Sohei Nishino’s dazzling Diorama Maps return to the Michael Hoppen Gallery October 28, 2014 The ancient art of map-making is hardly an art at all; minute precision and scientific attention to detail are the sacred virtues of the cartographer. But imagine a map of a different kind, one that reveals not the brute fact of a city’s physical landscape but the energy of its bustling streets. These are [...]
Beautiful things: Stanforth’s Kibo bike and Vertu’s titantium and snake skin smartphone October 28, 2014 New bike company Stanforth aims to combine the rugged performance of a mountain bike with the style and accessibility of its city sibling; a cycle that can tackle the daily commute and also tour the world. The product of this philosophy is the lightweight Kibo, which boasts a rigid steel frame (hand built from [...]
The Australian food revolution: Heston Blumenthal and Jamie Oliver are joining a new wave of top antipodean chefs October 28, 2014 A grizzled miner in grubby, cement-splattered overalls clutches the stem of a wine glass with blackened fingertips, sipping chardonnay while recounting a recent dining experience at one of the city’s top tables. “It was the worst pizza I’ve ever tasted. The base was too limp and the feta too salty; it totally overpowered the [...]
The art of theft: Why do thieves steal famous paintings when they’re so hard to sell? October 28, 2014 On a freezing Stockholm evening just before Christmas 2000, a group of six to eight Middle Eastern men put into action a plan they’d been working on for months. The group parked cars in the middle of the three central roads leading to the Swedish National Museum and set them ablaze. As fire engines [...]
The black tie dress watch: From classic Omega to definitive Cartier October 28, 2014 I suspect I’m not alone in greeting invitations advising a black tie dress code – the season being just about to kick off – with a weary groan. It’s not that I particularly object to it as a style, so much as the imposition: on the few occasions one wheels out the tux, it feels [...]
Women’s watches with complications have hit the market October 28, 2014 A grande complication on a watch, generally speaking, used to be the preserve of those timepieces on the male side of the display cabinet. They allowed men to show off how much they knew about watches while indulging in a little horological one upmanship (this despite the fact I have never met a man who [...]
What should you wear this winter? The classic British tailors embracing modern branding October 28, 2014 Compared to the world’s superbrands, the majority of London’s tailors aren’t exactly household names. Savile Row outfits have always had the product, but they tend to lack the branding. Compare this to the big American and Italian designers, who took the Savile Row template, sexed it up a bit and created some of the biggest [...]
Beautiful things: Glass fruit, an orange clutch and headphones by Vertu September 23, 2014 Watching an artist mould molten glass is a sensual experience. The thick liquid folds on top of itself, smouldering at the edges; it’s this danger factor that attracted Parisian sculptor Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert to the medium. Wintrebert, whose glass installations have been on display at the V&A’s Glass Galleries, says, “It became my passion [...]