The onefinestay journal about living beautifully – and sharing it

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Guestbook Issue 7

Editor Alex BAgnerArt Direction/Designwww.field-projects.comCopy Chief SArA norrmAnAdvertising/Production Managerliv SToneSonefinestay Co-Founder & CEOgreg mArShPublished by onefinestay www.onefinestay.com

Cover photography mAx creASyRetouching by richard@happyretouching.com. Dollhouse courtesy of BoominiCat lAurA mAyWords liz ArmSTrong, JonAThAn Bell, lucy Brook, Tim BurrowS, cATherine BlyTh, hAyley FAirclough, williAm B helmreich, SArA norrmAn, Amy SerAFin, JoSh SimS, AlexAndrA SchwArTz, chriSTopher STockSPhotographers STeven BrAhmS, mAx creASy, STAcy krAniTz, philip SindenIllustrators hugo BArroS, chriSTopher Brown, AndréS lozAno, SArAh mAycockPrinted in the UK by Cambrian Printers www.cambrian-printers.co.ukFor all advertising enquiries or to order more copies of Guestbook please email: guestbook@onefinestay.comTo read a digital version of this and past issues visit www.onefinestay.com/guestbook

conTenTS

8 locAl lowdown Wild swimming in London and the organic revolution hits Paris – find out what’s really happening in our cities Words Catherine Blyth, Alexandra Schwartz and Josh Sims Illustration Andrés Lozano

16 in converSATion wiTh Ani Tzenkova and Cyril Foiret, Greenhouse Loft, Chelsea, New York Words Lucy Brook Photography Steven Brahms

26 SuBJecT To oBJecTS Mary Randolph Carter on why it’s time to reclutter Words Alex Bagner

32 how To mAke iT in lA A survey of the craft movement growing in the city of glitz Words Liz Armstrong Photography Stacy Kranitz

38 pAriS mATch Illustrator Sarah Maycock swaps art for a onefinestay in Paris Words Hayley Fairclough

46 in converSATion wiTh Janine Duvitski and Paul Bentall High Holborn, Covent Garden, London Words Christopher Stocks Photography Philip Sinden

54 STreeTS AheAd New Yorker and sociologist William B Helmreich walks the walk and talks the talk in his home city 60 The TwiST in The ploT London’s most exciting contemporary architecture isn’t always where you’d expect Words Jonathan Bell Illustration Hugo Barros

64 AlphABeT ciTy The wonders of London spelled out in traditional lino cut Illustration Christopher Brown

74 A liTTle plAce i know Journalists Amy Serafin in Paris and Tim Burrows in London invite us to visit their favourite locales 78 AT home london evenT A report from onefinestay’s day of activities with London’s finest start-ups Words Hayley Fairclough

80 end noTe From Miranda Cresswell, Director, Brand Marketing

conTriBuTorS…and what makes them feel at home in their neighbourhood

When not busy snooping around London’s back alleys and cul-de-sacs in search of the city’s most innovative buildings, JonAThAn Bell writes about cars and contemporary architecture for Wallpaper*, where he is editor at large. ‘In Peckham, south London, where I live, I really appreciate the mix of cultures and strong sense of community – and the distant City views glimpsed from Victorian streets.’

An Australian based in New York, lucy Brook is a freelance writer who has contributed to publications including Nylon, Elle and Cereal. Her first year in NYC was a roller-coaster. ‘The city is busy, loud and relentless and can feel impersonal until you find your feet.’ Now she appreciates ‘the view of the Empire State Building from my rooftop – it never gets old.’

Tim BurrowS is a London-based writer on popular culture, music, art and place – often at the same time – for a number of publications including The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and The Gourmand. ‘My neighbourhood, Walthamstow, is on the edge of the capital before Essex. It has excellent pubs, Europe’s longest market and a proper feeling of community. It gives you space to think and dream but you still get into town quickly.’

Australian/Norwegian photographer mAx creASy tends to turn his lens to grand buildings for publications including The Architects’ Journal and domus. Slightly nervous about photographing a cat, it being his first time, he was put at ease when he found out it was the cats’ first time on a shoot as well. In his London neighbourhood, he enjoys ‘recognising people in the street’.

Copywriter hAyley FAirclough came to work at onefinestay after a (brief) career as a science teacher in Liverpool and now sharpens copy for the homepage as well as taking on features for Guestbook. ‘I live in New Cross, which is far enough from central London to be truly local – it’s full of born-and-bred south Londoners.’

A life-long New Yorker and professor of sociology, williAm B helmreich has been exploring the outskirts of New York since he was nine years old and his father invented the game ‘Last Stop’ – taking a subway to the end station and exploring the area on foot. Decades later Helmreich decided that the only way to get to know his city was to walk to every corner of all five boroughs, making him feel at home in most New York neighbourhoods.

Spanish illustrator AndréS lozAno studies design at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid alongside his illustration work. ‘I’m slightly obsessed with architecture, vegetation and film noir and I am a compulsive buyer of notebooks, books and art supplies. In Madrid, I enjoy having both green spaces and crowded urban streets nearby.’

Bibliophile AlexAndrA SchwArTz is a New York-raised editor and writer who is a member of staff at The New Yorker, in between reviewing books and translating French into English. ‘I love the city’s frenetic buzz, but when I get off the subway in front of the Brooklyn Museum and walk home down Washington Avenue, the smaller scale feels right. From my window, I can hear guys playing cards in the park downstairs, but also crickets – it’s a good urban-pastoral mix.’

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I realised as I was making this issue that I’ve never formally explained what we mean by ‘living beautifully’, the strapline we use on the Guestbook cover. Let me give it a go.

Living beautifully is about those everyday moments in life that become extraordinary, the ones that mean so much to you, you want to share them. It is not about striving for perfection in everything you do, making sure you’re stylish at all times or that your interior matches tastefully. Living beautifully is about the wonder, fulfilment and celebration of ordinary life, lived extraordinarily both at home and in a neighbourhood.

