted to put our own creative stamp on a house,’ adds Jonathan, who is from three generations of architects.

Throughout the house, you get a strong sense of Kira’s German roots, from a Biedermeier screen containing old photos from her greatgrandmother’s house in Bavaria to a poster from a Sonic Youth gig that she went to with Jonathan in Berlin. ‘Germany is very important to my identity, so there’s a lot in the house that ties in with that,’ she says. ‘I tend

to ascribe a lot of meaning to objects, not in a materialistic way, but more in a sentimental or academic way.’ This can be largely attributed to her Munichborn father, Henry von Eichel, who collected everything from writing sets to paraphernalia from his trips on Concorde.

When Kira’s father died in 2012, she inherited his collections from homes in Virginia and Georgetown. ‘We ended up with a lot of random things that meant a tremendous amount,’ she says.

One of her most vivid childhood memories is of her father’s vitrine. ‘He put random treasures in there, from valuables to one of my milk teeth. I remember as a kid just staring into this. It was a bit like a Wunderkammer,’ she reminisces. In the music room upstairs, Kira has her own vitrine with objects from her father’s

36 / 37

travels such as Pan Am cards from the 1980s, alongside drawings by Bella and Sevi.

‘As you can see, we are deeply steeped in family,’ she says.

Having grown up rooting around flea markets, Bella and Sevi have inherited the collecting bug. ‘That Blondie poster was from the flea. They grew up on Blondie and Bowie and punk rock,’ Kira says, pointing out a pink record player. In Sevi’s room next door, there’s no missing the Star Wars and Lego, but there is also a vintage Superman tin artwork on the wall. ‘Flea markets are an integrated part of their lives,’ she says, entering the children’s bathroom, which features an old-school sink.

Kira’s favourite room is the white marble kitchen, with its custom-made banquette inspired by a Bauhaus chair. ‘I absolutely

Guestbook — the salon

‘Buying a house that was falling apart and filling it with treasures from flea markets felt very right for us.’

love it. It’s the centre of the house,’ Kira says.

The sunlight-filled music room with its piano and array of guitars is another family hotspot.

‘Bella lives here and is always making up songs,’ says Kira. ‘Sevi plays music only when no-one’s looking.’ Jonathan plays guitar, but on the weekends you’re likely to find him in his favourite spot, the dining room, cataloguing his record collection. ‘As a kid, I was a huge baseball card collector and this is sort of the grown-up equivalent,’ he says.

When the couple lived in an 800-square-foot loft in Little Italy, before they had children, they threw many a wild party.

‘Jonathan built a DJ station in the loft. Mainly so he wouldn’t have to talk to people at parties,’ says Kira. ‘That’s the great thing about DJing, you can have a twominute conversation and then have to get back to choosing the next record,’ grins Jonathan.

Today, they still enjoy a raucous get-together. ‘A good dinner party is when you move the table aside after dinner…’ says Jonathan.

‘And everyone starts dancing,’

adds Kira. What do they cook?

‘I like the Ottolenghi cookbooks,’ says Kira, who loves the barley risotto with feta and cauliflower fritters. ‘The big sharing dishes are great.’ Indeed, daily life at the brownstone revolves around people. ‘My sister Julia and brother Jakob live a few blocks away, and lots of friends nearby, so life is fluid,’ says Kira.

Jonathan has already achieved so much, so what drives him on a daily basis? ‘Besides ego?’ he jokes. ‘I’m just addicted to creating things. I can’t stop.

Not making clay pots, but making businesses that I’m proud of.

One reason I hated Wall Street was because I was just a cog in the wheel.’ What part does he enjoy the most? ‘It’s very much the conception and creation, and not so much the operation.’ He is never short of new concepts: ‘I own about 150 domain names and most of them I bought at some point because they had some idea potentially attached to them,’ he says. Despite this, his approach is organic: ‘It’s not about me sitting here and saying, ‘Five years from now I want

38 / 39

to be running a multinational corporation.’ It’s more about having coffee with someone and saying, ‘Maybe we could do that there.’ There’s no grand master plan.’ When pushed, he does have one plan…’ When the kids go off to college, I want to start spending winters in Mexico or somewhere warm,’ he says.

In the meantime, they are keen to nurture Bella and Sevi’s individuality while instilling in them certain life values. ‘As a mother, I think about what I want to give our kids ethically as they get older, what I hope they take away from things that are more complex than what you just tell them, such as our value systems,’ says Kira. She has recently started writing. ‘I’m a bit of a late bloomer, but once I started writing, I haven’t been able to stop. I’m currently working on a novel about class, identity, sex and art,’ she says. What’s her big dream for the future? ‘I think we’re sort of living it,’ she smiles.

•

Browse more homes in New York at onefinestay.com/new-york

Whether it’s what you see, eat or smell that is most important to you when exploring a city, all your senses are on high alert when you’re travelling. Here we ask five experts in their fields to guide us round their city – with their strongest sense leading the way.

Sense and the city Illustration: Nick White Words: Alex Bagner, Katie Brown

40 / 41

Guestbook — the salon

Sight, London Sibylle Rochat Art dealer, curator and director at Paddle8.

Fascinated by the art world from a young age, Sibylle Rochat cut her art dealer teeth at Christie’s in New York before founding the SAKS gallery in Geneva. Today she is a director at online auction house Paddle8.

Tell us about your background in art.

Map out your most visually stimulating day in London.

I moved around a lot as a teenager and searching for new galleries and museums in each new place became my way to penetrate each city and its culture.

I start at the Carlos/Ishikawa gallery in east London. A short stroll from there is the Union Pacific gallery: a great new space with a wonderful programme.

I love to wander the streets around the area, searching for African fabrics in tiny boutiques.

Then I jump in a taxi to veteran gallerist and local talent discoverer, Jonathan Viner.

Next door is Kate MacGarry’s gallery, I recently saw a great Max Lamb show there. For lunch and people-watching, I settle into a booth at Hoi Polloi at the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch. Next, I go to Cambridge Heath Road to visit Campoli Presti and Laura Bartlett. Ten minutes’ walk from there I end up with a drink in hand at The Approach, a gallery above a beautiful old pub.

What is the first thing you remember seeing as a child that blew you away?

A Giorgio Morandi still life. I was with my father in a small Swiss museum. I can’t have been more than 10 years old. The subtlety of the muted colours and the quietness of the composition left me speechless.

How have you trained your eyes over your career?

When looking at a new work of art, your perception of it is many threads coming together: from all you have seen before, your knowledge of the art world, and also personal taste – there is always a gut feeling when looking at art.

What qualities do you look for in beautiful things?

I like it when there is a meeting of the conceptual idea with the physical representation of it. I look also at the whole body of work for an artist, hoping for coherence, but not conformity.

How do you keep yourself visually stimulated?

I am a self-proclaimed gallery addict. I see everything I can, from a blockbuster show at the Tate, to a tiny show above a pub or in an underground car park. There are new spaces popping up every day, all well documented on my Instagram.

Do you think London is the ultimate city for art lovers?

In Europe, yes. I’ve lived here for three years. London has a sweet tooth for eccentricity and freedom, and you can feel this nowhere more than in the art world.

