Cover:
FEATHERS & SOULS
BY THAI MASTER WEAVER KACHAMA PEREZ
JIM THOMPSON FLAGSHIP, 9 SURAWONG ROAD
BANGKOK, THAILAND
Inside Front Cover:
FILIGREE PLASTERWORK
RIBEIRO DA CUNHA PALACE
LISBON, PORTUGAL
Inside Back Cover:
SACRISTY COVE
PARISH CHURCH OF SAN MICHELE ARCANGELO
CASTELLO DI RESCHIO
LISCIANO NICCONE, ITALY
Back Cover:
HEIRLOOM TAPESTRY
VALDEMARS SLOT
SINGE, DENMARK
Building a legacy isn’t a sprint. It’s an endurance test. Tended to over a lifetime. Nurtured through generations. Less tied to singular acts than cumulative deposits made day in and day out, year after year. Though its breadcrumbs can be detected in real-time, only the benefit of hindsight allows depth and longevity to truly be revealed. For the fifth volume of The Current , as we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we’re looking inward, reflecting on the pursuit of permanence and the nature in which it’s artfully sustained. We explore what it means to create things that last and ideas that endure—looking to a group of standard-bearers and ceiling-breakers, flamekeepers and pioneers who’ve made an outsized impact in the areas of thought, place, heritage, scene and inspired us on our path both directly and from afar... whether they’ve known it or not.
The Dawson boys, James (10) and Jack (15), at the family farm.
For proof, look no further than our own two boys. Neither of them were even born when Jen and I started this business two decades ago, but they have literally grown alongside Urban Electric, experiencing all of it with us, from flea market hunts in Paris to Saturday morning visits to the factory.
It’s hard to reach a milestone like this without thinking about the journey we’re on and the mark our steps will leave along the way. The passage of time certainly makes me think about what we’re building and what we’re leaving behind. Are we demonstrating to our boys the values we cherish most? Are we inspiring them to someday pursue their own passions and create legacies of their own?
Those questions aren’t unique to us. In fact, all of the reflection we’ve been doing this year has brought to mind not just the work we’re proud of having created but also the artists, makers and designers we’ve been fortunate enough to meet, work with, learn from or just admire from a distance.
In this edition, we traveled far and wide from Bangkok to Denmark and Oakland to Umbria to examine at closer range the resonance of some of these living legends, icons and iconoclasts, to uncover the secret to their staying power, a longevity born out of the clarity of their vision and sustained by the essential nature of their ideas.
Each of their stories is still being written, of course, and some are only mid-stream, but as we discovered, the passion that propels their work and the drive that guides it similarly comes with a healthy amount of self-assessment and introspection.
And because every celebration calls for a toast, along the way, we also took the opportunity of our twentieth anniversary to capture some of our favorite classic bars and clubby haunts, each an institution in their own right.
While it’s been our great honor to explore the motivations and origins of the legends in this volume, this is a forwardleaning reflection, not a sentimental one. After all, legacies aren’t nostalgic—but they are certainly personal. Jen and I can attest to that.
Dave Dawson September 2023
EVERY MILESTONE IS MADE UP OF COUNTLESS FRACTIONAL MOMENTS. THE FITS AND STARTS, REVELATIONS AND CELEBRATIONS, PEOPLE AND PLACES THAT TOGETHER HAVE SHAPED OUR SPIRIT AND DETERMINED OUR TRAJECTORY FOR THE PAST TWENTY YEARS. EACH WITH ITS OWN STORY TO TELL. AS WE LOOK BACK ON TWO DECADES OF URBAN ELECTRIC, FROM OUR ORIGINAL RAMSHACKLE WORKSHOP TO AN EXPANSIVE FACTORY CAMPUS, AND CELEBRATE THE SKILLED CRAFTSMEN AND COLLABORATORS THAT HAVE PASSED THROUGH ITS WALLS, THESE 20 ICONIC IMAGES CULLED FROM OUR ARCHIVE MAKE CLEAR THAT WHILE EVERYTHING FROM OUR FOOTPRINT TO OUR AMBITIONS MIGHT HAVE CHANGED OVER TIME, OUR RESOLVE REMAINS FIRMLY ROOTED.
THE LANGUAGE OF DESIGN IS UNIVERSAL, BUT ITS EXEMPLARS ARE HYPERLOCAL TO THEIR CORE. ICONIC DESTINATIONS BECOME TOUCHSTONES IN THE COLLECTIVE MENTAL MOOD BOARD, EXCHANGED THROUGH GENERATIONS LIKE TRADING CARDS BY THOSE IN THE KNOW. AUTHENTIC AT ALL COSTS. ORIGINAL FIRST AND FOREMOST. THESE BEACONS OF INSPIRATION RECALIBRATE THE EYE AS MUCH AS THEY RECHARGE THE SPIRIT.
A painting of Niels Juel’s decisive naval victory at Køge Bay.
Opposite: A portrait of Louise Albinus by Louise Fenne atop another more bucolic scenic landscape painting.
VALDEMARS SLOT has been in the same family for 350 years. Its current chatelaine, the 11th generation to occupy the 17th century Danish castle, takes her family heritage seriously and is determined to bring the property back to life, shepherding it, via the arts, into a future as spectacular as the past.
The formal entrance to the manor house.
Every Danish schoolchild learns about Niels Juel, a naval hero famous for routing the Swedes in the Battle of Køge Bay in 1677. Despite being outnumbered by men, guns and ships, Juel’s brilliant tactical innovation led to the greatest victory in Danish naval history and gave the Danish-Norwegian alliance control of the Baltic Sea.
Thousands of Danes daily pass by a commanding bronze statue of Juel that presides over a major intersection in the heart of Copenhagen. Louise Albinus is one of them. She is the picture of vitality, her glowing skin framed by blond hair caught in a loose braid. In her typically casual attire of jeans and sneakers, she blends in with her hardy Dane neighbors, giving no hint of resemblance to the famous admiral in his swashbuckling tall boots, flared coat and broad festooned hat. But Louise is also known as Louise Eleonora Kathleen Iuel-Brockdorff and Niels Juel is her 10th great grandfather. (Juel morphed to Iuel around 1900).
Juel’s victory and valor earned him knighthood bestowed by King Christian IV, thus elevating his heirs to nobility, which, generations later, makes Louise a baroness. Juel’s other reward was Valdemars Slot, a castle commissioned by the king and intended for his son Valdemar, who died young and never took up residence. Designed by Hans van Steenwinckel the
Younger and built from 1639 to 1644, the elegant edifice is more manor house than castle, the largest privately owned home in Denmark and the only royal palace in private hands.
Louise is so nonchalant about her aristocratic status it’s nearly undetectable. She is quick to smile, open and curious, warmly welcoming to all. But underlying her relaxed demeanor she has a Juel-like core of strength, one that has been put to the test in ways she could never have predicted just a few short years ago. As happens in many families, noble or otherwise, hers went through turmoil following the death in 2017 of her beloved father, Baron Niels Krabbe Iuel-Brockdorff.
It’s been a seesawing period of good and bad luck, wonder and woe. Regrettably, a family dispute forced the sale of the estate on the open market. Happily, a term in the baron’s will stipulated that should Valdemars ever be sold, Louise had the sole right to buy it back, something she did in April 2022. Sadly, that term did not apply to the furnishings, the majority of which were removed the following month and put up for auction last September. Luckily, many of the things she cherished most, like irreplaceable portraits of family members, were eventually returned to Valdemars through a series of challenging, often emotional events and gestures. The unexpected generosity of many who have helped recover these artifacts has further buoyed Louise’s mission to restore Valdemars’ heritage.
Lifesize equestrian portraits line the walls of the King’s Room.
In the Reception Room, shrouded figures in tapestries from the mid-18th century contrast with lighthearted overdoor paintings of ladies of the era.
Arches along a wall of the vast entry hall frame the symmetrical staircase to the second floor.
Beneath renderings of champion horses, Louise unpacks far more significant portraits as they return to Valdemars.
To lend financial support to the dream, Louise and her husband Nikolaj have rented some of the 30 small houses scattered around the estate, but the focus is always on making improvements that nurture the arts. “Coming from a banking background, my orientation tends to be the bottom line,” Nikolaj says, “but Louise reminds me to ‘leave your financial head far away.’ I’ve come to realize many propositions, no matter how much business they might generate, simply don’t fit
It’s a tall order. Where once there was a roster of 100 staff, including three solely to attend to the chicken house and gather eggs, now there are three staff in total. There is so much space to work with it’s hard to know where to begin. But what space! Appropriately for an admiral’s manor, Valdemars sits mostly surrounded by water, on the island of Tåsinge in southern Denmark. The main façade of the manor house looks east, past twin gatehouses, out over a rectangular reflecting pond flanked by long low buildings that served as stables, to an enchanting tea pavilion punctuating the eastern shore of the property. It was Niels Juel’s grandson who commissioned these additional buildings in the mid-1800s and by so doing, made the manor house the formal head of a Baroque landscape, the only
Beneath Rococo flourishes, pine floors laid in a simple cross pattern in the Garden Room anchor the space.
Beneath renderings of champion horses, Louise unpacks far more significant portraits as they return to Valdemars.
Louise has borne the upheaval with remarkable equanimity, even optimism. In some ways, the castle being emptied created a clean slate for thinking about the property’s future. Where Valdemars was once immersed in the past, with portions of the castle and outbuildings devoted to a toy museum, a big game trophy collection and a maritime museum, now Louise sees room to look forward and throw open the doors to new ideas.
“One of my great visions and dreams is to host exhibitions featuring current and deceased artists inside the castle, and even installations of modern architecture and design,” says Louise, who studied art history at the University of Virginia. “I think that the contrast between Rococo-decorated walls and the work of modern artists will be quite powerful, and it will again make the place a living art space.”
Aside from exhibitions, she hopes to host everything from performances by international artists to readings by local poets. “The 18th-century Danish poet Ambrosius Stub used to write poems at the base of an oak tree just a few steps from here,” Louise says. “Now the tree, named after him, is one of the oldest (400 years) and biggest (24’ in girth) in Denmark.”
To lend financial support to the dream, Louise and her husband Nikolaj have rented some of the 30 small houses scattered around the estate, but the focus is always on making improvements that nurture the arts. “Coming from a banking background, my orientation tends to be the bottom line,” Nikolaj says, “but Louise reminds me to ‘leave your financial head far away.’ I’ve come to realize many propositions, no matter how much business they might generate, simply don’t fit with the DNA.”
It’s a tall order. Where once there was a roster of 100 staff, including three solely to attend to the chicken house and gather eggs, now there are three staff in total. There is so much space to work with it’s hard to know where to begin. But what space! Appropriately for an admiral’s manor, Valdemars sits mostly surrounded by water, on the island of Tåsinge in southern Denmark. The main façade of the manor house looks east, past twin gatehouses, out over a rectangular reflecting pond flanked by long low buildings that served as stables, to an enchanting tea pavilion punctuating the eastern shore of the property. It was Niels Juel’s grandson who commissioned these additional buildings in the mid-1800s and by so doing, made the manor house the formal head of a Baroque landscape, the only intact one of its kind in Denmark.
One of two identical gatehouses in a cheery yellow that bookend the entrances to the property.
Fanciful plasterwork frames Flemish tapestries in the Reception Room.
A painting of Niels Juel’s grandson in a guest bedroom shows that the view looking east remains unchanged.
A centuries-old leather portfolio holds historic architectural plans for the castle.
On a window sill in the dining room, a cloth cloche protects the feather crown that once topped a campaign bed.
Lawyer and family friend Klavs von Lowsow and Nikolaj discuss Valdemars’ future.
Cast iron stoves from Norway have long warmed the castle’s rooms.
In the library, bookshelves will be removed to restore the room to its original, more austere state.
Glass apples handblown nearby reference the orchards planted by Niels Juel the Younger in the mid-18th-century.
This spread: Nikolaj and Louise, along with architect Jess Heine Andersen and lawyer Klavs von Lowsow, contemplate the ways the stables and barns can be sensitively repurposed for cultural installations and events.
There are yet more outbuildings behind the north stables, some soaring spaces like a horse arena and barn where Louise’s father, an avid sailor, used to store his boats, and some less lofty spaces, like a dairy shed named Hollander House after the Dutch workers skilled at milking animals and making cheese. Each building displays the year it was built along with the initials of those who built it; more formal buildings like the stables also bear a coronet with seven points, indicating the rank of baron.
The reflecting pond is flanked by similar but not identical stables.
To the south of the manor house are smaller scale structures. A blacksmith forge stands alone, a candidate for a future estate manager’s office. For generations, the manager occupied the ground floor of an adjacent two-story building with household staff bunked under the roof; men in one string of rooms, women in another. The lower floor has recently been handsomely converted into a few apartments, but the upper story remains largely untouched, an atmospheric time capsule complete with handwritten names of flowers on doors. Wallpaper artfully shreds off the old walls; a recently discovered nook once hid weapons and resistance fighters during World War II.
This page: Time stands still on the upper floors of the building that once housed the estate manager.
One of the most surprising characteristics of the façade of the manor house are the tall Gothic windows that circle the south end of the building, throwing off the symmetry synonymous with Baroque architecture. It’s as if the chapel that lies behind them was so overflowing with special powers that they broke through the façade to declare their importance.
To call it a chapel hardly does it justice. Gothic vaults soar over a space that accommodates nearly 200 for services. An organ occupies the better part of a choir
loft that spans the back of the room. Another balcony, this one festooned with swagged curtains and the Iuel-Brockdorff crest, was just for the family. Yet for all its magnificence, the chapel retains a Scandinavian sobriety. The leaded windows are clear, not stained glass; an austere tiled stove heats the space; the stone walls and marble pews are all trompe l’oeil; the overall palette is a warm chalky gray. Hovering overhead is a wooden model of a ship, in the Danish tradition of installing a miniature ship in a church as an offering ensuring safe passage for the vessel and its crew.
Major family events, such as the christenings of Louise and Nikolaj’s daughters, continue to take place in the chapel.
A model ship, representing safe passage through life’s storms, is suspended near the choir loft of the chapel.
Louise greets us in the chapel from the private family balcony.
Of all the spaces in the manor house, the chapel holds the most meaning for Louise and Nikolaj. It is where they were married on a bright spring day in 2009. It is where their two daughters, Marie-Louise and Elisabeth Rose, were baptized just as their mother was. And it is where they have first tested the waters of reopening Valdemars to the public. “In the past,” Louise explains, “the castle has been a place where many musicians have gathered. There was even once a music school, two hundred years ago. So bringing music back seemed like a very natural way to begin.”