With that in mind then, I’d like to welcome you to Guestbook 7 – onefinestay’s examination of living beautifully, and sharing it, in our current quartet of cities.

Our hosts remain our keys to unlocking living beautifully, and this issue has us visiting trend predictors Ani Tzenkova and Cyril Foiret in Chelsea, New York, and actor couple Janine Duvitski and Paul Bentall, in High Holborn, London. But this quarter we’ve broadened our reach and asked some other carefully selected locals to guide us as we explore and uncover the riches of local life. The Local Lowdown dispatches our journalists to report back on the latest goings on in their hoods; LA resident Liz Armstrong traverses the workshops of the artisans leading a craft revival in a city known mainly for its sheen and superficiality; architecture journalist Jonathan Bell takes us to London’s hidden back streets where he uncovers the capital’s most innovative architecture; and sociologist William B Helmreich walks to the ends of his city’s five boroughs to discover a New York nobody knows.

In this ode to the exploration of our homes and the everyday world around us, it felt only right to hand over our cover (our first photographic one I may add) to that most curious, yet domestic, of creatures, the house cat. Forever inquisitive, always examining and leaving no stone unturned in its adventures (yet once settled and familiar more than happy to curl up and enjoy), you’ve got to hand it to our feline friends, they know how to live. Here’s hoping you find this issue nothing short of purrfect. Do let me know.

Alex BAgnereditor, guestbookguestbook@onefinestay.com

EDITOR’S LETTER

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To find out whatʼs bubbling in a city, head straight to those in the know – the inhabitants. Here three writers from Paris, New York and

London share the latest topics being discussed on street corners and around dining tables

illustration AnDRÉS LOzAnO

LocaL LoWDOWN

5 PARIS (FINALLY) GOES ORGANIC

BY CATHERINE BLYTH

Ah, Paris! City of Light and culinary lantern of the world. Or is it? Unless you are ready to shell out for a Michelin-starred meal, large parts of the Parisian restaurant scene have stayed woefully behind

the rest of the world. Modern gourmets who live in the city complain that trad comfort food reigns supreme in the majority of restaurants, and that it’s impossible to get a coffee that doesn’t look like creosote and taste like eau de Gitanes.

Yet change is finally afoot. In September, legendary chef Alain Ducasse made headlines relaunching his Plaza Athénée flagship with a menu championing ‘naturalness’. It starred a ‘trilogy’ of fish (sustainable!), cereals (organic!) and veg from Versailles’ pesticide-free Jardin de la Reine, with just two meat dishes quarantined on a separate menu. Some thought it a joke. Had he been confused with L’Arpège’s Alain Passard, widely ridiculed for buying produce from farms where ploughs are pulled by animals rather than being motorised, allegedly to avoid harming worms?

It seems odd this should be news. Globally, organic is mainstream. But perhaps out of stubbornness, perhaps confidence, France has resisted. Tellingly, this century’s most influential French restaurant is in California, the veg-hugging Chez Panisse. Meanwhile Parisians hungry for kale had to start The Kale Project, an online movement to bring healthier green

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vegetables to the city. My vegetarian friend reluctantly left town three years ago, fed up with being asked, ‘So does that mean you can eat ham?’

Then food scandals shook faith in culinary tradition. First, the horsemeat debacle. Next came revelations that most soi-disant restaurants served frozen ready meals from a wholesaler.

Ann Mah, author of Mastering the Art of French Eating, witnessed the backlash. ‘There has always been a great passion for the “producteur” in France. Now this extends to people wanting to know who cooked their food and what they’re cooking.’ Publicity for the new fait maison law, that requires restaurants to state whether they cook from scratch or not, inspired people to look deeper into their food’s provenance.

At the hip end of Parisian dining, many are beginning to embrace ‘forgotten vegetables’, parsnips, salsify and swede, spurned for 60 years because they recalled wartime deprivation. Locavorism is gaining traction too. Sunday at Raspail, once a minor market, is the place for organic legumes, thanks to a rash of new producers. Those who mix their eco-cred with decadence favour vins naturels – small-batch wines, too unstable to export, so unique to France. ‘With each glass, I’m learning something new, as well as sustaining artisanal producers… how’s that for justifying a habit?’ confides Meg Zimbeck of the Paris By Mouth blog, recommending Chapeau Melon on Rue Rebeval in the 19th arrondissement.

New-wave coffee shops and specialist roasters like Folks and Sparrows on rue Saint-Sébastien are satisfying a thirst for ‘coffices’, somewhere to massage a MacBook. They’re run by expats and French travellers, back home with an approach to eating and drinking more familiar to Sydney. At Holybelly in pretty Canal Saint-Martin, co-owner Nico Alary thinks the seasonal vogue is the joyous response to a climate of fear. ‘People have been fooled for too long. But entrepreneurs see open kitchens and young chefs as an opportunity. Authenticity needs to be defended!’

So it’s true. Ducasse, king of haute cuisine, has converted to eco-friendly grub. But not everyone is thrilled. ‘Every new restaurant has a brick wall, chairs that look like they were from a schoolhouse cafeteria, menus on chalkboards,’ observed revered foodie David Lebovitz. In the New York Times, Thomas Chatterton Williams complained that Pigalle is being Brooklynised, its pungent soul ‘scrubbed clean’ by ‘the banal globalization of hipster good taste.’ This may be true for some, but as one café put on a sign: ‘We may have ruined Paris but we make good coffee.’

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5 THE REBIRTH OF NEW YORK’S

INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS BY ALExANDRA SCHWARTZ

When it comes to literary pedigree, New York stands proud. Henry James, Edith Wharton, Langston Hughes, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Philip Roth, not to mention the legions

of scribblers who can be seen, any day of the week, typing away on their keyboards in coffee shops across the five boroughs: we are a city of writers, and, above all, one of readers.

Still, for more than 20 years, New York has suffered from a severe bookstore drought. The trouble began in the early 1990s, when the Barnes & Noble megastore began an aggressive expansion, putting scores of beloved neighbourhood bookshops out of business. As they tend to do on these shores, things happened fast. By the time Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail appeared in 1998, a film about the owner of a small children’s bookstore who falls in love with the CEO of a Barnes & Noble-type empire, it already seemed like a period piece. Then came the age of Amazon, and indie shops that had managed to hang on through years of fierce competition from the big chains folded, too.