42 / 43

@sibylle.rochat paddle8.com

Taste, New York

Soul-sisters Whitney and Danielle have turned the fastpaced eat-outers of Manhattan into healthy eat-iners since they launched Sakara Life in 2012.

Each of their organic meals, designed to help you feel good in your body, is delivered straight to your door.

Whitney Tingle and Danielle DuBoise Founders of organic meal delivery service Sakara Life.

How important is taste to your life?

Taste is a huge component to being able to take pleasure from food, and eating for joy is something that we believe in wholeheartedly.

Was good, healthy food important to you growing up?

Absolutely. I was always the kid that no-one wanted to trade

WT:

lunch with. My peanut butter sandwiches were made on bread that had twigs and berries sticking out of them.

What is your first memory of taste?

DT: I remember the taste of steamed broccoli and carrots with butter as a young child. As an adult it seems a really boring dish, but as a kid the flavours were so strong and impactful.

44 / 45

How did you both come to realise that you wanted to set up a business centred around empowering people through food?

I was working in finance, was stressed out and suffered from cystic acne. I tried everything and nothing worked so I went back to what I’d learnt from my mum while growing up. Back to food as medicine and the key to health and glowing skin.

WT:

DT: For me, food had become an enemy. No matter what I ate I never felt good after I ate it.

I started to create nutritious, plant-based meals that turned this around for me. Then I thought that there must be others out there who felt the same.

So we put Sakara Life out there and had a huge response.

DT: I think the more you taste the more you learn what you like. But then there are lots of outside factors involved like habitat and how hungry you are that can change that.

What in your opinion makes something taste great?

WT:

If it’s really fresh and made with love it will taste great, guaranteed.

How long have you both lived in New York?

What effect does living in New York have on your sense of taste?

We’ve become perfectionists because we’ve had the best of the best for so long.

DT: It’s also broadened our sense of taste. You get to eat your way around the world every day.

WT:

Map out your perfect tasting day in the city.

Is taste implicit or is it something that is learnt?

We’d start with a wander to Union Square Market (on Saturday mornings). This is the best place to get a taste for what’s in season.

I’ve been here for seven years and Danielle for nine years. We’re both originally from Arizona.

Guestbook — the salon

For brunch, the Monterey Eggs at Butcher’s Daughter are taste heaven. Followed by a vegan ice cream at byCHLOE. My tour would continue into Chinatown.

There’s such an energy there and you’re hit by the interesting smells from all sides. For dinner we’d go to either Dimes, a great low-key spot with amazing flavours, or Kiki’s for a great home-cooked meal. sakaralife.com Read Whitney and Danielle’s #LiveWellTravelWell tips on the onefinestay blog.

46 / 47

Scent, Paris

Nicolas Cloutier moved to Paris from Quebec in 2004 and has since made it his mission to diagnose the preferences of Paris’ perfume aficionados. The Nose boutique is home to a unique technology that paints your olfactory portrait based on your favourite fragrances and perfume history.

Nicolas Cloutier Perfumer, and co-founder of Nose.

What is your most powerful sensory memory?

Map out your perfect scented day in Paris.

That of my childhood at Chris­ tmas. With everyone’s coats on the bed and me going to sleep among them to smell the fragrances of everyone that I love.

Otherwise, the scents of my biggest love affairs!

I would go to Versailles and more importantly to the Osmothèque fragrance archives there, where you will discover notes and scents from the past that are no longer available, as the raw materials are banned. While there, I’d go to the Cour des Senteurs (‘Courtyard of Fragrances’) which is home to four Parisian institutions, all united by their sensory sensibilities: Guerlain, Paris’ oldest perfumer; Diptyque, a scented candlemaker; Lenôtre patisserie; and Maison Fabre, a glovemaker.

I would have lunch at Dame de Pic, the ultimate food and scent experience by the Michelinstarred chef, Anne-Sophie Pic. Then, I would pass by Nose to perform a perfume diagnosis.

I’d go to the Jardin du Lux­ embourg, where you have so many different species of flowers.

It gives an idea of what you might find if you were to visit the house and laboratory where master perfumer Edmond Roudnitska used to stay in Cabris.

I’d finish on the terrace of the Raphael Hotel, one of the best views in Paris with a beautiful garden that is very romantic.

Tell us about the inspiration behind the Nose store.

To help people find the perfect fragrance from a collection of 400 unique and exclusive scents. Most people don’t know what they like. For instance, most women believe they hate patchouli, while actually they wear it a lot! That’s why we developed the Nose perfume diagnosis. In seven questions, we are able to create an olfactory portrait for each client based on key families and preferred notes, from which five recommendations are made.

What are you working on next?

Our ambition is to travel with our concept and restore the prestige of perfume without just focusing on the price or a well-known personality.

Does your nose get tired testing scents all day?

The nose is actually like a muscle, which is trained over time.

It is important not to smell a perfume too fast as alcohol can dry out your nose. After 12 to 15 in a row, you are not usually able to smell new fragrances.

If you had to have one perfume for the rest of your life, what would it be?

L’Air de Panache, created

by Nose for the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel.

What scent do you associate with Paris?

So many. Personally, I associate jasmine with Paris, as I grow it outside the Nose store and on my balcony.

What effect has living in Paris had on your sense of smell?

The weather is much more consistent than in Canada, where when it is cold you are exposed to very few scents. So in Paris I enjoy the Sunday markets, terraces and rooftops.

Guestbook — the salon

nose.fr

Touch, New York

Dean and Juliana Di Simone are on a mission to get the people of New York on bicycles. Dean, who has founded multiple design agencies, and Juliana, a model, launched the Tokyobike store in Nolita from which to spread their message: that it is only when in the saddle that you can really get in touch with your city.

Dean and Juliana Di Simone Founders of the US arm of Tokyobike.

What is the most powerful way in which a bicycle gets you back in touch with your city?

It offers an entirely new pers­ pective on your environment.

You have this incredible flexibil­ ity and can quickly change your route and divert your plans as your ride evolves. It is also about discovering new parts of a neighbourhood quickly passed by in a car or inaccessible on the subway.

What was the inspiration behind bringing Tokyobike to New York?

Bicycles allow you to experience the city on your terms. Whether you want to do a four-hour trip up the Hudson Valley or meander through the West Village, what we loved about Tokyobike was how it captured every type of ride with a well-designed and beautiful bike.

What landmark in New York do you associate with being most in touch with the city?

The Manhattan Bridge – the bike path offers some of the best views of Manhattan. It also makes you realise how diverse lower Manhattan is – over the last third of the bridge you begin to smell the spices and foods from a variety of downtown neighbour­ hoods, including the heart of today’s Chinatown.

Map your perfect day spent in touch with New York.

It would start early with an egg sandwich at Court Street Grocers in Brooklyn. From there we’d ride up over the Manhattan Bridge.

After landing on the rock, we’d head north, cross west via Rivington Street and, depending on the time of day, queue up for a scoop or two of ice cream at Morgenstern’s.

Our trip would continue with a quick stop at the Tokyobike shop to make sure the tyres are pumped and

48 / 49

everything is in working order before carrying on down Prince Street into the heart of SoHo. We’d cut through the West Village along Bedford, Christo­ pher and Greenwich Streets aiming for the Meat­packing District, where we’d stop at Blue Bottle Coffee for flat whites or New Orleans iced coffee with roasted chicory.