Last December, they held two candlelit Christmas concerts featuring an opera singer, a violinist and a pianist, followed by a reception in the entry hall where gløgg
and special apple buns were served. (Niels Juel’s grandson first introduced apples to the island, and Louise hopes to restore the estate’s orchards.) Demand was so great that the 150 tickets on offer sold out in 24 hours, and the public begged for additional performances. Tickets to a second day of concerts were scooped up in no time.
The concert response demonstrated more than just the locals’ curiosity to see a chapel not normally open to the public. It confirmed their sincere and sympathetic support for Louise and Nikolaj’s stewardship of Valdemars. The sundering of antiques that had been part of the manor house for 350 years was painful not just for them but for the entire community who justly viewed it as an assault on their patrimony.
Clockwise, from top: An original copperplate engraving of the layout of the castle and garden; a leather drum likely used in a military campaign; an oar from Louise’s great-grandfather’s winning rowing team at Oxford; amid intricate calligraphy, the family crest remains vibrant.
Support has arrived both overtly and in mysterious ways. When Louise and Nikolaj were reviewing the paintings and furnishings they hoped to buy back and return to Valdemars, they made two lists: “nice to have” and “need to have.” Of the 91 items offered in the first auction, they had earmarked 22 as critical and won them all. Of 260 items in the second auction, they secured 27 of the 31 they sought.
Of all the things on display throughout the auctions, though, most spectacular was Louise’s resolve. She sat front and center, going after her birthright with such determination that she put other bidders to shame for daring to raise a paddle and contribute to the dispersal of an historic estate. So touched were people by the sad saga of seeing Valdemars’ interiors dismantled that a few bidders even won significant items and anonymously donated them back to Valdemars.
An enormous painting of the Battle of Køge Bay dominates the upper hall.
Louise holding a portrait of King Christian IV of Denmark by Karel van Mander III.
The Knight’s Hall, a confection of delicate plasterwork, is missing its chandeliers but not its magnificent portraits which are considered official artworks of Denmark’s patrimony.
Most prized of these gifts is a set of 33 chairs, historic shipboard witnesses to Niels Juel’s winning campaign, that have returned to the elegant ballroom where Louise and Nikolaj held their wedding banquet. In an otherwise all-white room with frothy plaster embellishments, the gilded seat backs of the exquisitely-tooled boarskin chairs echo the gold frames of magnificent royal portraits by court painter Carl Gustaf Pilo. “The chairs’ homecoming is such a proud event,” says Nikolaj. “They’ve become a symbol of Louise’s devotion to Valdemars’ legacy and to the community that has rallied to support her.”
To witness the treasures returning to Valdemars was to see Louise’s face light up with pure joy, like a child on Christmas morning. Their return marked more than a win for family continuity. It represented the restoration of significant Danish cultural heritage. As caretaker and restorer, Louise is stewarding the history of Valdemars for her children, the 12th generation, and those to follow. As a visionary, she is fighting to unite the old world with the modern one. Odds are good that she will succeed; after all, she is descended from Niels Juel.
Shapes of the Chieftain chair recall shields of warriors.
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss and sometimes it’s just plain useful. Because Finn Juhl was trained as an architect and not a cabinetmaker, he—today, one of Denmark’s most notable and inventive designers—approached furniture design initially unencumbered by such nagging concerns as strength and structure. That was for his steady collaborator, master joiner Niels Vodder, to work out.
Rather, Juhl’s unconventional furniture designs were driven by an organic sculptural vision, an architectural exploration of loadbearing elements versus flat planes, and a preoccupation with forms designed to comfortably accommodate the human body. In designing chairs, for which he is best known, Juhl choreographed a dance between the frame and the upholstery, the carrying and the carried, the seat and the sitter.
Furniture, art and a sensitivity to human dimension and desires were absolutely central to Juhl’s creative life. No surprise then that they were also the building blocks
of the house he fashioned for himself in the Copenhagen suburb of Charlottenlund. The 30-year-old Juhl designed it from the inside out, unfettered by floor plan and elevation; rather, his vision for furniture arrangements drove the shape and orientation of rooms and the placement of windows.
A DANCE BETWEEN THE FRAME AND THE UPHOLSTERY, THE CARRYING AND THE CARRIED, THE SEAT AND THE SITTER
The end result was a dwelling whose modest size, a well-considered 2200-square feet, belies its enormous influence. What seems unremarkable now was radical for 1942 when construction was completed. Essentially an L-shaped building composed of two rectangular boxes joined by a lower,
largely transparent, connector, the open plan of the split-story house was entirely new in Denmark. Moreover, the house was a complete Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, in which no single element—interior, exterior, furnishings, art—dominated but instead complemented each other in support of a fully realized whole.
Trained in architecture, famous for furniture design, Juhl excelled where the two disciplines overlap, in interior design. For him, a house was simply a building. What turned it into a home was warmth, comfort and visual delights, with art playing no small part, especially in his own home. Juhl’s first passion—art history— is evident in his expansive art collection, paintings whose color and composition were as elemental as three-dimensional form in directing design decisions.
At the home where he lived and worked for decades until his death in 1989, pale walls, mostly white, unite spaces that flow into each other. But the ceiling of each room is painted a distinct color, an approach which was and
Colors in the living room unite in a 1938 still life by Vilhelm Lundstrøm.
remains highly unusual. In the entry, an Yves Klein blue overhead is a bright cap to a humble space, the preamble to furnishings in the glassy garden room just beyond: cushions on a chair and built-in banquette done up in marine blue and a graphic rug in blue and orange by textile artist and colorist Anna Thommesen.
In the dining room, a deep mustard is just the hue to amplify candlelight, while the emerald green upholstery of Juhl’s distinctive Egyptian chair references verdant shades in a painting by Richard Mortensen. In a small bedroom, a deep green visually lowers the ceiling, making a compact space even cozier while connecting to the foliage-filled view framed by the room’s single window.
A warm bisque ceiling, evoking sunlight coming through a canvas tent, floats over the discrete lounge, work and dining areas of the living room, itself an I-shaped space. His clusters of intimate, humanscaled groupings of furniture in an open space is today a familiar arrangement, but when the room debuted the configuration was strikingly original. In 2019, The New York Times included the living room as one of history’s 25 most enduring and influential spaces. Design journalist Suzanne Slesin, one of six jurors who selected the spaces, neatly summed up why: “The art, the furniture, the space, everything is of one mind and very, very simple and modest, but extraordinary…a typical Scandinavian mind-set.”
One mind indeed. Juhl celebrated the work of artists such as painter Vilhelm Lundstrøm, sculptor Erik Thommesen and textile artist Vibeke Klint by making their works stars in compositions of furnishings that he massaged over the years. But every stick of furniture in the house, as well as smaller objects like dinnerware and cutlery, sprang from his own robust imagination. No design choice was inconsequential and he had decades to consider and reconsider how art and objects, furniture and color, sightlines from room to room and views out to the garden by landscape designer Troels Erstad, all played off each other.
The seamlessness of Juhl’s work and home life are most apparent in a living room corner where he worked at a desk set perpendicular to the wall, seated in his supremely comfortable FJ46 chair. Bookcases filled with art and architecture tomes in four languages were in easy reach, as was a bulletin board where he could pin up inspiration and sketches of works in progress.
A glass vitrine room divider holds china Juhl designed as well as ceramic pieces by artists he admired.
When he wanted to take a break, he could shift to the alcove section of the room where a dining height table pulls up to a wall-to-wall banquette cum sofa. At the head of the table sat his FJ44 chair, otherwise known as “The Bone chair.” An elegantly organic, beautifully balanced form made of Cuban mahogany with a leather seat, the chair was notoriously difficult to produce; only a dozen were ever made.
From his desk, Juhl’s view took in a progression of spaces: the fireplace section of the living room, the garden room, and on through a glass vitrine room divider into the dining room. It is this view of the living room that is the most iconic as it features Lundstrøm’s magnificent portrait of Juhl’s longtime companion Hanne Wilhelm Hansen. The strong yellows and blues of the painting are a colorful beacon overlooking a mostly monochromatic seating area, but it is the rounded contours of Hansen’s body that resonate with the furnishings.
That portrait hangs above Juhl’s softly cocooning Poet sofa from 1941 and his most commanding chair, the Chieftain, both flanking a sculptural plaster fireplace hood. Inspired by art and objects from indigenous cultures in Africa and Oceania, the chair is a biomorphic masterpiece that put Neils Vodder’s skills to the ultimate test, demanding from the wood frame everything it could tolerate.
Embraced by the Chieftain’s generous arms, Juhl could take in the warmth of the fire and the broad view of the garden through large windows opposite the fireplace and celebrate what he described as the most important feature of any chair: “the people who in turn have to sit in it, and without whom it is a dead thing, but with whom it becomes a pleasant everyday object.” For all his milestones in furniture design, Juhl remained a humanist. Or rather, because he was a humanist, his milestones endure.
Right, above: Juhl often worked at a desk he called the Drawing Board. Right: A banquette spans one wall of the living room while bookcases flanking windows line another.
In Juhl’s office, a large black and white photo captures the interior of the Trusteeship Council Chamber that Juhl designed in 1952 for the United Nations’ Headquarters.
INTERIORS BY STUDIO ASHBY / PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENSINGTON LEVERNE
LONDONERS HAVE TURNED TO LANGAN’S IN MAYFAIR FOR STYLISH SOIREES EVER SINCE THE LATE ‘70S, WHEN MICHAEL CAINE WAS AN OWNER, DAVID HOCKNEY’S DOODLES GRACED THE MENU AND REGULARS LIKE MICK JAGGER MIGHT SHOW UP ON ANY GIVEN NIGHT. RECENTLY REIMAGINED AND REINVIGORATED, A STOP IN FOR A PROPER DRINK REVEALS THAT THE ART IS STILL MUSEUM-WORTHY, THE ROOMS ARE GLAMOROUS AND THE PEOPLE WATCHING IS AS GOOD AS EVER.
Cheers to twenty years!
LANGAN’S BRASSERIE LONDON
THE PURSUIT OF BEAUTY IS MORE THAN AN AESTHETIC IDEAL. IT’S A CALLING. AN OPPORTUNITY TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE PANTHEON OF CREATIVE ENDEAVORS THAT HAVE NOURISHED AND ENRICHED OUR LIVES SINCE PEN FIRST MET PAPER, BRUSH FIRST COLLIDED WITH CANVAS. WHETHER TUCKED AWAY FOR PRIVATE ENJOYMENT OR ON DISPLAY FOR ALL TO SEE, GREAT WORKS OF ART ALLOW US TO WITNESS HISTORY IN THE MAKING. THE RIPPLES OF ARTISTRY LIVE ON, TRANSCENDING TIME, CONNECTING TO WHAT CAME BEFORE, BRIDGING TO WHAT’S NEXT.
JIM THOMPSON FARM PAK THONG CHAI, THAILAND MONDAY, APRIL 3, 2023 10:44AM
INTERIORS BY DAN SCOTTI DESIGN & MIMI BROWN STUDIO
ARCHITECTURE BY RAYMOND RENAULT ARCHITECTURE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GIEVES ANDERSON
INTERIORS BY DAVID FRAZIER / PHOTOGRAPHY BY GIEVES ANDERSON
SYMON
DECADES AFTER THE 1967 DISAPPEARANCE OF AMERICAN TEXTILE ENTREPRENEUR JIM THOMPSON, KNOWN AS THE THAI SILK KING, HIS EPONYMOUS BANGKOK-BASED COMPANY LIVES ON, AND SO DO HIS VALUES. WE EXPLORE THE UNLIKELY STORY OF A HERITAGE BRAND THAT FLOURISHES IN SPITE OF—AND PARTLY BECAUSE OF—ITS FOUNDER’S UNSOLVED MYSTERY.
An array of crimson umbrellas mirrors the hue of the teak paneling featured throughout the house.
In the sweltry darkness of an April Bangkok night, we pass through an alleyway of squat concrete buildings to arrive at an anonymouslooking gate. Just beyond a gravel courtyard, a cinnabar-hued jewel of a 19th century Thai house comes into focus, nestled in a jungly thicket of palms. This is the storied House on the Klong. The famed homage to the region's architecture and art was assiduously assembled by an even more famous man—Jim Thompson, the former Thai Silk King, whose legend the passage of time doesn't seem to diminish but perhaps even emboldens. Thompson, a Princeton-trained architect and art collector who spent the 1930s living and working in New York, first arrived in Bangkok as a World War II military officer in August 1945. Enthralled by Thai culture, particularly the region’s ancient textile traditions, he settled there after the war and began organizing and supporting local artisans, creating a network of Thai weavers and silk farmers whose ancient skills and livelihoods were being threatened by post-war industrialization. By 1950, Thompson had founded the Thai Silk Company, an artisan cooperative, and is credited for single-handedly resuscitating Thailand’s dwindling silk industry and spinning it into an international sensation. Celebrated for his deft use of dazzling color combinations and classic patterns, the multi-armed business Thompson began, improbably, still flourishes today.
As we slip off our shoes and cross the threshold into the House on the Klong’s receiving room of checkerboard marble floors, which Thompson sourced himself, and rich teak paneled walls, an air of mystery and marvel pervades the space, which remains much as it was when Thompson walked out these doors, 56 years ago, never to return. It was Easter in 1967 when Thompson left his home to visit old friends in Malaysia’s remote Cameron Highlands, and after attending a morning church service and enjoying an Easter picnic with his hosts, he vanished into thin air—or rather, into the vast jungle surrounding the country retreat. His disappearance touched off a manhunt of a scale previously unmatched in the region, and despite a thorough search that included extrasensory tactics enlisting the help of mediums and psychics, no credible trace of him has ever been found.
But Thompson’s home remains very much present, an ode to a man of vision, style and yes, mystique. A disoriented Westerner might mistake it, if even momentarily, for a Scandinavian-like interior, but that feeling vanishes quickly, replaced by a sensual physicality—the omnipresent heat, the thickness of the air and the buttery, worn-down patina of the teak floors underfoot which have caressed the bare feet of thousands of people over nearly two centuries. There is an intoxicating languor to it all. The whir of rotating fans, a slight to the modern convenience of air conditioning, is the only disturbance in the velvety blanket of air, which is just how Thompson wanted it.
In contrast to the languidness, every wall and surface of the home is alive thanks to the worldclass collection of Southeast Asian art Thompson accrued in his lifetime, a testament to his vast curiosity and zeal for his adopted country’s architecture and arts. As Somerset Maugham once noted while visiting Thompson, “You have not only beautiful things, but what is rarer you have arranged them with faultless taste.” In addition to Maugham, his guests included the likes of Robert Kennedy, Helena Rubinstein, Doris Duke and countless members of royalty and the diplomatic corps, and his parties and dinners were the stuff of Bangkok legend. Tonight, we were the lucky guests to follow in that tradition, albeit five decades later.