Now, independent bookstores seem to be staging a long-awaited comeback. Unable to keep up with Amazon, the once-mighty chains are on their way out, and New Yorkers’ appetite for all things local is, in turn, leading many away from the internet and toward the expertise of homegrown booksellers. This past summer, Amazon’s refusal to ship books published by the Hachette Book Group because of a dispute over e-book pricing led to a surge in support for smaller shops across the country; it didn’t hurt that satirical TV host Stephen Colbert, whose books are published by Hachette, rallied his viewers to the indie cause.

But in New York, the bookstore renaissance is more than just a business trend. It’s a cultural revival. Reading is a private, intensely solitary experience, yet readers need a place to convene, to discuss and argue and trade recommendations about literature – and, of course, to flirt. (Just think of Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal checking each other out at the old Shakespeare & Co in another Nora Ephron classic, When Harry Met Sally.)

One excellent place to do all of those things is the brightly inviting McNally Jackson Books, on Prince Street in SoHo. On the first floor, readers will find an abundance of fiction, the titles organized by geographic region, plus books on subjects including food, design, and travel, as well as a beautiful selection of art and literary magazines. The shop holds its frequent author readings downstairs, by the poetry and biography sections. McNally Jackson has one of the best cafés in town, with pastries, sandwiches, and teas from local suppliers like Balthazar and Sarabeth’s, but Sarah McNally, the store’s owner, decided against providing wifi, which turned out to be a canny move. The result is a rare sight: a bookstore full of people who are actually reading. McNally Jackson has good company in Manhattan. There’s

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Three Lives & Company, a cosy space tucked into a triangular storefront on West 10th Street (look for the bright red door) and, uptown, on Madison Avenue between 81st and 82nd, Crawford Doyle Booksellers, whose dark wood panelling and beautiful collection of first editions gives the place the feel of a private library.

Sarah McNally will find herself among a different group of peers when she opens a branch of her shop in Williamsburg this fall, down the street from Spoonbill & Sugartown Booksellers, a Bedford Avenue mainstay. In addition to new titles (the philosophy selection is particularly strong), Spoonbill deals in used books, an approach that yields all kinds of treasures to the patient hunter. The same is true of Unnameable Books, on Vanderbilt Avenue, where you’ll have to peer over the stacks piled high on the clerk’s desk to pay. In a borough full of young, aspiring writers, Unnameable knows its clientele. It stays open till 11pm every day of the week, encouraging late-night browsers to plop down in an armchair until closing time.

Good food is as vital a part of Brooklyn life as good reads are, and a delicious pairing of the two can be found at Fort Greene’s Greenlight Bookstore, which recently launched Book/Plate, a series of family-style dinners held off-site in collaboration with Peck’s Specialty Foods. For $50, guests sit down with a writer to enjoy a meal based on one of his or her books; recent hosts include the novelist Francisco Goldman and the poet Saeed Jones. New York writers and New York readers eating New York food and talking New York books: the city’s literary life is finally back on track.

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5 WILD SWIMMING IN LONDON

BY JOSH SIMS

Rachel Jones is bothered by the algae. She has received a warning that, due to a combination of rainfall and warm weather, the place where she does her weekly swim – in Stoke Newington, north London

– is closed until it clears. It is not a problem you typically find at your local leisure-centre pool. But then Jones is swimming in a reservoir. ‘The sensation of swimming in open water is entirely different to the kind you get from a pool, or even a lido,’ says Jones, an accessories designer. ‘You’re competing with the wind perhaps, or your own psychological response to the murk below you, to the feeling of brushing up against something in the water. It’s strange and exhilarating.’

Jones is not the only Londoner to find thrills partaking in open-water, or what has been dubbed ‘wild’, swimming. Interest in it has grown in part as a result of open-water swimming becoming an Olympic event in 2008, in part by the boom in triathlons (a must-do in the competitive macho culture of the city’s financial district), and even as a result of more advanced, flexible wetsuits. Certainly wild swimming has captured the imagination of many London residents, who now regularly find themselves front-crawling across its reservoirs, lakes, canals and rivers in all seasons. In 2006, when one of the activity’s pioneering exponents in the UK, the Outdoor Swimming Society, was founded, it had 300 members. Now it has 16,000 and is even seeing the advent of swim travel – like skiing holidays but for those who prefer their water in the liquid state.

If, despite first being hosted in 1864, participants of the traditional Christmas morning 100-yard swimming competition on the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park are still annually portrayed as masochists and oddballs, clearly now there are many more of them. And they are organising: open-water swims in and around the capital have become a major fund-raising draw for charities, while local design company Studio Octopi is even working on the development of a floating freshwater swimming pool in the Thames. Yet this is merely a return to the normal state of affairs that existed before public pools became widespread and, combined with the growing pollution of open waterways, drove swimming indoors: a century ago London could claim many outdoor swimming clubs, like the Sheep’s Green Swimmers, The Tadpoles or the New Town Water Rats.

‘It’s as though we’re all remembering that actually there is water outside, and it’s harder but more rewarding to swim in,’ says Emma Pattinson, co-founder of Shepperton Open Water Swim, a flooded quarry in west London which now pulls up to 1,000 visitors a week. ‘After all, pool swimming can be quite monotonous and the chlorine bothers a lot of people. Swimming outside adds a whole new dimension.’

Indeed, the special benefits of wild swimming now being rediscovered are as much spiritual as physical – although of course it has all the well-known fitness advantages of swimming too: there’s the reconnection

often craved by urbanites, both with a more natural world and with the elements that will ensure no two swims are alike; a sense of exploration of waters usually just crossed or circumvented, or maybe hidden in the edgelands; perhaps solitude or the chance to have what writer and wild swimming advocate Roger Deakin has called a ‘frog’s eye view’ of things.