Then we’d lock up our bikes and head up to The High Line for some people-watching while we enjoy our coffees.

One of these days, we will forgo the balance of the ride and spend the day at the new Whitney.

Once back in the saddle, we’d head up the Hudson River Greenway toward Madison Square Park, where we’d lock up our bicy­cles and go grocery shopping at Eataly.

We typically stock up on fresh agnolotti, a wheel of pecorino, a block of Beppino Occelli butter, and all the ingredients to work up a homemade tomato sauce and follow that with a bottle of Barolo from the wine shop next door.

We would then head down Fifth Avenue with stop-offs at Despaña SoHo, where anchovy-stuffed olives, sliced lomo pork loin, and young Manchego cheese are staples.

Dessert is taken care of in Dumbo at Patisserie Burrow.

The scenic route home would be along the new waterfront park, through Brooklyn Heights, and then south towards Carroll Gardens with one stop left – Caputo Bakery on Court Street, where the bread is always warm, the perfect way to finish off the shopping. tokyobikenyc.com

This autumn (7th September25th November 2015) onefinestay guests in New York can pick up a complimentary Tokyobike for the day from the store in Nolita.

Guestbook — the salon

Sound, London

Inspired by a visionary cello teacher at school, Tom Panton always knew his career would be within the music industry. After a decade working as a producer at independent record labels, he is currently working on the launch of Sonos Studio in London.

Tom Panton Head of Sonos Studio, London.

What is your first memory of getting hooked on sound?

Tell us about the new Sonos Studio in Shoreditch.

My parents seemed to have McCartney II on loop at home.

It’s still his masterwork in my opinion.

The thinking behind the public space is to promote the idea that listening to music doesn’t have to be a solitary or private activity.

Sonos Studio is about communal listening and the enjoyment that comes from sharing sound.

How important is it to you to make sure you are surrounded by the right sounds?

For me it’s not always about having music playing, it can be just as inspiring to be surrounded by musicians and artists talking and learning about sound.

What effect does living in London have on your sense of sound?

In London you have a sense that there is creativity all around you and that can’t help but rub off on you.

Is London the ultimate city for sound lovers?

I think so. Whether it’s the back­­ground hum of all the historic venues and music schools or the more natural rhythm that has sprung up in Hackney with studios and nightclubs.

Map out your perfect sonic journey through London.

It would start with a wander through Hyde Park where parakeets abound and are a unique sound of the city – there are many theories as to their origin, my favourite being it was Jimi Hendrix who released a breeding pair from his flat on Carnaby Street.

Then I’d put my head through the door at the Royal Albert Hall. There’s a natural hum there, even when nothing is playing. You can imagine the notes hanging in the air and the cumulative effect of all the music that has gone before. I’d then wander past the Royal College of Music and hear the sound coming out of the recital rooms.

Next up, I’d make my way into the West End, past the ICA

Guestbook — the salon

on The Mall – an iconic and hugely important music and art venue and the scene of many of London’s sonic moments such as Einstürzende Neubauten climaxing their 1984 show by attempting to drill through the floor into the tunnels beneath.

No sonic journey through London would be complete without Soho – always in fashion in its own way. The once numerous record stores may be closing but the boom in restaurants and the carefully selected playlists blaring from places like Bone Daddies and Spuntino have become the new soundtrack.

I’d probably end up at the Barbican – one of my favourite places to listen to live music.

There is a real sense of occasion in going to the Barbican and it ties music with architecture, art and culture seamlessly. sonos-studio.com/ldn

For contact details to all these places and more, see the Address Book, p110.

For more neighbourhood guides by locals see the onefinestay blog.

Inside track: designer Ilse Crawford on how interiors can change your life

Photography: Leslie Williamson

A figurehead for a human, emotional approach to design, Ilse Crawford’s work, across branding, interiors, furniture and product design, is driven by the individual. Here, she talks to friend and architecture writer Edwin Heathcote on why she believes design can be a frame for life.

52 / 53

Guestbook — the salon

EH: I guess you might have asked me to conduct this conversation as I’ve been writing – for what seems a long time – on meaning in architecture in design. It’s a little unfashionable – this idea that design is more than something superficially striking, that it can strike chords deep within us and affect us in ways we might not even be conscious of, yet which evoke quite primal associations. These make us feel comfortable – or perhaps more often, unsettled. As soon as you introduce narrative, history, iconography and so on, you pass outside the mainstream, as if there was something slightly suspicious in the idea. But your terminology is different than mine, and rather original. Rather than meaning, you talk about putting man at the centre of design. It sounds obvious – what else should design be for?

But perhaps you could explain what you mean?

IC: First of all we need to stop talking about ‘them’ and begin talking about ‘us’, instead. It’s become normal to think about man as a demographic. Very often when we begin a project, we are given a wodge of research – a pile of Venn diagrams and percentages, focus-group findings and measuring characteristics. I don’t doubt there can be value in quantifying the depth and breadth of any particular audience. But the problem is that if this is the only thing you have then you lose any sense of character in what you’re trying to create. It comes down to us as individuals.

All information is not equal.

there are things that make us sad and so on, and none of these things are easy to measure or quantify or put on an Excel sheet.

They get lost. Many of us are many things at different times of the day. How is it measured if you have one answer at two o’clock in the afternoon and another one at six? We need to start with normal, everyday situations and work out how you can expand on those rather than trying to invent artificial worlds to go with artificial statistics.

EH: In architecture it’s long been an accepted custom to place an abstract idea of man in the centre: Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, Francesco di Giorgio’s inscribing of man on a church plan or Le Corbusier’s Modulor and so on. But that has always been an abstract figure, an ideal. What you are talking about is creating space for specific individuals, about provision for people with known characteristics and quirks and fleshed-out figures, rather than abstract ideas.

IC: I find truth is better and definitely stranger than fiction, no question. It is far more interesting and I think you can learn more by studying one, two or three individuals, in all their eccentricities, and then building a world around them than by looking at an abstract idea of people. A case study of an individual is always much more revealing.

My belief is that we need to prioritise the human experience.

EH: What is interior design to you?

The important thing to remember is that design is a verb not a noun. It is about a process not an aesthetic.

IC:

In life there are leaders and there are followers, and there are things that make us happy and

54 / 55

Opposite, the bedroom, kitchen and living area of Ilse’s own apartment in Borough in London, where she lives with her husband, Oscar Peña.

Photography: Lisa Cohen

Guestbook — the salon

‘I think you can learn more by studying one, two or three individuals, in all their eccentricities, and then building a world around them than by looking at an abstract idea of people.’

Ilse Crawford

I would argue in the end that interior design is simply a tool to make the places that we live.

We have been through an era of the representational, and that was an approach that applies to pretty much anything you care to mention. I understand interior design as part of the same story as iconic architecture. Not all building needs to be iconic.

EH: This might sound like a stupid question but is there a difference between interior design and architecture and if so, what is it?

IC: The way they are perceived is fundamentally different. The architect builds and creates the form and that, it is thought, is the interior. But an interior designer would say that you should design the building outwards, using the experience of the human and the different life experiences as a starting point. The interior is a vessel for all the different aspects of your life. I’d argue that the interior designer should be employed on equal terms with the architect from the beginn­ ing; it’s not either/or, it’s a team.