Our host is the ever-amiable Eric Booth, who greets us, a tray of cocktails at the ready, in Thompson’s former living room overlooking a stone courtyard and the klong, beyond which lays the storied Cham weaving village that first captivated Thompson. For Booth, executive director of Jim Thompson, the Thai Silk Company and the artistic legacy is a family affair. His father, Bill Booth, had been hired as a young man in his 20s by Thompson himself after serving in the US military. Bill Booth took over as managing director in 1972 and expanded the company into an even greater multifaceted business. Eric follows in his father’s footsteps but with a particularly keen interest in supporting the arts—especially work that addresses the political climate of his homeland and its people.
We dined that night with Eric on Andaman scallop ceviche, tom yum soup and yellow beef cheek curry, all redolent of the bracingly bright, sense-igniting food Thailand is so well known for. Elaborate phuang malai were arranged across the table, like an installation of fragrant floral jewelry. Belgian chandeliers overhead lit up the house. Lush palms, from banana to bismarck, crept into open windows, blurring the distinction between indoors and out. With the sound of the call to prayer from the Islamic neighborhood ringing from across the klong, the evening, steeped in wine and humidity, felt like a synesthesia dream.
The next morning, we returned to the house—the spell of night lifted. The house and its extensive art collection (now under the aegis of the James H.W. Thompson Foundation) is one of Bangkok’s most visited landmarks. Global languages mingle as group after group arrives. Visitors remove their shoes and follow guided tours through the serpentine rooms. Across the gravel courtyard is a modern two-level store, restaurant and exhibition space devoted to the timeline of Thompson’s life and business pursuits. The area is now known as the Jim Thompson Heritage Quarter. “Ironically, Jim’s disappearance turned out to be effective branding and marketing for the business,” Eric says. With every purchase of a scarf, necktie or bolt of fabric, the customer considers this story, as though he or she is buying a bit of the mystery itself.
This jewel of a house is, of course, the draw. Thompson discovered it while visiting the Cham artisans, the ethnically Vietnamese and Muslim group of traditional weavers who lived in the Ban Krua neighborhood (directly across from this spot on the klong). This is the group with whom Thompson had formed the Thai Silk Company, and on one visit, Thompson happened upon a 19th-century Thai house that belonged to one of them. These traditional teak homes were being abandoned in lieu of more Western, ranch-style houses that boasted air conditioning and windows, but Thompson, a trained architect, appreciated the classic form. He acquired the building, turning it into the large, central structure of his house, while two similar structures were discovered in Ayutthaya to comprise the smaller flanking wings. Thompson brought over specialized carpenters also from Ayutthaya to reassemble the buildings—the addition of which ensured ample room for entertaining. “He was a social lion,” remarks Bruno Lemercier, conservator of the foundation. “Everyone stopping in Thailand wanted to see not just the silk, but Jim Thompson and his home. A mix of high society, celebrities and designers all came through here.”
This page: Gracious interiors are filled with art and antiques and furniture upholstered in the vibrant colors that Thompson was famous for, while lush greenery encircles the exterior of the home.
Eric Booth
From the outset, Thompson envisioned his home as a showcase for his prodigious collection of regional art ranging from ceramics and paintings to sculpture and furniture. “He was an aesthete,” Bruno reflects. “Jim had a real eye, but he liked a good bargain. Many pieces he acquired had imperfections.” Thompson responded to innate beauty rather than museum-like standards. Some standouts include his collection of Benjarong porcelain in vivid, often pastel polychrome with Siamese motifs manufactured in China for the Thai elite. Scenic storytelling devotionals painted on cotton or silk, remarkably intact, hang from the walls. Thompson also retrofitted several windows to create niches for ancient large-scale Buddha sculptures, his favorite of which is a 7th-century limestone Dvaravati school example and remains the focal point of his former office. Thompson wanted his collection seen. “Six months after he moved in, he declared the house a museum, with entrance fee donations benefiting a school for the blind. He wanted to keep things for the Thai people, for his collection to remain together for people to enjoy,” Bruno says.
Art for the people remains a central tenet of Jim Thompson’s legacy. In 2021, the Jim Thompson Art Center opened as an homage to contemporary art and artists of the region. For Eric, this is a natural extension of the foundation, and he does not shy away from controversial or political subjects. Rather, he welcomes dialogue through socially and politically subversive art. “It’s not just another contemporary art exhibition space. The country faces issues today that date to the time Jim was here, many stemming from the Vietnam War and Cold War. What happened then still resonates now,” Eric says. Just a few blocks away from the antiquitiesfilled house, the Art Center welcomes a rotating series of thought-provoking shows. “For us, the house is very important. Like the handwoven silk—it’s about history. But we are also looking at the present and the future, and the Jim Thompson Art Center is where we engage with the social, economic and political situations in the region, and look toward how to solve these problems.”
A modern exhibit at the Jim Thompson Art Center.
This spread: An immersive tableau of richly painted scenes and meditative Buddhist statues mingle with vivid Benjarong porcelain and Chinese export ware.
Four hours north of Bangkok, the gateway of the historically impoverished Isan region is home to another Thompson legacy, the Jim Thompson Farm, known more simply as “the Farm.” We arrive, once again, in darkness. As urban as Thompson’s house is, the Farm is equally rural. We dine that night with Eric on a pond dock, complete with a silk tablecloth. In the distance, we view two temple structures on stilts above the water, floating like two wooden crowns gracing the still surface.
The Farm is the key to the evolution of the multitentacled brand that the Jim Thompson Company is today. Under Thompson’s cooperative-style business structure, silk weavers all worked from home, as the company was not poised for an economic future increasingly trending toward standardization. “My father, this young guy, takes the helm and says, ‘ok, let’s grow the business’,” Eric recounts over dinner. “He opened a factory for hand weaving and dyeing, then the next step on the vertical chain is raising your own silk worms, so he bought this farm.”
A temple constructed in the classic Isan style for prayer and contemplation graces the surface of the reservoir at the Jim Thompson Farm.
This spread: A day in the life of the Farm where silk weaving is only one of the traditional Thai arts and crafts that flourishes. Preserving these timeless skills and introducing them to visitors is one of Eric's greatest passions.
This spread: The ancient process of raising silkworms has remained unchanged for thousands of years.
The arid land, not suited to rice production, was excellent for growing mulberry plants— the preferred food of silkworms. Bill Booth, after working with Chinese silk consultants, developed a Japanese-Chinese hybrid silkworm. Realizing that raising silkworms would require thousands of farmers, he created his own type of cooperative—selling silkworm eggs to farmers across the region for them to independently raise, while the Thompson farm would grow enough mulberry plants for their consumption. The four-stage process, from egg to larvae to molting and finally spinning a cocoon, takes 21 days. “It is like Goldilocks—they need just the right environment to produce the best silk,” Eric says. Once in the cocoon phase, the Jim Thompson Company buys them back from the farmers, paying a premium for the best quality cocoons to yield the finest silk. Once returned to the farm, the silk would be degummed and readied for the looms.
The next morning, Eric takes us on a tour of the farm and the entire silk-weaving process, from egg to final product. After seeing the silkworm in various phases of its cocooning process, we watch a woman tending a vat of boiling cocoons, melting away the binding glue to reveal the silk filaments. “This is the ancient process Jim discovered. When you look at the threads, they’re very uneven, full of humps and bumps, as Jim liked to say. When you dye it, the color doesn’t penetrate evenly—that’s what gives silk its iridescence,” Eric explains, as the woman unfurls filaments from the boiling va t of cocoons. “You can’t put it in a machine, it has to be handwoven. This is Thai silk.”
Bundles of hand-dyed silk threads. Their imperfect texture gives it iridescence.
This spread: The Jim Thompson brand blends traditional handlooms meticulously controlled by artisans with the precision of modern machinery used for mechanically-printed designs.
With a handloom on site, silk by the yard is being made much as it has been for centuries. Dozens of women and men tend the silk, dyeing it in brilliant colors, winding the bobbins, warping the looms and hand weaving the yarns into fabric. The handmade silk will eventually make its way to their showrooms in Bangkok, Paris, New York and London and into homes around the world. In contrast to mass manufacturing, it is remarkable to witness this ancient technique, harnessed for modern luxury by Jim Thompson. Such high-touch artistry is the foundation of the legendary man’s legacy.
But the company is far from anachronistic. Bill and Eric Booth have moved the needle forward on implementing technology to remain competitive. “There’s been a huge investment in modern machinery, printing and weaving to stay relevant for the future,” Eric says. A short drive away, by which we arrive in open-air vintage army jeeps, is the multi-building factory for the mechanized looms—an industrial silk city in the middle of this rural countryside. State-of-the-art automatic looms spin out the resplendent silk scarves and fabrics for the current collection of clothes the company is increasingly known for within Thailand. Silk bolts for interior designers are churned out with inspiration from creative directors, Susan North and Richard Smith. Designs by young artists the brand collaborates with, an effort led by their newly appointed CEO, Frank Cancelloni, come to life. “All our collections relate to Jim—what he was interested in, techniques he modernized. Even the artists we work with to create these collections are always thinking about Jim, his era and what he was interested in. How those things inform us now,” Frank explains.
In the spirit of Thompson, the Booths also use the land as a place for architectural preservation. A collection of authentic Thai houses sourced from all over Isan have been painstakingly moved and reassembled as a focal point on the Farm. “We started collecting the houses. The inspiration, of course, is the Jim Thompson House,” Eric says, “it inspires everyone in a different way. He was fascinated by the traditional culture and architecture. He’d go out on the weekend in his jeep, exploring. He was our Indiana Jones, a real adventurer.” In addition to the reconstructed 19thcentury houses, the Booths also had two temples built on the water, connected to land by a walkway. The two wood structures served two functions: one, built in the Isan region style, is a place for the monks to conduct ceremonies and pray; while the second, modeled on the Isan and Southern Laos tradition, is a kind of library for religious texts. Both stand on stilts hovering above the Farm’s pond, which is also its reservoir.
“These temples were built over water for termite protection. With no bridge linking them to land, the religious texts, made of paper and cloth, would be safeguarded,” Eric explains. A collection of simple hand-carved wood Buddhas presides in the temple reserved for prayer. Perched above the pond with a cross breeze flowing through the structure, the feeling of serenity is palpable.
Eric reflects on the entwined, carefully woven legacy that permeates the Jim Thompson Company today, both in their business and cultural endeavors. “It’s not just the silk. It’s the support of the weavers. It’s the arts. It’s the house itself and the collection within it, all of which shows how much Jim cared about conservation and sharing knowledge,” he says. The Jim Thompson legacy is ultimately a dialogue between past and present.
This spread: Two temples hover over the glassy surface of the water; one a place for contemplation and prayer, the other designed to house and protect religious texts.
On our last night at the Farm, Eric invited the weavers to feast with us. A sprawling buffet of curries, soups, grilled fish and game, complete with a platter of silkworm pupa accompanied by fish sauce and a dash of chili and lime was washed down with Thai moonshine—rice distilled into a sakereminiscent milk-hued alcohol. We sat on picnic tables facing a stage where a local singing group performed traditional song and dance, which lasted well into the night. A hand-painted backdrop of farmland and antique houses was like a scenic simulacrum of the Farm’s own landscape. Above the stage, a large, dazzling swath of apricot and watermelon checked silk, the likes of which Jim Thompson was famous for, hung like a vibrant banner above the performers, whose music lilted for hours in the embracing darkness. It was evident that while Jim Thompson has been gone for decades, his joyous spirit lives on in the world he created.
A folkloric musical performance added to the cultural experience that made our visit to the farm so enriching.
T he breadth of Jim Thompson’s contemporary business is evident at the company’s 9 Surawong Road location, which Thompson himself opened in 1967, a mere nine days before his fateful disappearance. On our last day in Bangkok, thirdgeneration brand steward, Sasaya Vesanen, spent the afternoon immersing us in the expansive flagship, which was recently reimagined under her watchful eye. The store is connected to the three-floor home furnishings showroom, the main offices and the sprawling shop full of silk fashion accessories, homewares and clothing. In Thompson’s day, silk for dressmaking was the company’s bread and butter, and people flocked to 9 Surawong Road where silk was displayed in large mahogany wardrobes and brought out to be draped and presented to customers for custom tailoring. Thompson’s fame led to fabric commissions for the costumes in The King & I and Ben Hur. He drew fashion support from Vogue Editor-in-Chief Edna Woolman Chase and collaborated with the likes of Rochas and Balmain. Today, Sasaya and Frank work hand-in-hand to creatively intertwine the fashion and home brands under one roof. According to Sasaya, “What we’ve done at 9 Surawong Road is to show the depth of what the Jim Thompson brand has to offer.”
Sasaya Vesanen
rough mock-up of flamingos for a mural in a Miami Art Deco
Covers: Anne’s love of nature shimmers in her maquette for a stylized and stylish mural.
EDDYSTONE ROUND
INTERIORS BY NINA FARMER INTERIORS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JARED KUZIA
A
home.
The ever-ebullient Anne Harris.
Walls are functional brilliance—they support the roof over our head and enclose us in comfort and safety, yet for New York-based artist Anne Harris, that’s only the beginning. To this accomplished muralist, walls are fantastical fodder—a canvas for beauty and imagination, as well as her extraordinary talent. Though she can, and has, painted most anything (need a reproduction Picasso to stand in for the one your gallery has lent to a museum? Call Anne, as many a Manhattan dealer or art collector has done), murals have been her specialty for the last three decades. She loves bringing an idea, initially presented to her client in a small maquette, to 360-degree, largescale, spectacular life, and absolutely transforming an interior as she does so.
Design icons like Charlotte Moss turn to Anne when they need a glorious English countryside vignette to grace the foyer of a Park Avenue apartment or a pair of cabinet-of-curiosity panels for a Lyford Cay residence. Anne’s super-scaled rendition of a 17th-century Dutch still life, with its rich moody hues and glints
of silver and glass, embraces an elegant New York City dining room, but, ever versatile, she’s equally artful when a client requests a snarling Tyrannosaurus for an unexpected powder room. From Old World murals like those she loved when visiting the Vatican and Pompeii to more modern, exotic works, like the award-winning black and gold murals in the vein of French artist Armand-Albert Rateau that Anne painted for a private club in Chicago, her work is as wide ranging as her insatiable curiosity and joie de vivre.