But this is not to say it is all plain sailing. And certainly in some instances one might rather be in a boat. ‘It’s much safer now than many other pursuits, with organisers providing lifeguards and even ensuring you’re not trespassing, but open-water swimming can always provide the opportunity to push your limits,’ says Simon Griffiths, founder and editor of

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H2Open Magazine, launched three years ago to report on the growing scene – and a man who recently suffered hypothermia swimming the 18km length of Lake Windermere, in the UK’s Lake District. ‘For some, open-water swimming is about racing and the solo effort, and for others it’s just the pleasure of being outside in the water, and the fun of finding new places to swim in,’ he adds. ‘The first time can be a challenge for those used to heated pools – it can feel pretty cold. But it’s addictive.’

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In cOnvERSATIOn wITh

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ANI TZEnkOVA & CYRIL FOIRET

GrEEnhoUSE lofT, ChElSEa, nEw yOrK

words lucy brookphotography STEvEn BRAhmS

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Shortly after I arrive at Ani Tzenkova’s sun-drenched Chelsea home, a contractor, Harry, returns from the local hardware

store with a mass of screws, expansion bolts and heavy ropes. Charged with hanging two whimsical wooden swings from the ceiling in the living room, Harry is concerned about the bolts being unable to hold much weight.

‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ says Ani, chic in jeans and a black and white sweater, with a shrug. ‘I mean, if the ceiling isn’t going to fall in? It’s fine.’

After losing their home in Seaport, Manhattan, to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Ani and her husband Cyril Foiret don’t sweat the small stuff when it comes to decorating. The couple, who founded and edit Trendland, an online platform for design, arts, lifestyle and culture, met by chance when Cyril was visiting New York from his native Paris and have been married for eight years.

They moved into the Chelsea apartment with their two children – Cassius, three, and Penny Lou, two – 18 months ago following an exhaustive search, and quickly transformed the once-rundown space into a light-filled urban oasis.

‘We looked at 120 apartments before we found this, which is insane even for New York,’ says Ani with a laugh, ‘and honestly, the fact that it has 21 windows was the only thing that drew me to the place.’

Ani and Cyril renovated the loft into its current seven-room, two-bedroom guise, complete with a new kitchen and two new bathrooms, in a lightning-fast two and a half months.

‘We were desperate, which is why it was done so quickly,’ says Ani. ‘After Sandy, we were living in a tiny one bedroom, which is owned by my parents, with the kids. We were like, we can’t stay here – we’re stepping on each other’s faces! To access our stuff at the Seaport house, we had to make an appointment, and we’d go in there for 20 minutes once a week, collect some things and leave. I wore a uniform that year – jeans, a white button-down shirt and a cashmere sweater – because I just didn’t have the energy to worry about clothes.’

The Chelsea home was a clean slate for the family, and Ani was quick to imbue the space with a relaxed, inner-city glamour. A fashion graduate at Parsons The New School For Design,

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Ani’s eye for colour and texture is evident throughout the interior, but rather than carefully curating pieces, she insists the home’s décor is simply a reflection of the couple’s eclectic taste.

‘Our visions are very much aligned and we influence each other a lot. Sometimes it’s a tug of war to get on the same page,’ she says, noting that Cyril is forever bemoaning her growing collection of plants and trees, ‘but the whole space is just filled with things we love.’

Ani cites the living room’s pièce de résistance – an enormous black and white geometric painting by Los Angeles-based artist Tofer Chin – as one of her favourite items in the apartment (‘getting it in here was a nightmare,’ she says, ‘but it was worth it’) as well as a pair of evocative prints by Norwegian photographer Anja Niemi.

‘I love this kind of disturbing, surreal, domestic drama,’ she says of the images. ‘They’re very Miles Aldridge, but less saturated. They remind me of a lot of things, actually. She’s really amazing.’

The couple’s collection of kooky treasures and knick-knacks, including a giant plastic ice-cream cone, a life-sized toy gorilla (‘he sheds but he’s cool’)

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25In COnvErSaTIOn wITh

and a vintage ceramic Michelin Man add a sense of fun, while pops of colour come courtesy of a pink countertop and Piet Hein Eek’s Scrapwood wallpaper in the kitchen and striped rugs in the living room.

‘Colour, stripes, natural light and plants you can associate with me, I guess,’ says Ani, who, along with a small staff, keeps Trendland’s wheels turning from the living room. ‘I’ve always loved that minimal, less-is-more, Scandinavian aesthetic, but with two kids and between Cyril and I, who are obsessed with everything, it never ends up that way.’

Though Ani admits having to move homes and neighbourhoods under such stressful circumstances was rough, she says Chelsea is the perfect area to explore with Cassius and Penny Lou.

‘The High Line is right on 30th Street, and it’s such a great place to go with the kids because you can let them off the leash without losing them,’ she says.

‘Dover Street Market is nearby and it’s rad, Korea Town is cool and the NoMad area around Broadway is popping. Everything happens for a reason, and I guess Hurricane Sandy led us to

this place.’ She pauses and glances towards the kitchen, where Harry the contractor is busy grappling with metres of swing rope.

‘I’ve wanted swings in my house my entire life,’ she whispers with a smile. ‘It will all be fine.’

www.onefinestay.com/new-york/greenhouse-loft

If our homes are extensions of our personalities, then Mary Randolph Carter leads the charge. She has turned her love for collecting pieces into

a career, working closely with Ralph Lauren for over two decades and partly informing his brand style with her eclectic ephemera. Her latest book is called Never Stop To Think... Do I Have A Place For This, and is a homage to stuff – from cherished heirlooms and souvenirs that spark a memory, to a painting that just took her fancy that day. Here she explains why it’s

the objects that surround her that bring an extra bit of colour and happiness to her life. Just don’t open that closet…

words ALEx BAGnERphotography cARTER BERG

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SUBJECT TO OBJECTS

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Where is your home?

