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Summer sunsets inspire Roksanda’s & Other Stories collaboration
Since founding her eponymous label in 2005, London-based designer Roksanda Ilinčić has become synonymous with elegant, sculptural silhouettes and a colour palette that draws from the vibrant works of artists Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler. This month, she is bringing her signature aesthetic to a limited-edition collection with & Other Stories. Spanning 21 holiday wardrobe staples such as floaty colour-blocked blouses, voluminous ruffled skirts in marigold yellow and a mulberry silk maxi dress adorned with an abstract brushstroke print, the pieces are designed to transition from day to night and to “evoke emotions of those moments we cherish during the summer.” Sara Semic
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Seaweed ink artworks fund ocean conservation
Lubaina Himid, Antony Gormley and Beatriz Morales have adopted a new medium for WWF’s Art For Your Oceans exhibition. By using “Ocean Ink”, a biodegradable ink derived from Scottish seaweed, they hope to draw attention to seaweed’s vital role as a carbon sink, water purifier and marine habitat. The resulting images of floating figures and dramatic rockfalls will be sold at Sotheby’s to benefit WWF ocean conservation programmes. Marion Willingham
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Alex Eagle’s fashionable car boot sale returns
This month, Alex Eagle’s #SheInspiresMe car boot sale returns for its ninth edition. Not your average car boot sale, this one boasts a selection of new, pre-loved and vintage designer pieces, and all proceeds (including each ticket sale, from £10) go to Women for Women, the charity supporting women in conflict zones. MW
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Svenkst Tenn celebrates 100 years with a new monograph
“It is never a fabricated colour chart that gives a home its personality, but it is all the things one collects through life,” Svenkst Tenn founder Estrid Ericson wrote in 1939. That idea is borne out in Svenkst Tenn: Interiors, the first book dedicated to the Swedish homeware company Ericson founded a century ago. A 400-page gambol through the company’s archives, the book brings together the objects, furniture, patterns and accessories that make up the Svenkst Tenn universe, a colourful, esoteric world governed by good taste and considered flashes of maximalism.
Beginning with the affordable pewter pieces on which Ericson founded the business (“Svenkst Tenn” translates as “Swedish tin”), only three years after women in Sweden were first able to vote, the book goes on to explore the outsize influence of Austrian architect and designer Josef Frank. But it’s the lush room set-ups familiar to those who have visited the warren of rooms making up the Stockholm store that will inspire budding homemakers and design fans. Ellie Pithers
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A dolls’ house for your jewels
The art historian-turned-jeweller Cece Fein Hughes is known for her whimsical gold pendants and rings, whose botanical motifs and mythological figures draw from the folktales of her home region of Dartmoor. Now, she is collaborating with master dolls house-maker Lucy Clayton on a one-of-a-kind dolls’ house, inspired by her latest Triptych collection and Hieronymus Bosch’s oil painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. Hand-crafted over three months, the dolls’ house (POA) is divided into three enchanted rooms, complete with miniature empire crystal chandeliers, Louis XVI chairs upholstered in vintage green silk and Lilliputian still-life paintings that evoke Hughes’ Renaissance-style jewelled talismans. “There is always something precious about a dolls’ house, but this one is particularly special,” says Clayton. “It feels like the most magical jewellery box.” SS
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Florence Houston finds beauty in all things gelatine
For a painter classically trained in portraiture, London-based Florence Houston has struck upon a curious subject matter: jelly. “I love the colours, the texture, the translucency, the highlights,” she says. Her paintings bring an Old Masters reverence to the froufrou gelatine dessert, drawing upon its erstwhile incarnations as a Georgian status symbol and a kitsch 1970s pudding.
