For more than 20 years, Melissa Goldstein worked as a magazine photo editor. While researching images, she developed a fascination with Scandinavian ceramics, 17th-century botanical illustrations, and Japanese woodblock prints dating back to the 1500s. It wasn’t until she moved to Brooklyn and began restoring the verdant garden behind her stone that she began to combine her interests:[My brand MG by Hand] it was the amalgamation of my research, the garden and making things for my family,” Goldstein says of the fine English porcelain ceramics she now sells in select stores and online. In 2008, the artist began handcrafting everyday dinnerware in her Carroll Gardens studio home, decorating the pieces with floral motifs in cobalt stain. Black irises, poppies and blooming quince from her garden adorned vases, shallow banchan dishes and baked serving trays. Her new Poppy and Cherry collections, which were fired in a gas kiln for 12 to 15 hours, channel Dutch Delftware while depicting local flora. “I have a wall that separates my garden from my neighbor’s, and I’ve incorporated quince into it,” says Goldstein. “I really like flowering trees.” from $65, mgbyhand.com.
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A New Book Collects the Writings of Dorothy Dean, a 1960s New York Fixture
Dorothy Dean, the writer, sports fan and Warhol Factory regular, was a central figure in bohemian New York in the 60s and 70s. But despite her famous circle of trusted friends, she died in relative obscurity in Boulder, Colo., in 1987. Nearly a decade later, writer Hilton Als told Dean’s life story for The New Yorker: She was the first black high school at White Plains High School in New York, a graduate of both Radcliffe College and Harvard, the first female fact-checker at The New Yorker, a member of a clique of white gay men she called “the Brotherhood of Lavender,” and a fierce girl at Max’s Kansas City nightclub. Now, a new book brings together a selection of Dean’s unpublished writings and letters along with her own film review newsletter called the All-Lavender Cinema Courier. Entitled ‘Who Are You Dorothy Dean?’, the book is edited by Paris-based director Anaïs Ngbanzo and published by the press she founded in 2020, Éditions 1989, which focuses on biographies and artists’ writings. On March 19 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Ngbanzo will also bring Dean’s sharp humor to the stage with “Dorothy,” a play adapted from her correspondence with artist Rene Ricard, model Edie Sedgwick and music journalist Lisa Robinson. “Who Are You Dorothy Dean?”, about $23; editions1989.com.
For nearly 100 years, the Matouk linen company has focused on making Egyptian cotton bed linen. Today, the company will launch its first clothing line with a collection of pajama sets made in Italy. Available in silk satin and cotton cotton, the long-sleeve sets will come in a selection of prints from interiors label Schumacher, including graphic, almost floral Levi, Celine polka dot and botanical Pomegranate, as well as monochrome and crisp white. All can be customized on the cuff or pocket with 20 monogram styles in 45 colors embroidered at the Matouk factory in Fall River, Mass. You can also mix and match patterns, colors and finishes. almost every bed fabric featured on their site can be turned into pajamas. “If there’s a special combination a client wants, we’re happy to achieve it,” says creative director Mindy Matouk. “Some of my favorite moments have happened walking the factory floor and spotting a design that someone else dreamed up.” The collection is online now and from April 4th will also be available at the brand’s new House of Matouk on New York’s Upper East Side. from $475, matuk.com.
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A sound artist finds inspiration in feline figurines
When British sound artist Oliver Beer prepared for his first solo exhibition in the United States in 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art allowed him to test the acoustic quality of thousands of vessels in his collection. Beer had placed microphones inside hollow objects and amplified the sound inside to make them “sing.” While at the Met, he became fascinated by an ancient Egyptian cosmetic jar in the shape of a cat. That discovery led to a feline obsession that culminated in a new exhibit opening this month at Almine Rech’s TriBeCa gallery. Beer has created a “cat orchestra” from 37 of the hundreds of jugs, teapots and vases he has collected. The figures range from the elegant (a floral pottery from Cornwall) to the kitsch (an absinthe pitcher in the shape of a cat playing a mandolin) and come from places as disparate as France and Thailand, with some replicas of historical artefacts found in places such as Benin or pre-Columbian Mexico. Spectators can take part in the performance by pressing keys on a custom keyboard that activates individually tuned containers whenever an original composition by the artist is not playing. For the exhibition, Beer also created 12 “resonance panels” using another of his signature techniques: The artist places a flat canvas over a speaker (in this case, attached to a cat with a microphone), whose vibrations vibrate the extremely fine pigment in intricate shapes. “These are more complicated than I’ve done in the past,” says Beer. “I have so much control now: I pick a different cat and change the note.” “Resonance Paintings – Cat Orchestra” runs at Almine Rech in TriBeCa, New York, from March 14 to April 27; alminerech.com.
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A new Athleisure range inspired by 80’s Tracksuits and Clerical Garb
“Athletes and members of the clergy have a lot in common,” says Louis Charles Aka, a Paris-based political consultant turned creative director. “They share a strong discipline and a mostly ascetic lifestyle and both wear distinctive costumes.” Aka’s affinity for the clothes of both professions has influenced his brand, Clerica, which launched in December with a collection of T-shirts and tracksuits. Aka, who grew up in the Ivory Coast before attending Catholic schools in Paris and Provence, France, remembers going to church with his grandmother and admiring the priests’ faces. His father, a financier, passed on his love for football and the sports kits of the 80s and 90s had an impact on Aka’s personal style. “All the key figures I grew up around, many of them politicians, spent their lives in suits from Monday to Friday and wore tailored overalls at the weekends,” he says. These inspirations came together in Clerica’s first release, which features three hand-painted t-shirt styles. One features a fantastic sports water called Liberia. another, a bowl of ginger and spinach soup (said to improve an athlete’s performance). and a third, a woman’s face with a running track reflected in her sunglasses. A tracksuit top and bottom are made from a silk blend with a white and navy nod to a collar. From around $82, clerica-paris.com.
New York’s Hudson Valley is known for its charming main streets lined with cute shops, but in the northern reaches of the Catskills, some of the most exciting designer shops are far off the beaten path. A.Therien, in Cairo, is a design studio that sits at a remote crossroads in a whitewashed barn next to a butcher shop. Inside, creative director Stephen Ellwood, the shop’s owner, offers a mix of vintage textiles, recently discovered George Platt Lynes photographs, 19th-century stonework and art books.
About an eight-minute drive away in Freehold is the appointment-only Hort and Pott (short for Horticulture and Pottery), the live/work space of Todd Carr and Carter Harrington, where the decor changes dramatically with the seasons. In spring, that means an indoor-outdoor display case filled with daffodils, fritillaries and branches of quince, forsythia and cherry to take home, as well as faux concrete planters, crockery plates and bud jars ready for Easter. Pidgin, in the young rural town of Oak Hill (population: 324), is home to poet and collector Costas Anagnopoulos and his shop filled with globally sourced antiques and new finds. Among Anagnopoulos’ favorite items: a mother-of-pearl bento box, pillows sewn from 100-year-old grain sacks from Portugal, and olive oil from his family’s orchards in Greece.
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