I see the interior’s role as combining matter with what matters – and that’s a real challenge.

EH: Do you think there’s a problem with interior design being trivialised? Whether that might be in terms of an artificial division being established between architecture and design or in culture more generally.

with the meal; they need to be made into something.

IC: I think it falls down a crack in between architecture and culture.

Partly it’s because architecture is a clearly demarcated profession and it defined itself against the bourgeois nature of interior decoration. Architects captured the moral high ground and decided that furniture messes up their spaces. What I think they wanted to say is that people mess them up, but they couldn’t, and so they had to blame it on the chairs instead.

IC: It’s a little muddled by its categorisation – is interior design a hobby, an art or a profession? As an industry, it needs to clarify its processes, fee structures, deliverables and so on. Architecture will always attempt to take a more rarefied position, but if I was a client, I would always demand a team with both an architect and interior designer involved from the beginning. This combination can also engender a degree of creative friction, which is always productive. Our relationship with 6a Architects is a good example. Often we come from different places but the result is made better by our collaboration.

But if you examine the best architects, they often had their interior designers: Mies [van der Rohe] had Lilly Reich, Le Corbusier had Charlotte Perriand, there was Charles and Ray Eames and Alvar and Aino Aalto, and so this idea of a Modernist division is based on a misunderstanding.

The trivialisation is also based on a misconception that interior design is a kind of box-ticking exercise – a shopping list. It’s like confusing the ingredients

56 / 57

EH: Is it possible that the design industry, and particularly interior design, has been unintentionally complicit in that trivialisation?

EH: The Anglo-Saxon construction process is famously confrontational, which also plays a big role in the downgrading of design.

IC: The building system today is very sequential. Very important decisions, which determine

the use of the building, are made long before the designer arrives.

Budgets are negotiated and spent – often overspent – before the designer has any say in the matter. Too often you find yourself with very little room, time or money to shape the human experience of the building. The existential matters are rarely discussed at those early stages – the things that really count like well-being, happiness, beauty, comfort, atmosphere.

EH: Beauty? Comfort? Atmosphere? They’re not words you’d hear architects utter. They’re almost taboo in that world.

Yes, yet they’re the things that touch 99 percent of the population. We’re all moved by beauty.

We tend to think that Modernism took the moral high ground by being functional and adopting a rational masculine view. That tradition trickled down to us as a two-dimensional – and not coincidentally – commercialised system. Yet this is a misunderstanding, too. Alvar Aalto was obsessed with beauty. It can be about natural materials and the human form, but because those aspects of Modernism disappeared, you end up with the situation where the modern versions of Aalto’s chairs are wrapped up in plastic, sanitised for a world of codes, guarantees and standards that put fire safety before human comfort.

IC:

EH: That brings us to another word: ‘de-risking’. It’s about as

Guestbook — the salon

unattractive sounding as what it represents, and I know it’s something you kick against.

IC: It’s a word that crops up increasingly. The bigger the company the less risks they take. It’s why the most interesting projects are nearly always led by individuals or privately owned companies or mavericks willing to stand up to a board.

EH: Another word is ‘accommodation’.

IC: That’s a super-interesting word. As part of a brief, we’ll

Below, Studioilse part restored and part reconfigured Dinder House, a Regency-era property in Somerset, to turn it into a family home.

Photography: Magnus Marding

always be asked to ‘accommodate’ a certain number of people.

But it’s unusual that any effort is actually put into accommodating them, by which I mean, thinking about the kind of people that might inhabit those spaces or what their needs may be.

EH: You talk about design as a ‘frame for life’. A lot of inter­ior design is quite finished; it presents a ‘solution’ to an interior.

But what you do and what you are interested in seem to be more about creating a framework for people to live in which can accommodate change and adaptation? There is clearly a problem at the moment with the idea of uni­versal iconism, with a globalised, commercialised, banalised version of spectacular design.

IC: Yes, there is problem with the iconic building, which is supposed to be the solution to all the woes of any small town anywhere in the world. In most cases the money should be spent on fundamentals that touch the lives of many: social housing, education, transport. The idea of a building as something aloof you aspire to, as something that will make your life different, better, happier is not true. We need to stop putting everything on a pedestal and viewing it as aspirational or the answer to all our problems.

The everyday facts and rituals of our lives might be incredibly mundane but they are actually gratifying and completely fascinating. Different people have different ways of being but they all have a place.

Guestbook — the salon

Everyone has a way of sitting down or lounging, a way of being relaxed and of interacting with others. There is nothing spectacular about these actions and yet building space around them, upgrading the ordinary, is what improves quality of life, more than anything iconic or spectacular.

•

An extract from Ilse Crawford’s latest book, A Frame For Life, published by Rizzoli. studioilse.com Opposite and above, Duddell’s, a destinations for the city’s art crowd, on Hollywood Road in Hong Kong. The challenge here was to create a space that could work as a gallery as well as a place one could settle into for a long conversation and an evening drink.

Photography: Magnus Marding

44 / 45

East Rustic Road, Santa Monica, Los Angeles

Call to the wild There’s more to Santa Monica than beaches and boulevards. For the Kydd family, it’s all about living on the edge… of the city that is. They’ve found the perfect spot in the urban oasis that is Rustic Canyon, a bohemian enclave where their light-filled contemporary home is steps away from the county’s largest nature reserve and its miles of hiking trails.

Words: Sam Sweet Photography: Chantal Anderson

Guestbook — the salon

On a forested street in western Los Angeles, a sunlit photography studio leads onto a deck where the branches of a centenary oak curl over the railings, embracing the polished concrete corners of Steven Kydd and Sal Taylor Kydd’s house. When they made Rustic Canyon part of their life, they decided to build something the canyon could embrace. ‘We wanted it to feel like it had always been here,’ says Sal. When their children, Oliver and Lola, were born, Steven and Sal were living in a remodelled house in Venice. On hot summer days, when the rest of Los Angeles descended on the beaches, the Kydds escaped to Rustic Canyon Park. The park is just a few minutes from the coast, but as soon as a car turns north onto East Rustic Road, vegetation enfolds the road, the temperature

dips, and the city falls away.

‘We knew if we ever built our own house,’ says Sal, ‘we wanted it to be in Rustic Canyon.’

When a dilapidated bungalow on East Rustic Road went on the market, Sal saw past the building to the light-filled potential of the lot. ‘Parts of the canyon can be dark,’ she said, ‘but at this turn in the road it opens up.’ The anchor of their new home would be a complete wall of windows, opening the central living space to the yard.

Those windows now serve as a canvas for the sun as it arcs across the entire room over the course of each day.

Working with Pasadenabased architect Greg Crawford, the couple drew inspiration from Case Study Houses embedded throughout the canyon, some of them visible only from secret

62 / 63

stairways leftover from when the area was a secluded commune.

Among them are Modernist masterpieces by Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and Craig Ellwood; the residence of architect Ray Kappe; and, just over the hill, the Eameses’ house.

Crawford’s design mirrors a similar interplay between modern domesticity and the deciduous paradise outside.