I’m lucky enough to have homes in the city and the country. Our city apartment in Manhattan has been ours for over 40 years. People come in for the first time and go ‘My Gosh!’. Then they wander round and look at stuff and ask questions. People either fall in love with our home or ask ‘how do you live here with all this stuff’?

Do you have enough room for everything?

Sometimes I do feel like things are being stuffed anywhere they can fit and it’s like ‘Don’t open that closet!’. But we find creative ways of storage and keeping things. As an example there’s a lady in my book, Janet West, who collects pot holders and she found that rather than stuffing them in a drawer she now hangs them on her wall, above the cooker.

Do the things that surround us explain who we are?

We’re much more than a sum of our objects, of course. But our homes are extensions of our personalities and we fill them with things that make us who we are. When people visit a home they understand the person better. You can journey through our lives through our homes.

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Do you ever get rid of anything?

Every now and then I feel the need to exorcise the place, as it were, but it’s usually more about moving stuff from one place to another. But some-times I have my own yard sale and give the pleasure of things I cherish to others. I do pity my children who have to take over all my stuff but I enjoy seeing how they integrate my things into their space – I worked with my photographer son Carter Berg on the latest book.

Are the things filling a psychological need?

Sometimes I think we re-invent ourselves or make up a childhood that we wished we’d had but mostly we fill our homes with objects that are the touchstones of our lives. Objects tell stories and you can create stories through them. Antique dealers do a lot of telling stories through objects. I like the idea of taking something in and the story of that object continues.

With your background working in fashion, do you apply the same thinking with clothes?

If you think about how we dress, we layer fabrics and jewellery – we like to decorate and embellish ourselves to attract attention (or not to). I have things that I wear that connect me to memories and things because of the way they look. I have a necklace from my Great-Aunt Nell that I never take off and it connects me to her. We do the same for our homes. We keep heirlooms that we cherish and we collect things that remind us of events, but other times I just love objects. For example landscape paintings, they fill my house and they make me happy. I don’t remember where they all come from but as a collection I love them.

Does the hunt for things excite you?

For me it’s all about getting in my pick-up and driving down the road to a yard sale. I can’t resist. As I get closer my husband asks me ‘Is your heart beating?’ I love the hunt. After we finish this interview I’m off to a yard sale and I’m so excited. I’m not looking for anything in particular but I know that there’s just all those beautiful things there waiting for me. Sure, I don’t need anything but the chase and excitement make me feel alive.

How do you start a collection?

My friend Jonathan (Bee) who I profile in my book says: ‘Three of anything is a collection’. There is something about the repetition of objects and showing them together that makes them more unique. (Our walls are always painted white so I can show off my finds.) One-offs can be amazing but there is some-thing very powerful about having more than one. It’s something to look for, it anchors your hunt. And soon enough friends find out about your collection and add to it.

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Is it a way to add value to the items?

To me value is in the eye of the beholder. I have things that cost $5 that I value as much as other objects that cost $500. I don’t collect to have a display, it’s not about filling a wall. There is an order in my disorder. A true antiquarian might be dismayed about how I treat my books but I love them all, the way they look piled high and used as side tables with lights on.

How come you started to publish books about your love of things?

I hope my books give people permission to fall in love with the wackiest things. Not to be worried what other people think about their choices. Obviously we have to be aware of what the people we live with think, but I mean not to let others say, ‘Why did you buy that’? To have confidence that it gives you pleas-ure. I do sometimes feel guilty but I’m not a hoarder. These are meaningful things, I don’t accumulate things just for the sake of being surrounded by stuff. They make me happy and add colour to what could otherwise be a drab life.

What was it like visiting all these homes in your book?

I’m fascinated by the way people live, and a huge part of that is living with objects. Every home has a soul and staying in someone’s home is so much more appealing than a cold hotel. People reveal themselves by their home. You learn so much about them, for better or worse.

31InTErvIEw

Never Stop To Think... Do I Have A Place For This is published by Rizzoli New York

In fOcuS: LOS AnGELES

32 GUESTBOOK

In a land where casting normally requires an agent and spinning tends to be in a gym, a quiet revolution is taking place. Tucked in workshops

and ateliers, a new generation of artisans are busy stripping out the artificial in favour of the authentic. From food to adornment to

interiors, meet the city’s new craftsmen

words LIz ARmSTROnGphotography STAcY KRAnITz

HoW TO MAKE IT IN LA

Traditionally, when people mention ‘the industry’ in Los Angeles, they’re referring to that big one with cameras and

directors and actors that’s largely concentrated in Hollywood. Lately, though, ‘industry’ in this city is associated with a less exclusive, all-pervasive, handmade sensibility. While it also involves creative vision, it’s less about illusion than tangibility: with its resourceful refinement, the Los Angeles maker scene is thriving.

From food to adornment to interiors, there’s a growing surge of individuals and small collectives creating heirloom-quality, decorative and functional items that are made with integrity from ethical materials. These are the things that last, and Los Angeles is infused with those who create them.

‘The constantly changing landscape of Southern California provides an endless supply of inspiration,’ says fiber artist Niki Livingston. Under the moniker Lookout & Wonderland, she works out of her fiber and custom-dye studio. Using locally sourced materials she specialises in the elegant ancient Japanese tie-dying art of Shibori. ‘We are so blessed here with such an abundance of art, music and innovative minds. It all inevitably spills over into the subconscious.’

Californian art and design as expressed through handmade objects notably popped up first in architecture, when the Craftsman home

movement came to Pasadena during the Victorian era. With an emphasis on modest and simple yet beautiful living, these homes were built to harmonise with the natural landscape, an ethos that carried through to other disciplines. Pottery, decades later, became a symbol of this mentality, bridging the outdoors with art through sculpture, colour, texture and visible human touch.

‘California is a place for writers, pottery, art and architecture,’ says jewellery designer Kathryn Bentley, who runs a flagship boutique in the Silver Lake neighbourhood under her design name, Dream Collective. Her elegant hand-cast work fuses art and the everyday, and as a result her pieces are instant favourites. Once purchased, they’re incorporated into the aesthetic balance of one’s appearance – it’s like being inducted into a subtle, unofficial club in LA. Women catch a glimpse of each other wearing a signature brass and enamel cuff or shield-shaped precious gem amulet and nod at one another knowingly.