“Anne has an aura—magnetism and charisma radiate from her. Her laugh is irrepressible and irresistible,” says her niece, Urban Electric’s own Halle Kern, whose solo trips to visit Anne were highlights of her teenage years and remain a special delight. Halle’s childhood visits to Anne’s New York City apartment left an indelible impression. It was a space “exuding personality” and filled with photography, art, sculpture, shells, textiles, and where Anne raised her own children as a single mother following her husband’s untimely death. “She opened me up to the creative world and continues to spark
my imagination with her appreciation for finding beauty in everything—from her highly unexpected fascination with bird legs and statues of feet to her full embrace of the art world, high and low,” Halle adds. “For all her visits to the Met and the Frick, she also helps sustain street artists by purchasing their work and supports aspiring artists with apprenticeships.”
Those apprentices learn the specialized skills that mural painting demands, an interesting hybrid of creativity and technical acuity. Anne typically paints in the studio on as many canvases as are required, which are then installed on-site by wallpaper hangers under her supervision. Despite being math-averse, she has an uncanny knack for scaling a work up to any dimension, some as large as 80 feet and spanning four walls. In the tradition of the Old Masters, Anne often starts with an underpainting of burnt sienna, a mid-tone base that lends depth to subsequent applications of paint and glaze, then layers on with her own sublime and signature magic. Brushstroke by brushstroke, glaze after glaze, walls do more than enclose space. They become portals to wonder.
A concept panorama in miniature depicting flora and fauna inspired by the work of Armand-Albert Rateau.MURALIST ANNE HARRIS OFFERS A MASTER CLASS IN THINKING INSIDE THE BOX AND ENTERING ANOTHER WORLD.
The earliest I can recall painting is around the age of eight. My mother recognized my budding artistic sensibility and signed me up for Saturday morning classes with Jack Clifton, a Virginia artist known as much for teaching as for his paintings. (His book, The Eye of the Artist, was reprinted four times.) Every week, we had just a few hours to complete a painting of a still life or an image in a postcard. It was great training for capturing a variety of subjects. I just loved it and continued with his classes for five years.
In many ways, you could call artists stylists, in the sense that we are always considering how to compose elements. I think this is what my mother detected in me, the clues to my future as an artist. She realized very early that there was only one side of my brain that worked! We lived in a rural area on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay, so there was not a lot to do in the traditional sense. My childhood was spent primarily in nature, looking and absorbing and collecting. I would bring back shells and bones and rocks to my girl cave under a fig tree and then experiment with composition.
Even though I studied painting, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make a living as an artist. My first jobs were in visual fields, at an auction house and a magazine, but they
Anne working out a composition in her studio, toggling between tracing and painting freehand.
Below, from left: Scraps of images and textiles pinned up for inspiration and reference; a pair of Bolga fans from Ghana hangs from shelves of art supplies.
AS TOLD TO THE URBAN ELECTRIC CO.
required a fair amount of writing and paperwork, two things I discovered I had no talent for. Luckily in the ‘80s, faux finishes were all the rage, so there was painting work to be had. But I came to understand the expression “eyes glazing over” after glazing one too many faux-finished walls. I knew I had to branch out and suggested to a friend a Rousseau-ish mural for his dining room and that kickstarted my 35-year career as a muralist.
In hindsight, murals have given me the freedom to explore artistic visions from around the world, and in that pursuit, the direction of my projects often veers drastically from one to the next, which may be considered a misstep for most artists. For me, this approach wards off boredom but also can ignite almighty fear. Each new commission challenges me with an endless variety of color, scale, subject. I wish I could lure more artists into this line of work. It’s diverse and stimulating and enormously satisfying. And you can make a living!
I, like many artists, found my first trip to Italy to be an utterly transformative experience. Of course I had seen and studied images of frescoes in books, but going into a room by Tiepolo and being surrounded by his murals—seeing the ceiling burst out and open—I was transfixed. It changed my life.
Obviously nothing beats seeing something in person, but since that’s often not possible I also rely on images I’ve been collecting for 40 years. I used to lean heavily on books because, back then, that was essentially the only source. The better your library, the better artist you were, so I had quite a collection. While I still turn to books, I also have some 60,000 photos, and counting, on my iPhone, though the filing is questionable!
“ IN HINDSIGHT, MURALS HAVE GIVEN ME THE FREEDOM TO EXPLORE ARTISTIC VISIONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD, AND IN THAT PURSUIT, THE DIRECTION OF MY PROJECTS OFTEN VEERS DRASTICALLY FROM ONE TO THE NEXT, WHICH MAY BE CONSIDERED A MISSTEP FOR MOST ARTISTS. FOR ME, THIS APPROACH WARDS OFF BOREDOM BUT ALSO CAN IGNITE ALMIGHTY FEAR. ”
A glowing mural wrapping a dining room in New York explores and explodes in scale the traditional elements of still life paintings from the Dutch Golden Age.
I find inspiration absolutely everywhere, so I’m constantly taking pictures of everything from an exhibition of Mughal paintings to water patterns in the shallows, to the progression of a blooming and fading peony. I’m lucky to live near the Metropolitan Museum and Central Park, where I walk almost every day. Each in its own way is a treasure trove. And I love going to the flower market and the botanical gardens. I may live in New York City, but nature will always be a very powerful draw.
For me, murals are the ultimate way to explore composition. Not only are you contending with imagery, but you are working out how to treat each wall of a room, dealing with cornices and moldings and doorways and directional light from windows. The color of the trim is also critical—it can make a mural shine or absolutely kill it, so I always try and weigh in on colors for all of the room’s details—the ceiling, the baseboards, even the light switches which I often paint to blend into the scene.
Sometimes people are fearful that a mural will overpower a room. True, they can be all-encompassing, but I see my work as more of a background. When done well, a mural should recede, but it still has a remarkable power distinct from a painting. A mural offers a fabulous way to step into another world. The possibilities for fantasy are endless.
Jaap Sinke and Ferry van Tongeren in their Haarlem studio.
DARWIN, SINKE & VAN TONGEREN IS AN ABSOLUTE WUNDERKAMMER OF THE NATURAL AND MANMADE, DENSE WITH BONES, PAINT AND PLUMAGE, ALONG WITH AN ABUNDANCE OF ANTIQUES AND FASCINATING EPHEMERA. A DELIGHTFUL, DAZZLING BESTIARY OF ANIMAL COMPOSITIONS THAT ARE MESMERIZING AND GLORIOUS.
A blue and gold macaw looms over the head of a scarlet ibis, framed on the right by a crocodile spine.
DESCRIBING THE WORK OF THE DUTCH ARTISTS
JAAP SINKE AND FERRY VAN TONGEREN AS “TAXIDERMY” IS LIKE CALLING THE WORK OF REVOLUTIONARY DANISH CHEF RENÉ REDZEPI
“COOKING.” YES, PLENTY OF SCIENCE AND PRECISION IS INVOLVED, BUT IMAGINATION AND ARTISTRY IS WHAT ELEVATES “SKIN ART,” AS THEY PRACTICE IT, TO A SINGULAR AND TRANSCENDENT PLANE. FOR SINKE AND VAN TONGEREN, TAXIDERMY IS SCIENCE IN SERVICE OF ART, WHICH IS IN TURN A MEANS, AS ART ALWAYS IS, TO COMMUNICATE. WHAT REMAINS A PASSION HAS BECOME THE ARTISTS’ MISSION: TO AWAKEN THE WORLD, VIA ARRESTING DISPLAYS OF PLUMAGE, SKIN, BONE AND ANIMAL ENERGY, TO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SPECIES. THEIR DREAM IS TO CREATE A MUSEUM OF FINE TAXIDERMY, A MONUMENTAL COLLECTION OF ENDANGERED AND EXTINCT ANIMALS NOT JUST PRESERVED FOR POSTERITY BUT CELEBRATED—NATURE’S ARTISTRY MEETING THEIR OWN. WHAT A FINE AND REMARKABLE LEGACY THAT WOULD BE.
UECO: It strikes us that the two of you are yourselves the rarest of species, creatives whose undying curiosity led you into a whole new mysterious world. How did the interest and shift to taxidermy come about?
VAN TONGEREN: Jaap and I have a shared background in advertising. We have worked together for two decades, first at Ogilvy & Mather where we met, then ultimately at an agency I founded where Jaap became a partner. When I tired of the business and sold it to open a door to a new adventure, I knew it would involve Jaap. Our creative minds share a brain and our skills are complementary. Taxidermy was an unexpected direction, however. While I’ve always been interested in animals, it wasn’t until spending a year traveling with my family after selling my agency that I noticed and became fascinated by so many dead animals along the side of the road. You could say this whole venture was inspired by roadkill.
SINKE: It’s a bit ironic since I grew up on a farm with a father who was a veterinarian. He wasn’t dealing with domesticated pets, so I was exposed to all kinds of raw, bloody animal doings. But that animal awareness, of how they behave and move, is probably in me from then. And in art school I spent a year learning to draw anatomically correct animals.
VAN TONGEREN: Jaap really plays with the animal poses for our pieces. He manipulates a multi-jointed flexible armature used in stop motion work, something he was familiar with from our advertising days. And he sketches all kinds of possible poses. We never use the same pose twice.
SINKE: I also look at videos of animals to see how they move and figure out positions. YouTube is our greatest continuing ed resource. Taxidermy involves more skills than we could have imagined. Both of us are dexterous, but there were so many things we had never done before that we had to learn—welding, carpentry, mixing
chemicals, skinning, tanning—in addition to educating ourselves about the animals themselves.
UECO: The start-to-finish process, from procuring animals to creating an amazing tableau, is so laborious and involved. How do you divide up the specific tasks?
SINKE: We both are involved in bringing the animals to the studio. A zoo or a breeder notifies us that an animal has died and we hop in the jeep and drive to pick it up as soon as possible, before the skin has a chance to dry out. It’s like being on call; we have to drop everything at a moment’s notice. The real hurdle is the paperwork because there are so many regulations involving dead animals. In some countries, you can’t transport a dead animal, so we have to skin it on site. In those cases, we come home with literally skin and bones.
VAN TONGEREN: We only ever buy animals that have been raised in captivity. Animals in the wild suffer all kinds of injuries that make them poor candidates for taxidermy. And we have no interest in being taxidermists to trophy hunters. Zoos are critical to our work. The animals from zoos all have their own passport-like documents stating they were born in captivity and then they're free to trade. Also, zoos have breeding programs for really rare animals that are on the edge of extinction. Zoos continue to present challenges though, especially in the Netherlands, because they are still reluctant to sell us animals. They customarily just burn them or bury them. We struggle all the time with turning the tide.
SINKE: So ultimately we end up with a walk-in freezer full of animals. From there, they move first to Ferry’s surgery table because he is our resident doctor of animal physiognomy.
VAN TONGEREN: I’ve always been fascinated by taxidermy, how it was actually done. You know, like how does a ship in a bottle get made? I pestered a local taxidermist to teach me until he relented—after I offered to work for free for a year—and allowed me to apprentice with him. I still work regularly at the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden, one of the best and oldest collections of taxidermy in the world.
SINKE: Once Ferry has completed the form the animal is taking and dressed the mannequin with its original coat, a process that is quite complex, I step in to do the finish work that brings the skin of the animal back to life. Tanning turns the skin black so I have to paint it to revive its natural color, everything from the full skin of a reptile to the skin around the eyes of birds to their beaks. I use the same oil paints as the Old Masters.
VAN TONGEREN: Jaap is our resident makeup artist and hairdresser. He adds layer upon layer of color to recreate skin and also handles things like manes and tails. And he fabricates our “label.” We found boxes of old gambling chips made of bone that he
then etches with our initials and those of Charles Darwin, our guiding light whom we made our silent partner.
SINKE: Traditional taxidermy has never really interested us. Professional taxidermists, like those employed by natural history museums, are concerned with scientific accuracy. They employ standard factory molds, often a polyurethane form, to serve as the internal body of the animal. So ultimately the animal is “true” but the rendition is very static. Fashioning an active pose for an animal is much more complicated. The mouth may be open, the wings stretched out, all of which requires a lot more finessing not only of the pose of each animal but of the composition as a whole. We make sketches to play with arrangements and arrive at a final composition, devoting as much time to the entire tableau as to the taxidermy. That comes from our advertising background— we understand the power of storytelling.
In the shadow of a 78-80 million-year-old Hadrosaurus skeleton, Sinke and van Tongeren discuss a composition. An antique clock case provides the perch for a spotted eagle owl and three ferruginous pygmy owls in Tower of Owls, destined for a client in Mexico.This page: Antiques and artifacts are critical elements in devising an overall scheme as well as positioning individual animals such as a green guinea turaco or a western pygmy marmoset.
VAN TONGEREN: So many things come into play: drama, balance, expressiveness, engagement between animals. Just like we don’t want to use standard taxidermy forms, we can’t imagine posing animals on ugly mounts made of plastic. We are always combing antique markets for interesting elements that can serve as platforms or frameworks. For as many animals as we have in the freezer, we have shelves and shelves full of antique glass domes, specimen jars, frames, columns, plinths, cages, vitrines. We make our own bases of marble that we stain with coffee to look old or of wood covered in velvet. Our bias is always to the antique.
UECO: Your studio is such an interesting bridge between the past and the future. Despite the instant access that the internet offers, it seems like art history has the biggest influence on your work, at least as far as composition is concerned.
SINKE: We both went to art school and, being Dutch, we are well aware of the Old Master painters. The Dutch Golden Age was a remarkable period of global exploration, a time when traders returned from voyages with exotic animals never before seen in Europe. The work of painters like Frans Snyders, Jan Weenix and Melchior d’Hondecoeter particularly
intrigued us because they put animals together in a painting that would not necessarily cohabit in nature.
VAN TONGEREN: And the animals are often posed quite dynamically, to the extent of warring with each other, so there’s incredible vitality to the painting. For instance, The Threatened Swan by Jan Asselijn, an iconic painting in Dutch art, just explodes with animal energy. These fantastical compositions are so alive and inspiring, a model for our own work. Ours is an alchemic art—taking dead specimens headed for the incinerator and reimagining them into eternal beauty.
17th-century painter Melchior d’Hondecoeter’s radical gathering of birds and monkeys from far-flung places (Africa, Australia, Central America, Indonesia) in his painting The Menagerie, continues to inspire van Tongeren and Sinke.
Survival, Darwin-style: a bald eagle wrestles with a puff adder and a blood python, left, while a verreaux eagle tackles a royal python and a boa constrictor, right.