Sal came of age in Australia by way of England, while Steven grew up in Maine. Their different backgrounds and accumulated experiences determine the details of their house together. A simple, subtly hidden pantry echoes the English kitchens of Sal’s youth, while a polished brass-plated hearth transplants a Mainer’s fireplace to the West Coast.

At the top of the stairs, a glass portal in the ceiling frames

Guestbook — In Conversation

64 / 65

Guestbook — the salon

8/9

Guestbook — In Conversation

‘While the house was being built I went to LACMA to see an exhibition of James Turrell. Afterwards I said, “We have to figure out a way to have an oculus!”’

the trees overhead and floods the hallway with natural light.

‘While the house was being built, I went to LACMA to see an exhibition by James Turrell,’ says Sal, referring to the artist who created his first light and space installations in an abandoned building in nearby Santa Monica.

‘Afterwards, I called Greg and said, “We have to figure out a way to have an oculus!”’

As it happened, Crawford had worked with Turrell before.

Steven and Sal invested extra footage in the spaces that give them the most satisfaction.

The master bedroom is modest so that the bathroom can be spacious. Well-hidden closets allow them to keep the living space uncluttered, while the TV and entertainment consoles are consolidated in a room upstairs.

The dinner parties they used to host at their house in Venice attracted local artists, designers and chefs, inspiring Steven to start Tastemade, an

online video network that enables people from all over the world to document and share their experiences of food. At East Rustic Road, the kitchen and dining room occupy the biggest space in the house, while the backyard hosts a pizza oven.

‘The other house we own is this little centre-chimney Cape cottage from the 1850s with chickens outside,’ says Steven of their place on Deer Isle, a ruggedly beautiful island not far from where he grew up. As a boy, his family grew vegetables and trapped lobsters nearby.

Spending summers in Maine gives Oliver and Lola familiarity with the rhythms of an older village, while Sal finishes her photography course at Maine Media College. Geographically and thematically, it’s a world away from Los Angeles, but on mornings when a salt-laden Pacific fog settles over East Rustic Road, opposing coasts seem a little less distant.

68 / 69

A few houses north of where the Kydds live, the pavement ends and the wilderness of Rustic State Park begins. Tonight, the Kydds might walk downhill to the Golden Bull, a back-in-time restaurant that serves good martinis, and then to the Hungry Cat for Kumamoto oysters and sea urchin caught fresh each day in Santa Barbara.

But for now, it’s still afternoon, and Steven has to return to the Tastemade studios.

As he walks to his old Jeep Wagoneer, Ringo, the family’s golden retriever, scurries to the spring-fed stream that bisects the street outside their door. On its way down Rustic Road, a passing car brakes for the pup. Steven gives the driver an appreciative wave and says: ‘Where else in Los Angeles does someone stop to ask if it’s okay if the dog is sniffing in the creek?’

•

Browse more LA homes at onefinestay.com/los-angeles

Guestbook — the salon

The Wireless HiFi System

Sonos Your Home

66 / 67

Whether it’s a cup of Earl Grey in bed or a preferred brand of face wash, morning routines tend to be the most likely to stay intact, even when you’re on the move. Here, writer Catherine Blyth celebrates these personal rituals, while photographer Rita Braz gives them a surreal twist.

The moment I wake up…

Words: Catherine Blyth Photography: Rita Braz, Styling: Rebecca Martin

Guestbook — the salon

‘Any process that helps us prepare ourselves to enter the public space is apt to acquire a superstitious dimension.’

‘Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast,’ said Oscar Wilde.

Presumably brilliant people were far too busy polishing epigrams to fritter their energy on morning table talk. That, or they were all up too late the evening before.

In a similar spirit, Winston Churchill claimed he ate breakfast with his wife only twice or thrice in 40 years. ‘But it was so disagreeable we had to stop.’

My mornings also used to be about getting up, ready and out. Nowadays an everlengthening sequence of actions must occur before I feel ready to exit my private universe.

With the arrival of two toddlers, whose sole aim is to thwart my every move, these morning necessities mean that their father is compelled to step in. In a very real sense, the small ceremonies of cleansing, toning, combing

and blow-drying have become guarantors of me time, and these tranquil moments are just as vital for reassembling this person called me as all those seductive dollops of hair mousse and moisturiser put together.

I suffer from a modern malady: routine creep. It is tempting to blame this affliction on cosmetics brands, but my predilections derive from psychological kinks whose origins are far more ancient than Lauder’s marketing departments.

After all, most religions’ roots lie in life-preserving rites of purification. Yes, cleanliness really is next to godliness.

Perhaps this mystical association can explain why any process that helps us prepare ourselves to enter the public space is apt to acquire a superstitious dimension.

72 / 73

Certainly, small ceremonies possess a talismanic quality that encourages us to cling to them as if to a protective shield.

Beautification is but one of a host of morning rites available, and your preferred options reveal a lot about your character and culture. For example, food writer Nigel Slater relies on espresso, confiding that ‘there would be no Nigel without my morning heart-starter’.

Whereas to the true Venetian, breakfast (coffee and a bite of sweet pastry) is incomplete unless that espresso is a caffè corretto – that is, corrected with a dose of grappa, to chase away the ghost of the night before.

As 19th-century abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher observed, ‘The first hour is the rudder of the day.’ Neglect it at your peril.

Because compelling recent

Guestbook — the salon

74 / 75

research finds that our willpower is finite, strongest when we wake, weakening as the hours go by.

Therefore whatever we tackle early is usually more accomplished than anything later on.

Luckily the best way to conserve our concentration is to cultivate prudent morning routines. For instance, what fires up choreographer Twyla Tharp is dressing in Lycra then hailing a cab to the gym. Thanks to this

trigger, she never wastes time on quarrels with herself about whether she feels like going.

It is a measure of how sacred these routines are to us that we will go to such lengths to maintain them. I find making luggage space for my retinue of potions a puzzle, but would not countenance abandoning them.

Equally I’ve known people carry their own brand of muesli on treks across the Himalayas and

Guestbook — the salon

seen countless tourists lost and out of breath in Hyde Park at 7am, not realising the running route was a bit longer than the one they had estimated. Such habits represent the portable habitat that makes us who we are.

So be kind to your morning rituals. They are stealth enforcers of resolve. Let them work for you. And respect those who, like Wilde and Churchill, prefer their waking hour to pass in silence.

•

Montague Place, Holborn London

In the shadow of the museum Located behind one of the world’s great cultural institutions – The British Museum – is Montague Place.

It’s a personal treasure house, where every inch is piled high with stories, each just as captivating as the tales from its imposing neighbour.

Words: Jonathan Bell Photography: Atlanta Rascher

46 / 47

‘It’s like a little sanctuary,’ says the owner of this remarkable central London bolthole, before adding, for those unfamiliar with the area, that ‘it’s just a couple of blocks to Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly’. Even more pertinent, perhaps, is its neighbour – The British Museum. With uncommonly high ceilings for a basement and plenty of artificial light to illuminate the various cabinets and shelves scattered around the space, Montague Place is a true private museum located in the heart of the city.

Sitting in the secluded terrace garden, the owners (pictured above), an American IT director and an English research scientist, tell the story of their home.