Her newest examples will be shown at London’s Lyndsey Ingram Gallery next month. Painted from jellies made in vintage moulds by Houston herself and Caroline Tremlett (who runs the Instagram page @adventuresinjelly), they include the oddly egg-clad Aspic and the glowing Tequila Sunrise. Others feature a tower of glacé cherries and whirls of whipped cream. But the show also reveals fresh infatuations: in one work she menacingly pairs long satin gloves with a vintage iron. “I found it at my in-laws’ house,” says Houston. “I like taking domestic things and giving them a stage.” Victoria Woodcock
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Cocktails on the roof in Tokyo
Ascending tens of floors for a view of Tokyo’s sprawling skyline is a rite of passage when visiting the world’s biggest city. One of the best (and highest) spots is Shibuya Sky’s observation deck, which has just re-opened its bar for the rest of the year. On a clear day, before sunset, you might see the snow-capped tip of Mount Fuji in the distance. BS
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The perfect butter knife
Beloved Irish butter brand Kerrygold have collaborated with British kitchen knife company Allday Goods on a very special butter knife. The design features a marbled green and gold handle made from upcycled Kerrygold plastic tubs and a Japanese-forged blade. Fifty have been made, and will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis from Dublin lifestyle shop Indigo & Cloth this Saturday. They’ll be serving buttery pastries and filter coffee through the day, too. Aoife Murray
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Vintage fashion from the mods
Roger K Burton, costume designer to David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, presides over one of the finest personal collections of vintage fashion in the UK, lovingly built up over a 50-year career. This month, he curates an exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery dedicated to one of his favourite fashion subcultures: the mods. The show celebrates the miniskirts, razor-sharp suits and flamboyant lapels of the era through clothing drawn from his 20,000-strong archive.
Highlights include pieces from British designer Mary Quant, who popularised the “Chelsea look” and miniskirts; the “King of Carnaby Street”, John Stephen; and shirtmaker Ben Sherman, whose eponymous brand was founded in Brighton in 1963. “The mods rejected the 1950s, favouring sharp tailoring, bold colours and a sense of modernity that captured the spirit of youth culture,” says Burton. “This exhibition will show how that spirit still influences fashion today.” Inès Cross
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A photographer’s journey through the Peruvian Andes
For a new series of photographs, artist Colin Dodgson was drawn to the earthy colour palette of the Peruvian Andes, all deep red soil, fields of maize and chubby potatoes. The images, which were made aboard Belmond’s Andean Explorer, a train that travels from Cusco to Arequipa, are now being compiled into a book, and will also be on show as part of Photo London at Somerset House. They will be exhibited alongside a tropical-toned series of work made by Dodgson onboard the Eastern and Oriental Express, which travels through Malaysia. BS
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Vincent van Gogh meets a postmodern German master
What did the postmodern German radical artist Sigmar Polke have in common with Vincent van Gogh? Potatoes. For the latter, they symbolised rural life in 19th-century Holland; for the former, the bleakness of postwar Germany. In the 1960s, Polke rejected the glamour of American pop art by incorporating real potatoes into sculptures such as his Apparatus Whereby One Potato Can Orbit Another. Van Gogh just delighted in painting their heft, “which you’d feel if they were thrown at you”, he wrote in 1885. Both artists “tried to be ‘realists’”, says Bice Curiger, who has curated a new retrospective of Polke’s work at the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles. In Beneath the Cobblestones, the Earth, two carb-heavy van Goghs introduce Polke’s satirical sculptures and signature Ben-Day-dots paintings, as well as never-before-seen photographs that Curiger calls “intimate and extremely poetic”. MW
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Rugs inspired by the Roman goddess of home
Pelican House design studio has partnered with Hannah Weiland, founder of London-based fashion label Shrimps, on a four-strong rug collection this spring. Titled Vesta after the Roman goddess of hearth, home and family, the rugs draw on Weiland’s penchant for colour and playful prints. Highlights include the Salina, featuring a Sicilian-inspired grapevine border, and the rich florals of Royal Garden, a nod to Weiland’s British roots. IC
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Turned-wood antiques in Kensington
Essex-based antiques warehouse Custodian lands in London with a two day pop-up this month. They specialise in turned-wood furniture (which means bobbin, barley twist and fluted legs) from the 18th to 20th centuries, and will be offering a selection of mahogany chests, Victorian writing tables and bergère chairs. MW
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