Process-oriented and laid-back in approach, artistic modernism has always been part of Los Angeles’ secret history. In fact, secret histories are Los Angeles’ ‘thing’, with singular aesthetics and experiences folded into tiny spaces where glamour meets woodland.

‘The California Design exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum in the 1950s through the 1970s are a great example,’ says Melissa Tolar of A Question of Eagles, a husband-and-wife

opposite, husband-and-wife team melissa Tolar and Jonathan Ballak of A Question of Eagles make heirloom-quality ceramics and quilts. Right, niki Livingston of Lookout & wonderland uses an ancient Japanese tie-dying art on her textiles

33

collaboration focusing on heirloom-quality products of traditional Americana crafts. Known for their texturally glazed, off-kilter pottery and minimalist quilts, A Question of Eagles draws from their travels through nature and family handicraft. Their work is a favourite among local contemporary ceramics enthusiasts.

‘From what I can see, people are definitely becoming more interested in the handmade in a serious and less cynical way,’ Tolar continues. ‘A perceptual shift has occurred and is continuing to evolve where handmade goods are becoming synonymous with quality, innovative design, and a return to American manufacturing. It’s a beautiful ideal that’s slowly becoming a reality – a return to an era when most things were made by hand by local craftsmen, and the joy it can bring to be clothed and surrounded by objects made by people you know.’

Several designers cite the economic schism of 2008 that, while a shock to the country, actually freed many of them from the grind of daily work into their true calling. ‘For Dream Collective, this marks the beginning of a different approach to design and materials,’ says Bentley.

‘I think people responded to this shift with a new awareness of where and how they spent their

money. Shopping local became a theme and I think now it is second nature for people.’

Besides its loyal fans and shoppers, the scene is now fostered by long-term art exhibits like the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA – which focused on projects where fine art and the handmade intersected as freewheeling experimentalism and larger missions like the Made in America Project, MiA. Located in LA, the project serves as community support, authentication platform and digital commerce convergence for domestic design, and its curation of local designers carries significant weight.

‘We’re all creative artists across the board,’ says Jessica Koslow, who runs artisanal farm-to-table restaurant Sqirl. It originated as a traditional preserves company made with produce from family-owned certified organic farms no more than 350 miles away from their kitchen.

In 2012, G&B Coffee, which produces coffee pop-ups all over Los Angeles, approached Koslow to expand to a full-service restaurant specialising in comfort cuisine that’s equal parts beauty, adventure and ethics. Sqirl has since been featured in Food & Wine and Bon Appétit and consistently makes Best Of food lists in the city.Koslow continues: ‘I wouldn’t say that it’s all even

34 GUESTBOOK

above and opposite, jewellery designer Kathryn Bentley runs a flagship boutique in the Silver Lake neighbourhood under her design name Dream collective

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35In fOCUS: lOS anGElES

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above and right, inspiration for A Question of Eagles' ceramics and quilts comes from travels, nature and family handicraft

food-related. I’m searching for those people who source with conscience and work with integrity.’

She and other makers refer to their audiences and their peers interchangeably. ‘I used to have dinner parties all the time,’ says Koslow, ‘and now I feel like the people who come into Sqirl consistently are people I would be friends with. Many of them have become my family. They’re creative, they have a worldly perspective and a good palate and they like to explore food.’

And these communities, she says - the ones that appreciate jewellery made with non-conflict ethically sourced stones and recycled metal, that like their pottery simultaneously angular and simple, that appreciate a botanically dyed textile, that enjoy a seasonal Santa Rosa plum and flowering thyme jam – are fully connected to one another.

Bentley says we can blame some of it on the location: ‘The open landscape gives me a sense of ease… Having less clutter physically and mentally opens channels and energy fields. Every place I’ve lived has shaped me. New York hardened me and trained me to be independent.

Los Angeles is more nurturing for creativity.’ Though, really, says Livingston, it’s about the people: ‘A part of our population is much more contemplative about what and how they consume. Knowing that a local person is making whatever it is you are purchasing not only creates a level of intimacy, it provides a clear line to supporting the community.’

aquestionofeagles.comlookoutandwonderland.comdreamcollective.comsqirlla.com

37In fOCUS: lOS anGElES

cREATIvE RESIDEncY

38 GUESTBOOK

As part of onefinestay’s Creative Residencies project, London artist Sarah Maycock swapped an old passion – reportage illustration –

for time in a home in Paris, booking in for a stay at Rue du Grand Prieuré in animated Canal Saint-Martin

words hAYLEY fAIRcLOuGhillustration SARAh mAYcOcK

PARIS MATch

Sarah Maycock’s delicate paintings first grabbed attention in 2011, when creative connoisseur publishers It’s Nice That declared her one of the most promising graduates of the year. And their foresight was wholly

accurate – she’s already worked with clients including Jamie Oliver Maga-zine, and the Financial Times, and her strangely bewitching ‘Bear’ was the best-selling print at Somerset House’s Pick Me Up event in 2012. As well as fauna, her skilled brush has brought a humanistic warmth to everything from wine bottles to city maps, dipping skilfully between pastel hues and shades of grey. Here she has combined both in a series of sketches and paint-ings documenting her onefinestay in Paris, and proved suffering for art really is an occupational hazard while doing so, being escorted from the Musée d’Orsay by a dozen security guards…

39CrEaTIvE rESIdEnCy

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What intrigued you about onefinestay’s offer of a creative residency?

Reportage illustration used to make up most of my portfolio at university and I haven’t had much chance to incorporate it into my commercial work since graduating – this was the perfect opportunity to revisit an old friend. I’d love to travel the world this way.  

What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever exchanged your work for? 

I made a drawing of a fishmonger in Borough Market in London and he asked if he could buy it. I said that he could, and he passed over a crinkly £20 note that absolutely reeked of fish and had scales all over it. After swearing I would never, ever spend it, I couldn’t cope with the smell for much longer than a week and bought a few gin and tonics with it. Which reminds me, I was actually paid for a job recently with several cases of gin…

Did you know Paris well before you went?