The apartment belonged to her late father, a perpetual traveller, aesthete, accumulator and autodidact, who shared his

passion for collecting with his three children. From the 1950s onwards, the Californian businessman was based in Europe, living in Paris, The Hague and Geneva and making frequent forays to Asia and the Middle East.

London, however, was where he wanted to retire to, and a chance discovery in a Bloomsbury estate agent led him to this flat in the mid-1990s. Over the years, he transformed Montague Place into a personal treasure house, in the literal shadow of one of the world’s greatest museums of cultural riches.

Every trip was an excuse to collect, often strongly influenced by visits to dusty local museums or galleries, after which he would seek out dealers, markets and craftspeople in order to buy paintings, porcelain, glass, tapestries and more. As a result, the

Guestbook — the salon

apartment hosts a lifetime of objects, with stories behind every one. The current owners are happy custodians of a place that’s much used by friends and family (a fine site for family Christmas celebrations), loved for its location as well as the treasures within.

The apartment is reached via a discreet staircase descending from the street. It wasn’t always so elegant. ‘It was very 1980s,’ recalls the owner, referring to when her father acquired it, ‘with airport carpets, red and white Formica, fake fireplaces, even a billiards table in the kitchen.’ Her father began a long process of reconstruction, alteration and restoration. ‘My dad had a knack of visualising things – he did all the plans,’ she explains as she walks us round the rooms. Walls and doorways

80 / 81

Guestbook — the salon

‘The apartment hosts a lifetime of objects, with stories behind every one.’

were moved to reinforce the kitchen’s role at the centre of the house, with a large reception room opening off to one side, and a huge stainless steel cooker taking pride of place in the reclaimed chimney space, surrounded by Portuguese tiles.

The ingenious folding kitchen table opens out to seat eight, with the brass chandelier above it – a family heirloom – mounted on rails to slide above the expanding surface.

Every square inch of floor is covered with a dazzling array of antique Turkish rugs – bought in Turkey, of course – while the focal point of the living room is a landscape by the American artist Daniel Lang, who was a close friend of the family. A new gas fireplace sits beneath an original carved Georgian fireplace, found by the owner’s father in a London salvage yard, taken over to Holland and carefully stripped back to bare wood over many months. Walls are hung with richly textured yellow and green silk, bought in Southall

and hung by father and daughter.

‘It was actually quite easy to do,’ she recalls. ‘He was quite handy and did a fair amount of the work himself.’ This included demonstrating the special brushed paint finishes on the woodwork, which took over six months for a painter to complete. The wood is enhanced by floral murals set into panels, ceilings and across the wall of the spare room, all lovingly painted by another family friend, Dickie Lowe, a muralist best known for his work in Harvey Nichols and Harrods.

One’s eye flits from object to object – a Buddha’s head, an 18th-century grandfather clock, a collection of Dutch landscapes, a door of false books which hides a utility room tucked behind it.

Even the copious library has a tale to tell. ‘My father designed the place with all of the books in mind,’ explains the owner.

‘Many were given by a professor, Ney MacMinn, of Northwestern University in Illinois. He retired to a houseboat in Paris and left his books to my father.’

82 / 83

The master bedroom contains a specially lengthened four-poster, set beneath an intricately woven cloth from Uzbekistan. A wall of printed vignettes float on a sea of gold leaf, behind which is the master bathroom, with its South African hardwood toilet seats (‘My father just knew they’d be useful’) and a magnificent Indian textile mounted above the bath.

From the street, these riches are almost entirely concealed. Even the garden terrace is tucked away between the elegantly bowed brick of the rear façades of Bedford Square and Rogers Stirk Harbour’s rigorous stone-clad conservation wing for The British Museum. Perhaps such a quintessentially English space could only have been created by an outsider’s viewpoint, as well as an acquisitive eye.

One man’s vision has shaped a home that will intrigue as well as inspire.

•

Browse more London homes at onefinestay.com/london

Guestbook — the salon

Love food, will travel We all have our culinary favourites, those comforting dishes that just say ‘home’ wherever we are in the world. Four globetrotting chefs share the trusted recipes they cooked up on recent trips, and tell us why they hit the spot.

Photography: Edward Park Food styling: Oliver Rowe

85

Fried eggs with anchovies and harissa Oliver Rowe was the star of BBC2’s The Urban Chef before opening his own restaurant, Konstam in King’s Cross. His book on seasonal food, published by Faber & Faber, is out in spring 2016. oliver-rowe.co.uk ‘This is a nourishing, savoury start to the day – easy to make wherever you are. The flavours are all very North African but I was inspired to make it by the great breakfast culture I found in LA.’ Oliver Rowe

Serves 2 4 slices of good, crusty sourdough bread 4 eggs butter, for spreading 8 anchovy fillets a good squeeze of harissa – Rowe likes Le Phare du Cap Bon freshly ground black pepper Cooking time: 5 minutes Toast the bread and fry the eggs the way you like them. Butter the toast, put the eggs on top and arrange a couple of anchovies over each one. Serve with the harissa.

Kale salad with yogurt and dill vinaigrette

Chef and author Seamus Mullen runs three acclaimed restaurants in New York, and has recently been over in the UK opening Sea Containers at the Mondrian London. In 2007 he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which forced him to rethink his relationship with food and led to his first cookbook, Hero Food, in 2012. Through food, exercise and lifestyle changes Mullen was able to turn his health around. seamusmullen.com

Serves 6 as a starter, 4 as a main 1 bunch cavolo nero, dinosaur kale or Tuscan kale 30g pecan nuts, toasted in brown butter, tossed in sugar, cayenne, ground coriander and sea salt 1 apple, thinly sliced 1 small serrano chilli pepper, sliced as thinly as possible 1/2 avocado, cut into pieces fresh coriander, basil, dill and mint, to garnish For the yogurt and dill vinaigrette:

‘It’s when I’m travelling and away from my routine that I’m most likely to start snacking and fall into unhealthy habits. When on the move I like to to prepare this kale salad to make sure I keep eating well, wherever I am.’

Seamus Mullen

100ml full fat yogurt or kefir 1 clove garlic, grated 6 tablespoons fresh dill zest and juice of 1 lemon 1 tablespoon champagne vinegar 1 teaspoon honey 250ml extra virgin olive oil salt freshly ground pepper Preparation time: 15 minutes With a sharp knife, cut the kale into a paper-thin chiffonade.

Combine all ingredients, season and plate in a small bowl.

To make the vinaigrette, combine all the ingredients except the oil, whisk together, then drizzle in the oil until emulsified. Pour the dressing over the kale salad, and toss. Garnish with the fresh herbs and fresh cracked pepper.

Guestbook — the salon

Baked reblochon with roasted grapes

Photographer and chef Karen Mordechai started Sunday Suppers – a culinary and design community based around simplicity and the love of food – from her kitchen in Brooklyn six years ago. Her book, Sunday Suppers Recipes + Gatherings, was voted by The New York Times as top cookbook of 2014. sunday-suppers.com ‘This recipe is a go-to in all our travels, and on our recent trip to Paris it was ideal. It’s easy to cook, perfect for a crowd and the cheese and fruit can be easily substituted depending on local fare and what’s available. Try something new at your local cheesemonger, and for fruits just get creative: berries and stone fruits like cherries would work well.’

Karen Mordechai Read about Karen’s onefinestay in Paris, in Events p103 and on our blog.