This page: While van Tongeren handles the placement of glass eyes and the arrangement of magnificent plumage, Sinke meticulously recreates the skin around the eye, using the same paints as artists of the Dutch Golden Age.
A large-scale work in progress
Songbird Orchestra No.1
Skeleton of a golden-handed tamarin atop a marble fragment.
Sinke inscribing a bone gambling chip with the DS&vT logo.
Tiger & Toucans II Jaap Sinke
Preserved tulips at the Teylers Museum.
Sinke at the ever-inspiring 18th-century Teylers Museum, around the corner from the DS&vT studio.
A skull of a Mosasaurus hangs in front of a Hadrosaurus being reassembled along a custom-made steel armature. On the back wall hang two DS&vT prints, the top from the Cattle and Concrete Collection, the bottom, a roseate spoonbill from the Unknown Poses Collection.
Art on display at the International African American Museum.
This page: King of Kings
YoYo Lander
Opposite: Vodunaut #009 (Hyperceiver) Emo de Medeiros
THERE ARE THOSE WHO VIEW THE WORLD THROUGH A PRISM OF THEIR OWN CREATION. THEY ZIG WHEN OTHERS ZAG, HARNESSING THE TOTALITY OF THEIR LIFE EXPERIENCES AND HARD-EARNED PERSPECTIVE TOWARDS
TILTING THE EARTH’S AXIS EVER SO SLIGHTLY, AS IF TO BEND IT WITH THEIR WILL. IN DOING SO, THESE FORCES OF NATURE SEE AROUND CORNERS, CHALLENGE LONG-HELD BELIEFS AND TURN IDEAS INTO ACTIONS, CREATING THINGS THAT WEREN’T THERE BEFORE.
REIMAGINES THE POWER OF PUBLIC SPACE
Walter Hood sharing concepts for the Venice Architecture Biennale.
“ITS ALL GOOD IN THE HOOD” proclaims an old bumper sticker (in artful all caps, no apostrophe) in the bottom glass pane of Hood Design
Studio’s ruby red door, a funky vintage doorknocker beside it. It’s all good inside, too, where on the studio’s first floor five or so associates are busy fine-tuning details of current landscape design and art installation projects, including an ode to the shotgun house vernacular for a Jacksonville, Florida, commission commemorating the Johnson Brothers’ home site where the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” was written. “I call this reflective nostalgia; we’re not re-creating a shotgun house, but reflecting on it, designing a memory device to activate the space,” explains Walter Hood, the studio’s founder.
Upstairs, around a U-shaped conference table, Hood shuffles through his chunky sketchbook and large printouts of prototypes for his most recent, exciting and somewhat urgent endeavor—the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, a tremendous honor and opportunity that his team has just recently been given and now has only three months to prepare for.
The Biennale will be another high point of Hood’s threedecade design career that has had many. His accolades include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award (2017), the Knight Public Spaces Fellowship (2019), the MacArthur Fellowship (2019) and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (also 2019), given “to a highly accomplished artist from any discipline who has pushed the boundaries of an art form, contributed to social change and paved the way for the next generation.” In 2021, Hood was awarded the Architectural League’s President’s Medal, the inscription of which dubbed Hood “the contemporary prophet of landscape and public space.” In addition to park prophet, other colleagues and fans have dubbed him a “community whisperer,” but neither is exactly right. First, there’s the problem of the park, which this renegade landscape designer believes is a tired term.
“The park really doesn’t have any power anymore,” Hood argues, digging his dirt-loving heels into a critical stance against the typology of traditional landscape architecture and environmental design. “Can we stop talking about types and talk about people’s relationship to things and places?” he asks.
Nor is Hood’s asking a whisper. The Oakland, Californiabased polymath—landscape designer, artist, urbanist, educator, provocateur—with his pulled-back dreads tinged with gray and his easy, youthful smile has a soft-spoken, gentle presence, but his designs, his vision, his art, is bold. Loud even.
Lush ferns and tree ferns outside the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.
Hood cranked up the volume, for example, in his paradigm-shifting “Black Towers/Black Power” installation at MoMA in 2021, part of “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America,” the first-ever MoMA exhibit to feature Black architects. In it, Hood presented a series of ten rhythmic, sculptural high-rise towers along an urban California avenue, each tower inspired by a patent held by African American innovators (e.g. the folding chair and heating furnace). Together, they “reimagine(d) what a healthy, vibrant and safe neighborhood might look like for Black and Brown people,” Hood explained. His evocative ebony towers and the show in general was “mind-blowing, beautiful work,” according to The New York Times, with “radical goals,” including offering “necessary responses to a system of cultural exclusion that, time and again, erased, demeaned and denied Blackness.”
No, Walter Hood doesn’t whisper to the community, or to a project site, or even to an august institution like MoMA. Rather, he listens to the land’s whispers, the residents’ whispers. His ear is to the ground. He is tuned to echoes of ancestors, to the murmurs of memory and pleas of place, to fissures and scars, stories and dreams long buried, excluded, erased. Despite his three-plus decades of practice and internationally celebrated career as a landscape designer, Walter Hood doesn’t really design landscapes. At least not in the sense of an expert swooping in to impose his vision on a project—a massing of pretty perennials here, shady benches there. Instead, Hood interrogates, interprets and amplifies the narratives that the place, the land, already holds.
Consider, for example, the art-filled geometric gardens at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, where Hood embraced
what he calls the “conscious/unconscious hybridization” of landscapes by pushing against the romantic notion to return to origin (in this case, the origin of Golden Gate park is a big sand dune). Alternatively, he created a fiction, an artifice—a sculpture tea garden and lush tree ferns enveloped within the museum itself, with “places for kids to play and benches for people to sleep on,” he says. “We’re trying to get people to look down at the ground as they move through this space, look at the stone, the beautiful coloration of the sandstone, and actually think about where they are.”
Or consider Oakland’s Splash Pad Park, where Hood re-envisioned the underpass below the intrusive I-580, activating mundane parking spaces and curbs into a vibrant community gathering place, now home to the East Bay’s largest farmer’s market. And one of his more recent projects, the sacred grounds of the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, where, among other elements, Hood created an infinityedge fountain engraved with abstract forms suggesting figures bound in slave ship bowels to mark the threshold where more than 40 percent of the African diaspora arrived as enslaved chattel. “Our work is about fusing and disrupting and being really deliberate about how we are doing things based on the places in which we are making things,” he explains.
Whether designing for a major museum or cultural institution or a blighted urban streetscape, Hood begins with an intuitive and nuanced sense of place, which is where his personal creative path began as well. Growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, the son of a career service man, Hood and his family lived in subsidized housing when he was young. For junior high, he was bussed from the
inner city to the suburbs—he remembers being in 7th grade before he first saw a split-level house—and by high school, his family moved to the suburbs. There, as on family trips to visit relatives up North, Hood became aware of how Black people moved through the world differently in these contrasting environments—his first inklings of grappling with the formative power of the public realm. Though he didn’t yet have the vocabulary and conceptual framework to define it, Hood perceived that people act differently in response to different environments, and even as a young man, he began to innately grasp the sociology of spaces.
Always a dabbler and drawer, Hood’s interest in art led to drafting in high school, and from there, to enrolling in North Carolina A&T State University’s architecture program—becoming the first in his family to attend college. After hearing a visiting lecturer discuss landscape architecture, however, Hood switched majors, lured by what he felt was a more multidisciplinary approach to design. At the time, NC A&T was the only Historically Black College
or University (HBCU) to offer a degree in landscape architecture. Hood entered a field where, to this day, he remains an anomaly in a white-dominated profession.
For Hood, landscape design has always been an expansive artistic endeavor. He’s less a green-thumb horticulturalist than a visionary, an ever-curious intellectual interested in planting and nurturing verdant ideas, and he’s got the degrees to prove it. After earning his undergraduate degree and working a few years for the National Park Service and a private firm in Philadelphia, Hood went back to school, earning a master’s in landscape design and another in architecture at University of California, Berkeley. Later, he earned his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Academia is fertile ground for a heady guy like Hood, who has been a professor at UC Berkeley since 1993 and lectures widely on campuses around the country, but he’s always combined teaching and mentoring students with his active practice, never retreating to the ivory tower. Unless you count the airy loft of his studio complex on the gritty edge of West Oakland, a
neighborhood that’s served as Hood’s living laboratory of sorts.
Two doors down from the live/work courtyard—a former sign factory—that is Hood Design Studio headquarters, a onestory brick building with barred door and windows boasts a hand-painted “American Casket Company” sign. Beside it, a small house’s façade features a quirky mural, with a discarded toilet-turned-planter as yard art. Across the street, chain link fencing encircles a scruffy abandoned lot. Today West Oakland, the city’s oldest neighborhood and birthplace of the Black Panthers, as well as the focus of Oakland’s “General Neighborhood
Renewal Plan” of the late 1950s, is pocked with pawnshops and payday lenders. Homeless squatters and bleak tent enclaves abound. Hood doesn’t have to look far to observe the recurring cycle of deterioration, renewal and deterioration again that results when paternalistic practices of traditional
An early conceptual prototype. Vintage photographs spark ideas in the studio. Hood instructing a team member on a shotgun house model for a Jacksonville, Florida, commission.
Pages from one of Hood’s many sketchbooks.
Hood's studio and project modeling workshop.
This page: Just outside Fire Station No. 35, BOW, a public sculpture/art installation on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, paying homage to the heroism of fire boats after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
urban planning fail to account for “the dynamic economic and social structures of the neighborhood,” he says.
This failure was top-of-mind when, in 1999, Hood was tasked with redesigning Oakland’s Lafayette Square Park, commonly referred to as “old man’s park,” thanks to its popularity among Oakland’s unhoused, including many elderly men. He fought to ensure the redesign met the needs of the diverse population that actually used it, including his adamancy that the new park offer public bathrooms for the homeless, as well as a children’s play area, flower garden, picnic areas and a central water feature. When his firm redesigned the gardens for the Oakland Museum of California in 2021, Hood again set about “breaking the box,” adding new plantings, lighting and gathering areas that softened the hard perimeter, enhancing accessibility and the interface between the museum and the city. Hood set about creating a free public space that welcomed and represented Californians by “investigating what it meant to be a museum for the people,” as the studio’s website notes.
Hood, in his reserved, gentle, cerebral way, has “created his own lane, crafted new language as he celebrates the strangeness of each place,” says New York-based landscape architect Sara Zewde, his former Hood Design Studio colleague and mentee. By transforming run-ofthe-mill public spaces like Lafayette Park and a freeway underpass into inclusive spaces that nurture a sense of community, Hood gives testimony to their resonance and power. Through his artistic meshing of urbanism, public art and landscape design and a process that includes collage, photography, sketching and music—a process perhaps akin to his childhood dabbling—Hood rigorously challenges our understanding of public space. In doing so, he continues to break new ground in designing common ground for the common good.
Hood’s signature audacity and boundary-pushing body of work was also the reason legendary architect Henry “Harry” Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, designer of Boston’s iconic John Hancock Tower, picked up the phone in the summer of 2016, called him, and simply said, “Walter, I need you.”
“I didn’t even know what the project was, but when Harry calls, the answer is yes,” Hood laughs. A few weeks later he found himself in Charleston, meeting with Cobb and the team assembled to design the International African American Museum on Gadsden's Wharf, literally the embarkation site, “the threshold where Africans crossed over and became African Americans,” Hood says. Creating a museum to tell the full story of the African diaspora, stories central to the Lowcountry and American experience but often overlooked, had long been a dream of the former Charleston mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., who first proposed the museum sixteen years before Hood got Cobb’s call.
“We knew Walter was the visionary we needed. He was tired of visiting civil rights and African American heritage sites that didn’t evoke emotion, convey gravity or make him feel much of anything about his own ancestry,” Riley says. “He sensed exactly what this project called for through his simple strategy of coming here and listening and learning.”
Hood, as always, was eager to listen and learn, to put his ear to the ground, but the weight of this project gave him pause. “The IAAM scared the hell out of me. I’d never done anything like it,” he confesses. But he knew Charleston, having designed the courtyard for Memminger Auditorium (now called Festival Hall) in 2008, and a Spoleto Festival USA installation that recreated a rice wetland in the Memminger Elementary School's paved play yard. He knew he could work well given Cobb’s collaborative spirit, and he respected Cobb’s building design: “a spare, elegant, non-rhetorical building that services the landscape without saying ‘look at me,’” Hood says. And he knew an opportunity of this magnitude would likely be his legacy project.
While visiting local historic sites to gain insight into the project, Hood saw a copy of the diagram from the slave ship Brookes on Sullivan’s Island—an image depicting how slave traders could barbarically cram 454 captured Africans into the vessel’s hold. The haunting image reminded him of an abstract African textile, and it sparked his idea to sculpt a similar design on the bottom of an infinity pool and fountain below the lofted building, marking the historic edge of the wharf. Water in the fountain drains and refills several times daily like the tide, ritualizing the sacred ground of the wharf and symbolically collapsing time, melding past and future, honoring African ancestors and the continuation of the diaspora through generations to come.
The fountain/infinity pool below the IAAM features engraved figures that represent captives in the hold of a slave ship. The pool fronts the wharf and fills and empties on tide-like cycles.
Moody Nolan and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners’ unrhetorical building design “floats” on cylinderlike piers, leaving the sacred ground below open for Hood’s activation. Black marble walls suggest the “hush harbors” tradition—landscapes where Africans would gather in secret to share and keep alive stories from their homeland.
One of a series of abstract forms suggesting humans emerging from bondage.
A serpentine brick wall embraces a stelae garden of abstract monuments to ancestors.
Other landscape design elements include a series of rhythmic dunes suggesting waves or burial mounds on the street side of the museum, a sweeping field of native sweetgrass and an ethno-botanic garden linking West Africa with the Lowcountry, as well as regal palm trees native to West Africa. An obelisk-like stelae garden suggests monuments, purposely undesignated “so visiting school groups can choose which ancestors or leader they might want to dedicate one to,” explains Dr. Tonya Matthews, the museum’s chief executive. On the museum’s east side, a massive black granite wall inscribed with a verse from Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” marks where a slave warehouse once stood. Archived records recount 700 captive Africans freezing to death while held there.
“I love how Walter has masterfully infused a sense of living into this site of deep trauma,” Matthews says. “The way the sun glistens on the water, the way the water is always in motion and the sweetgrass swaying—you can see and feel the life and energy and continuity in this space. For Walter, every element is imbued with story, which fits the museum, because first and foremost we are storytellers.”