When I was 18, I stayed with a family friend for a few days and his daughter showed me around some bars and clubs. After a particularly heavy night, we had Sunday lunch with her grandmother. Unfortunately, she served the French delicacy andouillette, or tripe sausages, which are white and sort of squeak when you cut into them – the family friend later apolo-gised and confirmed that they’re an acquired taste. On the last day I ended up at the Louvre, which was closed. So I attempted to smoke my first cigarette sitting in front of a large row of yellow cherry pickers repairing the roof. 

What most inspired you about the city?

Everything is just so much bigger than London. The roads are wider, the buildings have more storeys. And I don’t mean skyscrapers, I mean the classic five-storey Parisian town-houses with the shutters and attic rooms at the top. And there’s so much green, too – just this feeling of being slow and enjoying things, especially food and drink.

Is there anything about the home you stayed in that inspired you?

I loved the open-plan kitchen and sitting room, the glossy black floorboards and the windows that wrapped all the way around. It was also fun to glimpse someone else’s belongings and try to imagine what they were like. There’s definitely a link between that feeling and reportage drawing. 

What became your favourite thing about the neighbourhood?

Without knowing it beforehand, we (my boyfriend and I) actually stayed in a really exciting area, Canal Saint-Martin. Despite most Parisians being on their summer vacances, the surrounding bars and cafés were busy and there was something about it that felt familiar

40 GUESTBOOK

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and welcoming – it’s exactly where I’d want to live in Paris. We discovered a lovely restaurant called Chez Imogène which specialises in crêpes, and on the last evening we decided to wander to the Place de la République, where people were dancing in the middle of the square to salsa music from a speaker strapped to a shopping trolley. 

Did you see anything particularly memorable?

I finally saw Monet’s Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie and it was a euphoric experience. I can’t imagine there are paintings more beautiful in existence. Despite using one subject, he seemed to paint everything, and I just couldn’t look enough at them – pure joy. The Promenade Plantée also felt really special as I’ve never seen a city from that perspective before, with an elevated park built on an old railway line. Oh, and I was kicked out of the Musée D’Orsay, which was also rather memorable! I’d tucked myself around a corner to draw and was blissfully unaware that they’d closed. Maybe it was the language barrier but the guards didn’t seem to mind whether I finished my drawing or not! Ten or 12 security guards escorted me back up the stairs but it was extraordinary to see the place empty, as it was the busiest gallery I’d ever visited in the daytime.

Did you meet any locals?

Dozens! When you sit down to draw in public places, people naturally come over to you. Sometimes what they say can be encouraging, especially if you’re not sure whether a piece is going to be successful yet. And I was photographed so many times – I love that it didn’t occur to people that I might also be a tourist.

Your most Paris moment?

Going to the bakery to buy croissants in the morning. Or maybe running to the supermarket to get some cornichons to have with cheese (essential). That all felt very Parisian. 

What have you donated as a memento of your visit for the onefinestay art collection?

I wanted to make a series of drawings that acted as a visual diary, which, if I looked back over them in a year’s time or 10 years’ time, would help me remember the occasion. That’s why I also added notes about things that happened, sort of ‘off-screen’ moments. I took some photographs as aids, but I worked 99 per cent on location before finishing them in my studio, doing things I couldn’t really do in-situ, like slosh paint around or add in a line here and there.

Sarah Maycock stayed in Paris, at Rue du Grand Prieuré, Canal Saint-Martin, www.onefinestay.com/paris/rue-du-grand-prieure/

CrEaTIvE rESIdEnCy 45

In cOnvERSATIOn wITh

JANINE DUVITskI& PAUL BENTAll

hIGh holBOrn, londOn

words cHrISToPHEr STockSphotography PHIlIP SIndEn

46 GUESTBOOK

When I arrive at the four-storey townhouse of Janine Duvitski and Paul Bentall they are nowhere to be seen. After five

minutes’ fruitless knocking at their door they appear from round the corner. ‘We were in the pub next door,’ apologises Janine as Paul unlocks the door and ushers me in, adding by way of explanation (and perhaps in case I get the idea that they spend all day in there), ‘The photographer made us!’

Born and brought up in London, Paul is a highly regarded stage actor, with many productions at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company to his name, while Janine first sprang to fame as the endearingly gormless Angie in Mike Leigh’s 1970s cult classic, Abigail’s Party. The couple met, appropriately enough, at the National Theatre, where they were perform-ing in the same play. They have four grown-up children, whose portraits, by their actor friend James Fleet, are scattered all over the house.

They moved to High Holborn in 2008, converting the house from offices back into a home. A labour of love that Paul largely under-

took himself, getting rid of office carpets and strip lighting and filling the place with an appealingly eclectic collection of furniture, pictures and what Paul calls ‘weird artefacts which we collect, like old dolls, puppets, a fairground horse and a ventriloquist’s dummy. They seem to suit this old house.’ On the ground floor is a shop (not owned by them), which in the 19th century was Shapland’s Jewellers. The brass plate for Mr Shapland’s office can still be seen at the bottom of the stairs, and if you look carefully at the kitchen windows you can still see where his sons scratched their names in the glass.

Evidence of Paul and Janine’s own children is everywhere. Apart from their portraits, most rooms boast collaged artwork by their daughter Edith, who also suspended everything from sneakers to paper flowers from the rafters of the loft-style top floor, which used to be her living space. Meanwhile their eldest daughter, Ruby, a rising young actress in her own right, features in the posters that decorate the walls of the study.

GUESTBOOK48

51In COnvErSaTIOn wITh

53In COnvErSaTIOn wITh

Before they moved here they’d lived for many years in Richmond, though they also had a small flat in Covent Garden. Sitting in their countrified second-floor kitchen, Janine puts it nicely when she explains how it feels to live here.

‘We’ve spent so much time doing plays in central London that living here feels like stepping into shoes you’ve been borrowing for most of your life – except finally they’re your own.’