Serves 4 2 bunches of purple or black grapes, on the vine 60ml extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons sugar 10 sprigs fresh thyme sea salt to taste 450g reblochon assorted herbs such as fresh bay leaves and thyme crusty bread Cooking time: 30 minutes Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, drizzle grapes generously with olive oil and the sugar.

Toss well to coat grapes evenly.

Spread grapes across baking sheets, making sure not to crowd them. Distribute sprigs of thyme evenly amongst the grapes.

Sprinkle lightly with sea salt before placing them in the oven to roast for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

On another baking sheet lined with parchment paper, place the wheel of reblochon. Bake in the same oven, pre-heated to 200°C, for 10 minutes until starting to ooze.

Remove from the oven and move the cheese carefully to your preferred platter. Garnish with fresh bay leaves and thyme. Serve together with roasted grapes and your favourite crusty bread.

88 / 89

89

Guestbook — the salon

Chocolate chip cookies

The Mast Brothers (Rick and Michael) are obsessive about chocolate. Their beautifully packaged, signature chocolate bars can be found in markets and speciality shops around the globe, with flagship stores in Brooklyn and London. Their book, Mast Brothers Chocolate: A Family Cookbook, was publ­ ished in 2013. mastbrothers.com

‘The perfect recipe when I am away is this decadent chocolate overdose that we call a chocolate chip cookie. When cookies are baking in the oven, I am always home.’

Rick Mast

91

Makes 9

Cooking time: 20 minutes

225g unsalted butter (at room temperature) 170g white sugar 170g dark brown sugar 1 vanilla bean 2 eggs 280g all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 425g sea salt chocolate, chopped sea salt

Cream the softened butter with the white and brown sugars until fluffy.

Add in a scraped vanilla bean. Add the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated. Add and combine the dry ingredients, then add the chopped sea salt chocolate. Form into a 10cm log, cover with plastic and cool overnight.

Guestbook — the salon

Preheat oven to 160°C. Cut 2.5cm discs of cookie dough weighing 140g each. Place the discs on a tray lined with parchment paper, leaving plenty of space between them.

Lightly sprinkle the cookies with sea salt before baking for 16 minutes, rotating halfway. Allow to cool to room temperature before removing from the parchment paper.

To our mind, nothing sums up the beauty of our individually curated lives better than Instagram. In praise of this revolutionary platform, we picked some of the most captivating images to have appeared in our favourite feeds in recent months. And, at the risk of being contrary, we can’t think of a better way to cherish these photographs than to print them and hang them on our Guestbook walls, preserved for posterity.

Picture perfect

92 / 93

Guestbook — the salon

Photography: Jean Jullien

@macenzo

A founding member of SeeMyCity, Amsterdam-based Dirk Bakker is fascinated by the connection between architecture and graphic design.

320k followers

94 / 95

‘I love to capture the lines of the city.’

@spacioverde

Venezuelan photographer Guillermo Becerra’s feed documents his journey through London over the past three years.

12k followers

Guestbook — the salon

‘I break down my surroundings into geometrical shapes and play with perspectives, people and colours.’

@mrwilley

Matt Willey is the art director of The New York Times Magazine and co-founder of Port magazine and Avaunt magazine.

3k followers

96 / 97

An intimate feed of everyday life becomes breathtaking thanks to Willey’s extraordinary eye for composition and light.

@jean_jullien

French artist Jean Jullien’s charming take on modern life have made his work instantly recognisable. His body of work stretches across illustration, graphic design, photography, film, installation and clothing.

172k followers

Guestbook — the salon

‘I try to observe and play with our obsessions and habits.’

@hx1125

Xiao Han’s unique imagination and prowess at capturing people and architecture belies the fact that photography is simply a hobby for her. She is a political science teacher in Shanghai.

32.7k followers

98 / 99

‘In this community, you can always find someone to inspire you. And, since you share the same hobby, it’s easy to become friends in real life.’

@isabelitavirtual

Originally from Barcelona, New York-based creative director Isabella Martínez adds a mysterious and dazzling twist to each of her images.

742k followers

Guestbook — the salon

‘I had never thought of myself as a photographer but that changed when I became @isabelitavirtual.

After using the platform for a year I was selected by Vogue Italia as one of the 25 talents of PhotoVogue.’

backyard the

Print by Atelier Bingo

Photography: Stuart Beesley

events Hearts and crafts, London What makes a house a home?

We’ve been asking ourselves that question since launching five years ago and the answer is never the same. Every home has a different combination of people who share it, memories created in it and the personal items on display. To explore the various

interpretations of ‘home’ and to explore the notion that craft can bring energy, character and meaning to a space, we teamed up with London gallery The New Craftsmen to present ‘The Thoughtful Home’, a series of six salon suppers in its inspirational Mayfair space (see our profile of

102 / 103

the gallery founders on page 18).

The first event (pictured above) introduced fabric dyer Katherine May and calligrapher Rosalind Wyatt, two makers who focus on themes of narrative and process in their work.

Photography: Karen Mordechai

An American in Paris An Instagram post of a coffee and croissant, stateside, with the tag ‘practising for Paris’. That’s how Brooklyn-based photographer and chef Karen Mordechai began her journey to the City of Light. The founder of the Sunday Suppers blog was on a culinary mission, and she chose a onefinestay home

in Paris as her base, knowing one of the joys of being in a new city is having your own kitchen from which to cook with local ingredi­ ents and entertain friends (see our Loves food, will travel story on page 84 for more).

During her week-long stay at Rue Pétrarque II, Mordechai

Guestbook — the backyard

enjoyed the local delicacies at Carette, one of the city’s prettiest patisseries, and Frenchie To Go, a café cooking up street food with homemade dedication. But she also entertained at home, cooking with ingredients from the local market for the city’s top socialmedia influencers.

A family affair, London behind their mothers’ backs to chase one another around the vast garden. We even saw some healthy competition in a friendly game of tug of war.

Fussy eaters were no match for The Pickled Fork, which prepared a delicious meal and three scrumptious desserts:

Photography: Stuart Beesley

We had expected it to be nothing short of frenetic, but as it turned out our kids event was positively tranquil. We’d invited our London friends and their children to our impressive family-friendly home, Macaulay Road in Clapham, and it didn’t take long before the little gang hit it off, coming out from

Guestbook — the backyard

fruit sorbets, strawberry and elderflower jellies, and frozen blueberry and honey yogurt lollipops. For the entertainment, we called on West London toy shop RS Currie & Co to wave its magic wand and conjure up giant fluffy giraffes, oversized bubbles and a village of tepees.

Photography: Claire Cottrell

California dreamy, Los Angeles It’s not just us noticing it: LA is in the midst of a major moment.

From the buzz around the art and food scenes in Downtown to the thriving fashion, design and architecture industries in Venice and West LA, the city is exploding with creativity.

To celebrate two fine years’ exploring the diverse artistic communities in this city (we launched here in September 2013), we recently hosted three of our favourite brands for a weekend at the spectacular onefinestay home McKinley Avenue.

106 / 107

First to visit was Berlin-based creative agency and publisher Freunde von Freunden who hosted their ‘Friends’ dinner over food served up by LA chef du jour Jessica Koslow, founder of Sqirl (see our report on page 24).