From his North Carolina childhood to his decades practicing in California, Hood as a Black man has grappled with a central question: “are the places that I inhabit valued?” He articulates this in his book Black Landscapes Matter, arguing that “Black landscapes matter because they are prophetic. They tell the truth of the struggles and victories of African Americans in North America. Black landscapes matter because they can be ‘born again,’” he writes. Resuscitating them requires care to “ensure their resonance and power are not lost….We must be audacious in what we bring forward.” Here, on the shore of Charleston Harbor, at the site where thousands of captive people began lives of enslavement, Hood has brought forth a design that is prophetic and redemptive, poetic and audacious. Harnessing the artistry of sculpture, water, stone, dune, sweetgrass, imagery and memory, he brings new life to sacred ground.
Towering palms native to West Africa and gently rolling grass dunes reference coastal connections from Africa to South Carolina and the perpetual ebb-and-flow of history.
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Sailboats flank the 19th-century royal yacht Sírius at Lisbon’s Maritime Museum.
Covers: The finish of hand-painted Portuguese tiles mimics ripples on the surface of the sea.
Planes, trains, automobiles. Highflying, high-cruising Michael Phillips is always on the move. As president of Jamestown, a far-reaching real estate investment company specializing in community-minded, design-driven projects in cities around the world, he is either checking on spots he’s already put on the map (Industry City in New York; Ponce City Market in Atlanta; Urban Electric’s very own neighborhood, the Navy Yard Charleston, to name a few) or figuring out where next to plant Jamestown’s flag.
Phillips is to placemaking what Leonard Bernstein was to music, a maestro with a sixth sense for his subject and a gift for orchestrating many moving parts. He has the talent, beyond identifying a locale, for recognizing that a hybrid of different sectors—residential, retail, hospitality, office—coupled with a focus on design is key to the vigor and staying power of a public place. And he has the budget to nurture their cross-pollination, to ensure
that design is not a superficial grammable gloss but a substantial factor. For Phillips, good design is essential.
As a child, seeing the James Rouse developments, big public-private partnerships in cities like Baltimore and New York, made him look at development differently, as the full ideation of a place. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was Ian Schrager’s hotels that demonstrated the value of design. Through them, he understood, as he says “what makes something transformational in the built environment. It made me consider development through the lens of brand building, of creating place through thematic pillars that engage a constituency.” As is so often the case, personal interest and recognition of something missing is the driver. “I have a huge interest in design because I ultimately want to be the consumer of everything I create.”
Phillips seeks out places that start with a strong narrative thread weaving together
location, community and history. Then, through the application of design and programming, he enriches the story, creating vibrant hubs that are fundamentally local, humble, layered, colorful, exciting, aspirational and inclusive. Put simply, the goal is to cultivate destinations where he and, as it turns out, many others want to be.
As an insatiable scout, what better spot for Phillips to drop anchor than Lisbon, the home port of Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan, intrepid explorers in an age of discovery that shrank the world, giving rise to the earliest globalism. “I was struck,” Phillips says, “by the similarity in climate, experience and energy between Lisbon and San Francisco,” where he has roots. “Portugal also is leading Europe in its desire to welcome new business and new ideas. That friendly business environment coupled with Lisbon’s strong cultural heritage and architectural traditions makes for an overall compelling opportunity.”
WITH A KEEN EYE, A SENSITIVE NOSE AND AN IMPRESSIVE TRACK RECORD, MICHAEL PHILLIPS IS MORE THAN A PLACEMAKER. HE’S A VISIONARY WHOSE SURE SENSE OF WHAT SHAPES A DYNAMIC LOCUS ALWAYS INVOLVES DESIGN.
All that remains after the devastating earthquake of 1755 of the nave of the Carmo Covenant serves as the heart of the Carmo Archaeological Museum.
Consider the Innovation & Design Building Lisbon, a 60,000-square-meter office building from the late 1960s, located at the edge of Parque das Nações, Lisbon’s newest business hub. As Phillips’ first foray in Lisbon, IDB is home to a range of commercial entities, from airlines and insurance companies to social services and a professional school, newly energized with art installations and happenings on its vast rooftop, providing a draw, San Francisco-style, for innovative companies. But the roof is equally designed to serve as a lively public square for the surrounding neighborhood, a vibrant example of Phillips’ savvy in deploying art and culture and local passions to create magnetic and enduring places.
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For Phillips, “great buildings attract colorful stewards and great characters.” Palacio do Grilo embodies this–Phillips admires its imaginative reinvention in the hands of talented creatives. A 350-year-old estate on a steep rise just above the Tagus River, the palace and its gardens were in decline for years, but now have the benefit of being the only private palace in Lisbon in its original state. Enter Leonard Degoy, a chicly disheveled Frenchman with deep wells of style and a flair for the theatrical. With very little intervention, no big fixing up or paving over, he has brought the palace sympathetically and seductively back to life.
Virtually the whole palace is a stage set, with twice daily performances by dancers, actors
and musicians, many of whom double as waiters serving dishes from a limited but well-considered menu to diners seated throughout the soaring rooms. Custom-designed oak and eucalyptus tables and chairs in contemporary geometric shapes mingle with repurposed architectural fragments, all in smart contrast to the molting plaster walls. The antithesis of the typical “dinner theater,” this well-designed quirkiness appeals to Phillips’ love of bold reimagining.
Such spectacular stylized decrepitude ignites Phillips’ interest in diving deeper into Lisbon’s history and cultural heritage, which he does with Irish noble Hugo O’Neill and his Spanish wife Carmen. As former president of the National Association of
Historic Houses in Portugal and a descendant of Portuguese O’Neills who trace back to when brothers Shane, Felix and Carlos arrived in 1740, Hugo is a walking encyclopedia of Portuguese history and a sage cultural interpreter. “Inspiration and cultural understanding come from spending time with people who present a more nuanced side of communities,” Phillips says. “From Hugo and Carmen, I learned how connected we are to that arc of history, the values of the people and the celebration of what matters.”
As Phillips knows, places are soulless without people. His projects begin and end with the human element.
Palacio do Grilo
Leonard Degoy
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This spread: The interiors of Palacio do Grilo are an inspired admixture of Neoclassical architecture, Baroque gestures and theatrical interventions.
Creating a place that attracts all kinds and keeps them coming stems from a deep understanding of a locale, made possible by connecting with residents from the beginning, and in the end, by having a team of people as creative and skilled as they are knowledgeable. “I love all of it,” Phillips says, “but getting to work with really talented people and seeing the enjoyment and pleasure our work gives to the end consumer and user is especially rewarding. The ultimate is to see the places we create become self-generating and embedded in the community consciousness.”
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Leonard Degoy and Michael Phillips in the yet-to-be restored gardens of the Palacio do Grilo.
“The ultimate is to see the places we create become self-generating and embedded in the community consciousness.”
The patron saint of the fishermen of Aveiro hovers over a ship model at the Maritime Museum.
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ON A MISTY DAY AT THE SOUTHERN TIP OF MANHATTAN, DESIGNER DAVID NETTO AND JOURNALIST WENDY GOODMAN , BOTH NEW YORK NATIVES AND AUTHORS, MEET US AT CASA CIPRIANI—THE ICONIC CLUB AND HOTEL RECENTLY OPENED IN THE HISTORIC BEAUX-ARTS BATTERY MARITIME BUILDING. WE’VE LONG BEEN ADMIRERS (FANS, ACTUALLY) OF THESE TWO INDUSTRY LEGENDS, ALWAYS INTERESTED IN WHAT THEY DO, SEE AND SAY. WHILE WE INVITED THEM TO A CONVERSATION ABOUT LEGACY, WE KNEW THAT ‘SHOP TALK’ WOULD FLOW ALONGSIDE. AS EXPECTED, AND TO OUR DELIGHT, THESE TWO OLD FRIENDS AND DESIGN COLLEAGUES PROVIDE SHARP COMMENTARY IN ANECDOTES, MEMORIES, SENSIBILITIES, OPINIONS AND IDEAS.
David arrives first, a few minutes early, and we have a quick coffee in the bar. He is keen on the building, knowledgeable about it and seems appreciative that the restoration and decoration—sensitive to architect Thierry Despont’s fascination with the greatest ocean liners—delivers. Wendy, equally no stranger to the city’s private sanctums, joins us in a cheerful (for the gray day) plaid woolen coat, and we head to our appointed meeting place upstairs. As for how the two of them met, Wendy says “we’ve been friends and colleagues for so long that I can’t exactly recall,” but David’s memory is more specific. “I was aware of Wendy ever since I was a sentient New Yorker, but we first met in 2002 after she contacted me about an early project of mine.” He stops just short of naming the day, though it seemed like he might know it, recalling their meeting with such excitement. Cameras are set, mics switched on, and we settle in for this introspective conversation overlooking New York Harbor.
UECO: Let’s start off ... how do you spend your day, Wendy?
WENDY: I work for New York Magazine telling the stories of the city through people’s environments, the way people are living. They are not necessarily legendary or even legacy makers, they might be, but legacy doesn’t have to be the plan (smiles). David is much more knowledgeable than really anybody about the history of design and its legacy.
UECO: David. You, as a designer. How did that get going?
DAVID: My path to design was organic, and I was more conflicted about it. I went to architecture school and wanted to do architecture that was history-based. When you go to architecture school now, it’s glass curtain walls, descriptive geometry, stuff like that. I became more interested in residential design after realizing that being a decorator was as good a way
to make an impact as being an architect. A decorator’s contribution is to shape a house, if they’re any good, by knowing how people want to live.
UECO: But you’re a writer too. Was there someone who said, ‘you’re a good writer, you’ve got it?’
DAVID: When Deborah Needleman became the editor of WSJ Magazine she wanted a design editor. She wrote me a one-line email that just said ‘I want to turn you into a writer.’ I had written two things for her for Domino; readers liked them, and I guess she liked them. It was an interesting challenge, because nobody took WSJ Mag seriously as a source of design then, but in a very short amount of time, she absolutely made the case that they should. I was thrilled to be a part of that.
UECO: You’re old friends and you both grew up in New York City. A place full of legacies AND legends. What jumps out?
DAVID: Well, the restaurant that is now gone, and can never be again, was Mortimer’s. If you try to explain why that is, it just disappears through your fingers. I wrote a gag essay about what it was like to be a loser there, when I was ten years old, with my parents. My mom liked the food and would make us go there for lunch. We didn't know anyone, and I was the only one who was mortified by that.
WENDY: The Oak Bar and Trader Vic's. And then Schrafft’s. I would go with my mother after the dentist. Very smart. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it's my favorite place in the whole world. You'll light up with joy, David, at the memory of these—the Top of the Sixes and the Stanhope Cafe. It’s all blood memory, right? Being born and raised as a New Yorker, it’s part of my DNA. It’s physical, and there are certain places I miss so much, but I think, ‘OK, you’ve got to be looking forward.’
UECO: How do you keep in touch with these memories?
DAVID: I like to watch movies and look for old New York. The one that everybody knows is The French Connection, because you see all these exterior dolly shots at the Westbury Hotel.
WENDY: Oh and Breakfast at Tiffany's! When it was filmed, 5th Avenue was two way. The old Tiffany’s was absolutely flawless…(trails off)
UECO: Let’s talk about books. David, you have a new one, just out, about your own design work. What will it say about you?
DAVID: Well, I guess we’ll find out what legacy I may have with it! And if that doesn’t clinch it, then I don’t have a legacy. But after 20 years in this business, you’ve got to have a book, it’s sort of expected (laughs). I’ve accepted that it was my fate!
UECO: And Wendy, your book, May I Come In—tell us how you came to it?
WENDY: I had so much material from the gift of working for so many great magazines, and I wanted to show these incredible places and pay homage to these extraordinary people who let me come into their homes; many don’t exist anymore. I divided the work up between sort of the feeling and the characters of these places and ...
DAVID: ... (jumps in) You thought up the best title!
WENDY: (laughs) Well, it was just what I was always asking, ‘may I come in?’ So, I thought, there’s the title. I am excited and so curious about people. And that's my life. I am a worker bee; I think that to do what I do, and to do what David does, you must be interested in people, in listening to them. So yes, you have to really just want to know and tell stories. I only write about people I think are fantastic, right?
UECO: Right! So then who do you think, in our world of design, is doing exceptional work right now?
WENDY: (Pauses) A hard question, even if he wasn’t sitting here, I would say David has an extraordinary, unique antenna for design that he can also make happen. Steven Gambrel has a very good take on the things that he loves to do. And his own homes are particularly amazing and wonderful. There’s a whole new crop of designers who have a very interesting take that is not based on classicism.
DAVID: I’m glad I didn’t have to go first (laughs). Among the Americans that I get excited about watching–Will Cooper. An enormous talent. Whatever he’s showing, it’s a surprise and site specific. He's drawn to obscure furniture. Another brilliant designer is Andre Mellone. He’s doing a very 1930/40s Donald Deskey, Mexico City kind of thing. He’s done this incredible lobby for a building in Rockefeller Center. It’s very sensitive, very deferential to the architecture of that place and yet it’s unmistakably new. And of the Europeans that I watch, I love everything I see from Fabrizio Casiraghi in Paris. I don’t know anything about him so it’s not a very informed judgment, but he’s clearly talented and I hope to meet him one day. I love how Giancarlo Valle merges this European sensibility with a warmth in the work. And to pay a compliment to somebody who’s not a decorator, but whose very curated, very postmodern apartment, when it was published in Architectural Digest , blew the top of my head off and I still think about it, I’ll add Cara Delevingne. You had to know what you were doing to pick those pieces. Clients deserve some credit.
UECO: Do you think social media plays into a designer creating a statement or daresay, a legacy?
WENDY: I don’t think legacy is an instant thing, ever. It's not a one-shot deal, you must have a body of work. You become a legend by doing extraordinary things over and over, because that's who you are. It’s a way of living, a set of values. So much of what we see on Instagram is so disposable.
DAVID: I think there is something counterintuitive going on. I believe Pinterest and Instagram and this sort of flood of design imagery that you get via your phone has actually made books more important. You can learn about what you like more quickly than ever. You can be 20 years old, from the Midwest, you can show up in New York, and suddenly you're talking about Mongiardino. I see this happen with the kids who work for me and the things that they’re interested in, and you just want to say, how did you first get exposed to this? In the past, we went to Archivia, which is a Manhattan bookstore Wendy will remember, and tried to figure out what to reach for on a shelf without knowing anything. You just were in there with thousands of great books, and maybe they were all great. Instagram opens that first door to what you might be drawn to. ‘This is what I like, this is totally cool. I didn’t think this was still going on in the world. I want to know more.’
UECO: So, are there some upsides to living in a fast, visual world?