On Saturday we welcomed the

Photographers: Caitlin Mitchell, Benjamin Heath

healthy food service Sakara Life and a guest list of local entrepreneurs in entertainment, fashion and beauty. Founders Whitney Tingle and Danielle DuBoise (top right), already a hit among the glitterati of New York (see our Sense and

the city: Taste guide, page 44), curated a wellbeing bonanza with poolside yoga, delicious food and DJ Jasmine Solano on the decks (top left).

The following day we extended a warm West Coast welcome to Jarry, a new social

Guestbook — the backyard

community and magazine bringing together ‘men + food + men’, launching this autumn. Guests from LA’s food scene (above left) came to celebrate the intersection of food culture and contemporary gay domesticity with an afternoon of home cooking.

A glowing report, Los Angeles the Hollywood Hills, LA’s bold and beautiful celebrated the launch of Stop The Water While Using Me! – a range of skincare products that reminds people to conserve water and supports strategies to supply clean drinking

water throughout the world. It’s a cause that resonates with LA chef Jessica Koslow, who put together a selection of water-conscious snacks for the evening including carrot socca pancakes and almond milk panna cotta.

Photography: Sasha Young

Guests may have been encouraged to Stop The Water at our event with beauty brand How You Glow, but conversation was in full flow.

Set against the backdrop of the breathtaking Buff and Hensmandesigned onefinestay home in

108 / 109

Photography: Natalie Martinez

High fives, London Born of four proud fathers, Greg Marsh, Demetrios Zoppos, Evan Frank and Tim Davey, onefinestay welcomed its first guests in London exactly five years ago. Today we have over 2,000 homes across London, New York, Paris and Los Angeles – six times more rooms than The Ritz, The Plaza, Hotel George V and Hotel Bel-Air combined.

To celebrate, we treated our

London homeowners to a drink at our HQ in Clerkenwell. Here we celebrated past occasions, including launching Sherlock, the keyless entry system for unlocking doors with a mobile phone, unveiling a new brand identity and marque, and winning a D&AD Pencil for Guestbook.

We also took the opportunity to welcome five senior additions to our team: Dan Atkinson to lead our

Guestbook — the backyard

People team, Petros Demetriades as Chief Technology Officer, Nick Ruotolo as CCO, Tom Singer as CFO and Scott Verney as General Manager, London. And, announced a further financing round, which will be put to work to support our continued international expansion.

Watch this space.

address book

London Eat & Drink Bone Daddies 31 Peter Street Soho, W1F 0AR +44 20 7287 8581 bonedaddies.com Hoi Polloi, at the Ace Hotel 100 Shoreditch High Street Shoreditch, E1 6JQ +44 20 8880 6100 hoi-polloi.co.uk Spuntino 61 Rupert Street Soho, W1D 7PW spuntino.co.uk The Approach Tavern 47 Approach Road Bethnal Green, E2 9LY +44 20 8983 3878 theapproach.co.uk Shop The New Craftsmen 34 North Row Mayfair, W1K 6DG +44 20 7148 3190 thenewcraftsmen.com Entertainment Barbican Centre Silk Street Clerkenwell, EC2Y 8DS +44 20 7638 4141 barbican.org.uk Campoli Presti 223 Cambridge Heath Road Bethnal Green, E2 0EL +44 20 7739 4632 campolipresti.com Carlos/Ishikawa gallery Unit 4, 88 Mile End Road Mile End, E1 4UN carlosishikawa.com

110 / 111

Institute Of Contemporary Arts The Mall Soho, SW1Y 5AH +44 20 7930 3647 ica.org.uk Jonathan Viner gallery 28 Old Nichol Street Shoreditch, E27HR +44 20 7729 4098 jonathanvinergallery.com Kate MacGarry’s gallery 27 Old Nichol Street Shoreditch, E2 7HR +44 20 7613 0515 katemacgarry.com Laura Bartlett gallery 4 Herald Street Bethnal Green, E2 6JT +44 20 3487 0507 laurabartlettgallery.com Union Pacific gallery 17 Goulston Street Whitechapel, E1 7TP +44 20 7247 6161 unionpacific.co.uk

Paris Eat & Drink La Dame de Pic 20 Rue du Louvre Louvre – Opéra, 75001 +33 1 42 60 40 40 anne-sophie-pic.com/content/la-dame-de-pic The terrace of the Raphael Hotel 17 Avenue Kléber Trocadéro, 75116 +33 1 53 64 32 00 leshotelsbaverez.com/fr/home/raphael Shop Nose 20 Rue Bachaumont Montmartre, 75002 +33 1 40 26 46 03 nose.fr

New York Eat & Drink Blue Bottle Coffee – The High Line 10th Ave and West 16th Street Meatpacking District, 10014 bluebottlecoffee.com

by CHLOE 185 Bleecker Street Soho, 10012 +1 212-290-8000 bychefchloe.com Dimes 49 Canal Street Chinatown, 1002 +1 212-925-1300 dimesnyc.com

Patisserie Burrow 68 Jay Street Dumbo, Brooklyn, 11201 ayakokurokawa.com Tokyobike 1 Prince Street Nolita, 10012 +1 212-925-8200 tokyobikenyc.com Union Square Farmers’ Market East 17th Street & Broadway Union Square, 10003 +1 212-788-7476

Los Angeles Eat & Drink

Ground Support 399 West Broadway Soho, 10012 +1 212-219-8722 groundsupportcafe.com Kiki’s 130 Division Street Chinatown, 10002 +1 646-882-7052 Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream 2 Rivington Street Soho, 10002 +1 212-209-7684 morgensternsnyc.com The Butcher’s Daughter 19 Kenmare Street Soho, 10012 +1 212-219-3434 thebutchersdaughter.com Shop Caputo Bakery 329 Court Street Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, 11231 +1 718-875-6871

Visit

Court Street Grocers 485 Court Street Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, 11231 +1 718-722-7229 courtstreetgrocers.com

Cour des Senteurs Rue de la Chancellerie Versailles, 78000 +33 1 39 51 17 21 parfumsetsenteurs.fr

Despaña SoHo 408 Broome Street Soho, 10013 +1 212-219-5050 despanabrandfoods.com

Jardin du Luxembourg 75006 +33 1 42 34 23 62

Eataly 200 Fifth Avenue Gramercy Park, 10010 +1 212-229-2560 eataly.com

Guestbook — the backyard

Golden Bull 170 W Channel Road Santa Monica, 90402 +1 310-230-0402 goldenbull.us The Hungry Cat 100 W Channel Road Santa Monica, 90402 +1 310-459-3337 thehungrycat.com Sqirl 720 N Virgil Avenue Silver Lake, 90029 +1 213-394-6526 sqirlla.com Shop Arturo’s Shoe Fixx 9643 Santa Monica Boulevard Beverly Hills, 90210 +1 310-278-9585 arturosshoefixx.com Anzen Hardware 309 E 1st Street Little Tokyo, 90012 +1 213-628-2068 Rip City Skates 2709 Santa Monica Boulevard Santa Monica, 90404 +1 310-828-0388 ripcity.net

For a further tens of thousands of individually curated recommendations from onefinestay homeowners across our four cities, go to onefinestay.com