DAVID: Yes (pauses). One syndrome I find, however, is that clients only believe something that's already happened. Which they see on Instagram. Because they trust history. They hold up a picture and say ‘we need to do this.’ And I always say, ‘what are the rooms that we’re going to make that add to the legacy that you're mythologizing?’
UECO: What’s an example of that, David?
DAVID: (laughs) It can be a completely
alien mode of thinking to a lot of clients to think that adding to something is within their grasp. So, it’s my job as a designer to get them to believe in me enough to see that we’re going to create new rooms that expand the canon that they’re already so excited about.
UECO: Would you say there is such a thing as a legacy interior?
DAVID: I’ve always thought that an editor's job is to know what’s good before anybody else. To look ahead and see around corners and share it. But none of us really gets to decide what becomes a legacy interior because that collective appraisal of something being important or interesting might be 10 or 30 years out. What Wendy does is show it; you might think something’s going to be a huge hit. And you share it and it is crickets. But 20 years later, the world figures out, ‘oh remember that story of Wendy Goodman’s?’ and then there is this momentum. It will become a legacy at that time, not at the time of its reporting.
UECO: Interesting. So Wendy, what are you looking for?
WENDY: For me, finding great stories, ones that might stand for something one day, isn’t easy. There is a lot of work out there, but it’s the same sectional, the same set of bookcases, the same colors. And if I walk in and don’t know ‘who’ lives there, what they like to collect and what that says about them, there isn’t a story there. For me.
“ I don’t think legacy is an instant thing, ever. It’s not a one-shot deal, you must have a body of work. You become a legend by doing extraordinary things over and over because that’s who you are. It’s a way of living, a set of values.”
David and Wendy outside one of Casa Cipriani’s shiplike suites reminiscent of the SS Normandie.
UECO: And how do you both put all this thinking to work?
DAVID: We’re looking for new quality. It’s got to be about quality. Something encouraging happened after COVID, everybody seems to have collectively realized the value of these old places. There’s a renewed wave of emotional attachment to The Carlyle, for example. Hipsters fell in love with The Carlyle because they didn’t want the old, great things to go away. Kids see things in a
new way.
WENDY: Exactly. The designer who gets it doesn’t give the client an automatic life, right? Even though that’s what some clients want so much. A designer builds on the life their client has. And gives them surprises that they didn’t even know they wanted. That's important. That’s legacy.
UECO: Parting wisdom please?
WENDY: (pauses) Well, the thing is, I
believe you have to be part of your time. And you have to be plugged into what is going on in the culture, what’s going on with young people. Because if you can’t speak to the moment, there is a lack of authenticity that’s visible.
DAVID: (nodding) You have to write about the things people care about, not just things that you care about. And I completely agree with Wendy. You have to design in a way that is part of your time.
HOUGHTON
INTERIORS
PLENTY OF PLACES HAVE LOVINGLY ‘BORROWED’ SOME OF MELON’S BEST MOVES, BUT WHENEVER WE’RE IN THE CITY, WE CAN’T HELP BUT STOP IN TO ADMIRE THE ORIGINAL. AN UNDENIABLY OLD-SCHOOL JOINT, FROM THE GLOWING NEON SIGN THAT HOVERS ABOVE THIRD AVENUE TO THE GLEAMING CHROME REGISTER THAT ANCHORS THE BAR (AND ONLY ACCEPTS CASH) TO THE GREEN CHECKED TABLECLOTHS AND BRIC-A-BRAC ARTWORK THAT LINES THE WALLS. LIKE ANY TRUE CLASSIC, IT FULLY EMBRACES ITS PATINA.
Cheers to twenty years!
THERE IS A RAREFIED BEAUTY THAT COMES FROM CONTINUITY. A PROFOUND HONOR THAT REVERBERATES FROM A REVERENCE OF THE LESSONS OF THE PAST AND THE GLORIES, FOLLIES AND FOIBLES OF OUR PREDECESSORS. WITH EACH NEW LINK ON THE GENERATIONAL CHAIN, A COLLECTIVE WISDOM CAUTERIZES AND COMPOUNDS. AND A COMMON UNDERSTANDING EMERGES THAT FOR EVERY PRECIOUS HEIRLOOM OR ESTATE, TRADE OR TRADITION, WE’RE ONLY JUST CARETAKERS FOR OUR FUTURE SELVES.
The knowledge, creativity and know-how of multiple generations enriched Chris and Matthew Cox’s childhoods. Now this legacy infuses and informs their work in furnishing the future for generations yet to come.
Every few days, when the Cox brothers were growing up in England, their father would lug home some new treasure, extolling its virtues and unwittingly sowing the seeds of his sons’ futures. “He was always off buying and he’d come back with fantastic things,” Chris says. “‘Look at this, Matthew. Look at this, Chris!’ You’ll never see an example as good as this,’ he’d say, and we could feel his enthusiasm.”
The Cox boys were so immersed in the antiques trade that its influence proved inescapable and utterly inspirational. And they weren’t the only ones. No fewer than 12 members of their immediate family are or were notable antique dealers, especially their father, Robin, and grandfather, Ralph, who literally wrote the book on Victorian tinware with a tome he authored in 1970, but also their grandmother and various aunts and uncles. It was how Robin and their mother met. It was what the boys lived and breathed, a tide in which they became strong swimmers. “You could say it’s in the family bloodstream,” Chris says. “But it’s more that there was nothing else in our veins. It’s all we know.”
Well, not exactly true. Chris, a sculptor/maker and partner with his artist wife Nicola in Cox London, and Matthew, an antiques dealer who now has a furniture workshop, know a lot about a wide variety of subjects, much of it learned by osmosis from their dad, as well as from their mother, Pearl Bugg, who pitched in for the family business by restoring and recoloring pieces, a practice that later led to her own artistic pursuits.
A delightful woman with an endearing name to match, Pearl Bugg is a self-taught master of many things: renovating, gardening and floral design, and especially painting. Her charming animal portraits, primarily birds and dogs with a smattering of barnyard beasts, render the animals’ distinct personalities. When the kids were younger, however, and her restless husband was either off on the hunt or busy buying and selling properties (the family moved five times), she not only managed the household but often did the plumbing and house painting.
Between finding, making and doing, the scrappy Cox family developed an acumen fitting for their environment—their fantastically antique hometown of Stamford, Lincolnshire, an ancient market town right out of a period movie set (which it has been many times over). With the soul of old things permeating their every pore, the boys developed a love and appreciation for time-honored craftsmanship, materials that last, the beauty of patina, the power of an object’s evolving history as it is passed from generation to generation. And with this shared passion, Chris and Matthew set off on diverging yet complementary paths.
THE COX BOYS WERE SO IMMERSED IN THE ANTIQUES TRADE THAT ITS INFLUENCE PROVED INESCAPABLE AND UTTERLY INSPIRATIONAL.
Jagger greets Chris and Nicola in their bedroom where a favorite tapa cloth from Tonga hangs.
Opposite, left: Chris fabricated an iron base, inspired by the work of Gilbert Poillerat, for the voluptuously scalloped 19th-century stone basin converted into a sink for the primary bathroom.
Opposite, right: Ogun chairs surround the Reed dining table (all Cox London creations) which supports artistic endeavors every bit as much as dining.
As artists who can’t remember a time when they weren’t fabricating things, Chris and Nicola fully embrace the moniker of “maker.” Their material of choice is metal—steel for Chris and bronze for Nicola. “It’s rare to have ferrous and non-ferrous in the same workshop,” Chris says. “Nicky’s always been the bronze founder and I’ve been the forger and fabricator since I was better at welding. We’re a perfect team in that respect.”
Their collaboration started while both were studying and experimenting in the three-year sculpture program at Wimbledon School of Art. Nicola was always primarily interested in casting, exploring plaster and cement fondue before igniting her interest in the bronze foundry at school. Chris, meanwhile,was busy making objet trouvé by welding scraps, pulling from a towering heap of metal at school, much as he did in high school after discovering an enticing cache of raw materials at the edge of a field in Stamford, a pile of stuff too rusty or broken to be of use to the farmer who dumped it. “I made animals mostly, horse heads, lifesize goats,” Chris says. “It’s what got me into art school.”
On visits back to Stamford, he would also plunder his father’s and grandfather’s troves of antique books and auction catalogs. “One of Ralph’s great passions was metalwork—tinware, ironware, the humble as well as the fine, the older the better,” Chris says. “Along with a great eye, he had a wonderful library covering everything from the work of Renaissance sculptors to that of Alexander Calder, always one of my faves.” Because these catalogs tended to be mostly about lighting, Chris has been intrigued by chandeliers and other forms of fixtures from the very
beginning. Right out of school, he worked for an antique restorer of metal, primarily chandeliers, in London’s East End. In one short week he felt he’d found his life’s work. “All of the components and parts of lighting, creating it from scratch, asking dealers how much it would cost to restore a fixture—these were things I understood. I’d seen these materials around my house; I’d overheard my father and grandfather discussing all these things.”
But Chris still had to learn the brass tacks: threading, lathe operation, silver and lead soldering, polishing, lacquering, patinating, gilding, wiring. Nicola meanwhile, having furthered her knowledge by working for a glass artist back home in New Zealand, was heading up the wax room at a foundry in the Docklands, and honing the many skills demanded of bronze casting (a process with at least six steps) each of which is critical and exacting.
It was, for both of them, an essential period of “learning and earning,” Chris says. “But really all we wanted to do was make what we wanted to make.” Nicola still tends to start a piece with narrative, with ideas constantly germinating from a rich compost of information and knowledge. Chris, on the other hand, dives right into the making. Initially the two primarily created furnishings needed for their little Victorian house, the kinds of things that are still Cox London’s sweet spot: clean-lined furniture, lighting inspired by the antiques Chris grew up around and mirrors. But it is pieces like the Floral chandelier that most exuberantly express his and Nicola’s sculptural core, flights of imagination and desire to create pieces with personality and soul.
Chris and Nicola’s eclectic sitting room featuring multiple pieces made in their own workshop, including an octagonal coffee table, bold andirons and iron picture rails. An Oculus mirror and an antique sofa were acquired from Chris’s brother Matthew.
Exquisite tangles of branches, leaves, buds and blossoms, forged of iron and brass, subtly lit from within, hover over a table like an impossibly lush nest set adrift on a current of air. The eight months it took to work out the initial design was time well-spent; the chandelier put Cox London on the map. “Nicky and I both love nature and wildlife,” Chris says. “It’s definitely something my mother instilled in me.” A conservatory at the back of their current Edwardian terrace house in north London brims with palms and succulents much like those Chris grew up learning to nurture, minus the lizards and iguanas he had as a boy.
Plants, like these in the conservatory, are key occupants of the Cox house, just like they were in Chris’s childhood homes.
The natural, freeform design of the Magnolia chandelier contrasts with more structured geometric candlesticks.
Around the corner from a spectacularly graphic 1940s Fijian tapa that nearly covers a wall of the living room hangs a large Brighton Station lantern, a Cox design based on an antique.
Nature is a number one inspiration as
All of it is stuff to feed the imagination, natural forms that first find their way onto paper before blossoming into three dimensions from the drawings that Chris and Nicola create. Through materials as old and weighty as time—bronze, brass, stone, glass—and a deep understanding of patination, they miraculously capture the evanescence of nature in a form that can last forever.
Aided by a team of skilled makers in their ever-expanding Tottenham workshop, Chris and Nicola are turning out pieces for the ages, on display in their Pimlico Road showroom, territory Chris knows well. “Since I was ten years old, a good half a dozen major dealers on this road used to call on my father,” he says. Now all sorts of dealers and designers call on Chris and Nicola in London and Matthew in Stamford, eager to soak up another generation of Cox acumen and eye.
A lasting impression.
Chris and Nicola in the workshop.
This spread: The artistry and industry behind the creative process of Cox London.
Matthew Cox and Camilla McLean flank Matthew’s mother, Pearl Bugg, in the front parlor of their Georgian house.
Like Chris, Matthew’s upbringing with all things old has led to his 26-year career as an antiques dealer. He attributes his passion and joy to the fact that “provenance or no provenance, every piece has a story to tell.” And often, in his hands, a new life to live. Though not a “maker” per se, Matthew is a first-rate adapter. He sees “stuff sitting around with no obvious use”—architectural elements and industrial parts, for example, and gives things a fresh purpose, elevating recycling to upcycling.
An air vent from a factory roof is reborn as a superscaled convex mirror with a broad verdigris frame. A column, cut down, becomes the base for a table. Nineteenth-century metal components are fashioned into modern-day pendant lights. A hollow brass stair rail cut into segments is remade as multiple wall sconces.
And then there are the straight-up old pieces he loves for their simple form and strong character. He’s drawn to the functional: chairs and benches, cupboards and cabinets, sconces and lanterns, and timeless sturdy tables like the Living Island, a kitchen workhorse inspired by one in the Old Kitchen at Burghley House, one of England’s grandest Elizabethan houses just down the road.
M“atthew was probably stirred to make such a table because as a child, he’d come home to find the kitchen table, or some other major piece, sold and gone,” speculates Camilla McLean, his partner and prodder-in-chief. “I’m a great believer in going with the flow, being at the mercy of what falls in my lap,” Matthew confesses. “Camilla is the one who puts things in front of me and says, next, next!”
“Next” currently means working on their largest antique to date—a magnificent Georgian house in the center of Stamford that Matthew had frequently walked by as a boy and admired for decades. Together they are peeling back layers and returning rooms to their original lean beauty, for their own use and to serve as a showcase for their antiques and furniture collections. A mid-19thcentury glass-fronted tack cabinet from the stables of an English country house now commands a wall of the kitchen. The Galley lantern hangs in the front hall, Vesper lights climb the stairs.
A newly-made Orangery table anchors the main reception room where Oggy, their adorable schnauzer, circles around Chippy, a stuffed mohair “sibling” beneath Pearl Bugg’s portrait of a King Charles spaniel. Levity and wit counters the heft of the oak table flanked by antique benches—a table much like the one that spun Matthew off in a new direction a decade ago. “Someone had seen an antique refectory table on my website that was sold, and asked if it was possible for it to be reproduced. I found a joiner to make the table, and it turns out the buyer’s son worked for designer Martin Brudnizki, and before we knew it, we had orders for 20-seater tables for 10 restaurants.”
New lighting designs by Matthew Cox slip in quietly among the antiques including furniture, paneling and a fireplace mantle above which hangs a painting by Pearl Bugg.
Antique benches flank a bespoke table by Matthew. The hand-blown globe of the wallmounted Loupe light subtly reflects the space.
This launched Matthew’s furniture production offshoot, which exemplifies his savviness in glorying in the past without being trapped by it. With furniture, he believes it’s hard to improve on classic forms, however his business practices are forward thinking. His website, for example, is a beguiling blend of handsome pieces shown in monastic settings accompanied by 3D augmented reality features that allow clients anywhere to see furniture in various materials and finishes as well as in their own homes.
Becoming fully sustainable, i.e. eliminating the need for printed catalogs, showrooms, sample furniture, even inventory, is his ultimate goal, a challenge outlined in his 100-Year Plan. That means considering nature with every purchase, passing on skills, creating finishes that only grow more beautiful with time, and not only making furniture to order, but repairing, restoring, re-purposing and reselling it for as long as it, or his company, exists. In other words, making furniture to last generations, both materially and aesthetically.
“A hundred years is our benchmark,” Matthew says. “We often handle furniture this old, so we know that by using similar materials and techniques we can ensure longevity.” In the Maker’s Handbook given to every team member, he invites them to consider that “one day in the future our furniture will belong to an entirely different generation, and we want our pieces to be just as loved and useful then as they are today.” Matthew could just as easily be speaking for Chris and Nicola. Through all of them, the Cox credo lives on.
Sanding the Orangery table to a silky smoothness.
Matthew in his workshop.
This spread: The workshop is an organized array of forms, tools, drawings, pieces in process and finishes, handled by a team of makers, finishers and their apprentices.
Camilla’s homemade soup shared in mugs accompanied our workshop tour.
Pearl’s studio occupies an old storefront in Stamford.
“The day our daughter, Olivia, was born, Pearl came to London to be on hand, and whilst we were at the hospital, she calmed her nerves by painting this picture.”
Pearl Bugg, brush in hand, in her Stamford studio.
–Chris Cox
Suffolk-born artist Pearl Bugg, proud mother of Chris and Matthew Cox, is a self-taught artist that gradually came to her painting ability and style through studying, handling and restoring the vast array of decorative painted antiques and primitive carvings that passed through the family antique business over the years. Today, she finds her inspiration in her surroundings, rendering the charming peculiarities of the animals and landscape of the English countryside.
Pearl’s studio occupies an old storefront in Stamford.
BENEATH THE OVERT, ALL-ENCOMPASSING BEAUTY THAT MAKES THE RESCHIO ESTATE A MAGICAL PLACE TO VISIT LIES A DECADES-LONG EXPERIMENT GUIDED BY A FAMILY WITH DEEP EUROPEAN ROOTS.
LISCIANO NICCONE ITALY
CASTELLO DI RESCHIO
From the tower room of the castle, the view extends from the courtyard south over the first stretch of the estate’s 3,700 acres.
GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT; GREAT THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO TAKE ACTION WITH HEART AND MIND IN EQUAL MEASURE.
Just as the Slow Food movement was taking root in northern Italy in the ‘80s, the Bolza family, of noble Austro-Hungarian heritage, was reclaiming its Italian origins by putting down roots in Umbria. You could say Reschio and Slow Food grew up together, each taking a similarly mindful approach to their mission, each recognizing the enormous benefits of do-no-harm methods, each embracing the old ways while making space for enlightened new ones, each valuing taking it slow. In a world spinning ever faster, Reschio is a balm, one of the most intelligently beautiful estates in Umbria, if not all of Italy. It is an inspiring haven made possible by great imagination and effort but most notably pazienza Patience.
Reschio is the definition of a labor of love and the circle of life, both for a family and for a tract of land occupied for centuries. In 1984, Count Antonio Bolza, a former publisher and an accomplished equestrian, made his first purchase. By 1994, he had acquired the entirety of the estate: 3,700 acres of farm and forest and crumbling stone structures, including 50 houses and a 1,000-year-old castle overlooking the northern edge of the property, where Umbria meets Tuscany.
In the earliest aerial photos of the estate, taken by the British in 1942, every inch of land is cultivated. Each of the 50 farmhouses sat atop its own small hill, with the slopes hand-plowed by its resident tenant farmer, as had been done for 800 years. In the 1970s, 400 people were still living on the estate, but a decade later, all of the houses had been abandoned, as lack of opportunity drove an exodus from the countryside. By the time Count Bolza acquired the property, the houses were overgrown ruins, the castle only barely livable.
The name Reschio is thought to derive from resculum, Latin for fortification, though it seems apt today to associate it with “rescue.” Over the slow course of 30 years that is essentially what the Bolza family has done. Not long after Count Antonio acquired the estate, his son Count Benedikt returned to Italy from seven years studying and practicing architecture in London to take on the multi-hatted role of resident planner, architect, designer and visionary. A few years after that, Donna Nencia Corsini, herself a multi-hyphenate (artist, naturalist, cultivator, aesthete, wise counselor) became the other half, in work and love, of the dream team.
Benedikt’s many roles (and Nencia’s, slightly more behind the scenes) have fused into nothing short of a calling. There is no scrap of land, no corner of house or castle, no detail that has not been considered and reconsidered as the two have sought to render the landscape and its structures in their most advantageous and authentic light. They have planted 10,000 grape vines, established an organic garden and an apiary, instituted an increasingly complex recycling and composting program and tackled rewilding and forest management of land that over the years had surrendered most of its fields to chestnut and oak trees.
Today that most iconic of Italian trees, the cypress, once again uniformly line gravel roads snaking along ridgelines; the Bolzas having replaced any missing “teeth.” When the morning fog lifts from the valley floor where the Niccone River winds through tobacco fields, these dark sentinels marching off into the distance are the first to emerge. Then slowly, one stone farmhouse after another appears. The castle materializes in the mist as if out of a fairy tale.
The glory of present day Reschio began with a single farmhouse and a business plan that was basically ‘build it (or rather, design it) and they will come.’ Buyers, primarily Americans in the beginning, would first fall in love with a ruin, then with Benedikt’s vision for bringing it back to life. He would deliver a fully designed and outfitted casa, down to the bed linens and a stocked fridge. The arrangement called for buyers to front the investment required to execute that vision. Over the course of 30 years, Benedikt has renovated 29 houses in this manner, each paying for itself before a spade of dirt was turned. In this agrarian setting, he is a farmer and his crop is farmhouses, all spiritually guided by earth mother Nencia.
“As an architect, it’s a dream scenario to be able to take a genus and keep revisiting it,” Benedikt says. “Time allows best practices to evolve and one’s taste naturally changes.” Though his preferences for colors and finishes have evolved over time, his principal architectural goal— to bring light into formerly dark stone buildings that had only small openings—has never wavered, nor has his steadfast commitment to using (or reusing) only natural, native materials.
The typology of the estate’s farmhouses is a cluster of stone structures: a main dwelling and auxiliary buildings. Benedikt took advantage of the spaces in between to creatively insert greenhouse-like structures, with the twofold win of gaining light and maintaining the footprint of the original buildings to comply with local regulation. By bringing daylight into the darkest recesses and creating a more seamless open plan, he has catapulted the typically rustic Umbrian farmhouse into the modern age.
“Living on-site always gives you the best insight,” Benedikt says. He and Nencia camped out in a few of the castle’s small rooms when their five children were young. “I gave birth at home, and we homeschooled them in their early years,” Nencia says, “though nature was as much their teacher as we were.” It was all very primitive and intimate, which the young family found both liberating and instructive.
For his own farmhouse renovation, which Benedikt began in 2012 after years of holing up in the castle, a lofty atrium unites two buildings, filling a new staircase with light and sky. With the castle, a grander gesture was called for: a new soaring palm court that matches the scale and gravitas of the magnificent stone fortress. The court now serves as the bright and welcoming heart of the Hotel Castello di Reschio, a central hub for the 30 rooms and suites within the castle itself and the six additional suites outside the walls, adjacent to the parish church of San Michele Arcangelo.
A rooftop soaking tub with an irresistible view of the Umbrian countryside.
Nestled inside the castle’s walls is a central courtyard that serves as a backdrop for many of the hotel’s al fresco events.
This spread: The stylishly retro Palm Court, the brightest space in the castle, is a hub of tête-a-têtes, afternoon tea, aperitivos, games and music, including live piano every evening.
As majestic as the Palm Court is, it represents in microcosm all that Benedikt and Nencia have tackled in bringing Reschio into the 21st century, in giving it soul and life. Architecturally, the Palm Court is a triumph of ironwork and glass fabrication, showcasing the work (as does nearly everything that Benedikt designs) of local craftsmen.
The Palm Court’s fronds of potted palms create a lacy shelter beneath the glass roof, animating the space by shadow and making it more intimate and comfortable under summer’s midday sun. Small groupings of tufted velvet loveseats and fan-back rattan chairs invite reading or conversation or perhaps a game of chess. Nearly everything—the iron structure, the sofas, the hanging lights designed by Benedikt, the palms themselves—is a shade of green, a soothing palette complementing the Jazz Age atmosphere reinforced each evening by tunes played on the 1908 Steinway. Reschio’s master of music ensures that the repertoire ranges well beyond jazz to include show tunes, American songbook and current favorites.
The Bolzas themselves often lead impromptu moments in song. Like troubadours of yore, they perform musically and theatrically at various spots around the property, entertaining friends and extended family as well as homeowners and visitors, with impromptu singalongs as well as thoroughly produced yet absolutely lighthearted musicals. There is not a patch of Reschio that does not hum with Bolza current.
“NENCIA IS THE FREE SPIRIT BEHIND IT ALL,” BENEDIKT SAYS. “ANY TALENT FOR DRAMA OR GIFT FOR SPONTANEITY THAT THE CHILDREN HAVE COMES FROM HER.”NENCIA Benedikt and Nencia’s son, Geza. Reschio’s master of music leads Olimpia and Nencia in song. Olimpia, the youngest of their four daughters. Palm Court tucked into the castle. Nencia and Olimpia have a flair for the theatrical.
Such are the rewards of organic growth, of taking it slow. Every design decision for the hotel emerged from intimate knowledge of the place: 30 years of renovating farmhouses and designing every inch of their contents, 11 years of living in the castle with no heat and lots of leaks. Benedikt’s design for a steel fire grate, for instance, was a direct outgrowth of warming the small kitchen room the family gathered in. The grate’s tall sides kept logs from rolling out and endangering his babies.
That steel grate is now part of B.B. for Reschio, a collection of more than 50 handsome pieces (furniture, lighting, accessories) all designed by Benedikt, made with materials sourced in Italy and fabricated by local artisans in the Reschio Estate Workshops, which are housed at the bottom of the hill in the Tabaccaia, a 1940s factory building that Benedikt transformed into design studios. This is where the canopy and four poster beds, dressing tables, bronze valets and Poggibonsi lamps with pleated velvet lampshades that give the guest rooms such elegant distinction are all made. The Tabbaccaia also serves as the repository for Benedikt and Nencia’s ever-evolving cache of esoteric auction finds—decorative objects, side tables, candlesticks, books, mirrors, frames, sculpture, paintings—that work their way into every space, enriching new designs with extra layers of history and personality.
Benedikt has become especially captivated by old portraits. Though only a few of the subjects are relatives (none have such labels), including one of Nencia and her twin sister, they nevertheless are characters who spin a narrative for each room, often driving certain decorative elements. Together the dramatis personae communicate the importance of lives lived. Benedikt recognizes that regardless of the guise heritage comes in, it matters. As do people, be they from illustrious backgrounds or not.
If you can tear yourself away from simply admiring all that is around you, there is much to do: cooking and painting classes, foraging, truffle hunting, row boating at a lakeside cabin, bicycling, hiking, tennis, riding or simply marveling at the Spanish Purebred Horses Count Antonio breeds and trains in Reschio’s dressage arena.
Count Benedikt amid auction finds that are available for sale at the Tabaccaia.
A tented room within a room.
Below: A peek inside the Tabaccaia where ingenuity and a refined design perspective have led to the creation of Reschio’s signature pieces.
The dressage arena.
The tack room. A tranquil dock at one of the estate’s lakeside cabins.
Bar Centrale in the Ristorante Alle Scuderie is brimming with handcrafted details and a chic Italian design sensibility.
Twin candelabras posted at the entry to the boot room are lit every evening.
Guest rooms feature furniture from the Reschio collection, all designed by Count Benedikt.
And then there is the pool, restorative whether you immerse yourself in it or simply lounge beside it. Of all the brilliant design strokes at Reschio, it is the most strikingly modern, an elegant, mirrored ellipse set flush within a carpet of verdant grass. As with all things supremely “simple,” it was a complex feat, an example of Benedikt’s dogged perfectionism. With its subtle stone infinity edge, steps discreetly nestled between two wood bathing platforms and an ingenious pool cover that emerges from the water’s depths like a blooming tide, the pool’s beauty lives up to its setting, a former paddock now surrounded by hypnotic views. The lofty tousled heads of umbrella pines provide a luxuriant elevated canopy, their narrow trunks separating the panorama into delicious dollops of hills near and farther. From the south end of the pool, the soaring castle walls are caught in a mirror image, the glassy surface reflecting warm stone, bookends of modern and ancient.
The magical pool reflecting an evening sky.
An innovative cover rises from the depths of the pool. The castle reflects old in new.
The path back to the castle.
Doing things well, using the finest materials, respecting the land, honoring the past while integrating the future, giving the smallest detail as much focus as the big gesture—such is the credo at Reschio. Here, caring about details isn’t a burden, it’s a baseline. The Bolza family’s elevated taste and impeccable execution is so second nature to them that it seems effortless, which makes guests feel relaxed. But effortful may be more on point, and that fullness tumbles over into a sense of generosity. For the Bolzas, the satisfaction of creating a place of beauty is topped only by the joy of sharing it with others.
Count Benedikt
A majestic cabana sits on a rise at the south end of the pool.
A brick path leads past the pool to a former watchtower that now serves as a casual bar.
IT'S ALWAYS SPRITZ O'CLOCK AT MILAN'S ORIGINAL CAMPARI BAR THAT HAS BEEN POURING ITS NAMESAKE BITTER SPIRIT FOR NEARLY 100 YEARS, THOUGH ADMITTEDLY, IT WAS MORE ESPRESSO THAN APERITIVO HOUR WHEN WE FIRST ARRIVED FRESH OFF A FLIGHT FROM AMSTERDAM. A BETTER TIME, PERHAPS, TO SOAK UP THE SPREZZATURA AND DROOL OVER THE DESIGN DETAILS FROM THE ZINC-TOPPED BAR WHEN THE CROWDS ARE SPARSE AND THE SUN FLOODS IN. BUT WE RETURNED LATER THAT EVENING FOR ANOTHER ROUND TO CONFIRM. CAMPARINO
Cheers to twenty years!