Paul adds, ‘We also wanted a place where we would be near to work and where our children could come and stay. Some of them have their own places now, but they still find it a good place to crash after a late night in Soho. And friends often pop in if they’re having an audition in town.’

As for the local area, to most people Holborn may be no more than the name of an underground station, but as Paul points out, ‘We can walk everywhere – into Covent Garden or the Georgian garden squares in Bloomsbury. We’re spoilt for choice for cafés and restaurants, which is great when you are as greedy as we are.’ They still love visiting traditional actors’ hangouts in Covent

Garden like Joe Allen and the Ivy, but they’re equally keen to try newer restaurants nearby, like Balthazar and Mishkin’s. ‘And don’t forget the pub next door, the Princess Louise,’ Janine reminds me. ‘It’s a proper Victorian gin palace, with original booths and tiles.’

If houses reflect their owners, then Paul and Janine’s reflects them perfectly: expansive but relaxed, theatrical but not grand, it’s exactly the kind of place that you can imagine really coming alive at an end-of-show party. ‘People always seem to end up here somehow,’ laughs Janine, a fact that hardly comes as a surprise.

www.onefinestay.com/london/high-holborn

W alking New York City, block by block, brought into sharp focus a reality that I always knew was there but had never really articulated, because it was so much a part of me that I never

felt a need to express it. It emerged time and time again as I spoke and interacted with people from every walk of life. To sum it up, New York is a city with a dynamic, diverse, and amazingly rich collection of people and villages whose members display both small-town values and a high degree of sophistication. This stems from living in a very modern, technologically advanced, world-class city that is the epitome of the 21st century. That is both the major theme and conclusion of this intense and detailed journey to every corner of the five boroughs that constitute the city.

New York City has never been scientifically studied as a whole by sociologists. I once mused aloud about this to a colleague. His response was, ‘Well, it’s a huge topic. Maybe no one was crazy enough before you did it to walk the whole city.’ Perhaps he’s right. You do have to be a little crazy to explore the city as I did, though not so much if you see it as healthy, fun, interesting, and as a challenge.

Walking is critical to the task because it gets you out there and lets you get to know the city up close. However, you cannot merely walk through a city to know it. You have to stop long enough to absorb what’s going on around you. And the only way to do that is to immerse yourself in it, spending as much time as possible in the streets; hanging out where others gather; attending meetings, concerts, sporting events, and the like; in short, doing what those who live there do.

ESSAY

54 GUESTBOOK

In a quest to understand his home city, sociologist William B Helmreich spent four years walking virtually every block in New York, all 6,000

miles of it, uncovering some wonderful stories along the way

words wILLIAm B hELmREIch

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opposite, a view of Seventh Avenue looking south from 35th Street circa 1938

56 GUESTBOOK

My initial plan was to walk 20 representative streets of the city from end to end and use them as a basis for the book. But I soon realized that there was no way any particular 20 or even 100 streets could claim to represent a city as large as New York. To do it right I would simply have to walk the entire city, a daunting but eminently worthwhile project. If nothing else, it would be great exercise! I ended up walking about 6,000 miles, the distance between New York City and Los Angeles and back to New York (4,998 miles), and then from New York City to St. Louis. I wore out nine pairs of San Antonio Shoes (SAS), the most comfortable and durable shoes I’ve ever owned. And all of the outer boroughs turned out to be much more interesting than I’d anticipated.

As I walked, I interviewed – you could also call them conversations because of their largely spontaneous nature – hundreds of people whom I met, and this too was critical to my efforts. Speaking directly with the city’s residents was the second critical approach to my undertaking. Hardly anyone refused to talk with me.

Most of the time I did not tell anyone what I was doing unless they asked, because I wanted their answers to be spontaneous and relaxed. In keeping with that goal, I never began an interview with a standard: ‘Excuse me, could I ask you some questions about this community?’ Instead I would say something like: ‘How come you’re dressed like this?’ or ‘Is this neighbourhood safe?’ or ‘What’s a horse doing in that guy’s backyard?’ (That really happened, in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn.) Before they knew it (and most of them never did), they were being interviewed.

Many of these casual interviews yielded insights on a number of levels. Here’s a good example of one. I approached a stocky, youngish Honduran man who was waving a plastic orange flag outside a Lower Manhattan garage, signalling drivers that the garage had space for their cars.

‘Do you find this job boring?’ I asked. ‘This is not my main job.’‘What’s your main job?’‘Menten,’ he said in his limited English. ‘What’s that?’‘Menten.’Figuring I would understand what he meant if I asked him to describe his work,

I countered with, ‘What do you do when you do menten?’‘I clean the garage, throw the garbage away, sweep up.’ ‘You mean maintenance?’‘Yeah, menten.’Suddenly seized by inspiration, I asked, ‘Can I wave your flag for a minute? I wanna

see what it feels like.’‘Are you okay?’ he asked, a worried tone creeping into his voice.‘It’s all right. I’m a professor.’Of course, my line of work had nothing to do with my qualifications for this task,

but I had learned that many people don’t pay close attention to what you say as long as you say something.

Sure enough, the Honduran man said, ‘Okay.’And then a weird thing happened. After waving it for a minute, the flag curled up

tightly around the stick and I could no longer wave it. Feeling sheepish, I handed it back to him. I learned from this that the simplest task can be difficult for those who don’t know how to execute it.

My reverie was abruptly interrupted when he exclaimed, ‘I know who you are! You’re the boss!’

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57ESSay

I don’t know whether he’d seen the CBS reality program Undercover Boss, where a boss goes among his workers incognito to see how they’re doing their jobs, but I did take note that he wasn’t in the least bit bothered by this possibility. In fact, after I responded enigmatically with, ‘You never know,’ he simply laughed and said, ‘Be good, my friend.’

You need to walk slowly through an area to capture its essence, to appreciate the buildings, to observe how the people function in the space, and to talk with them. Driving gives you nothing more than a snapshot. More to the point, it creates a physical wall between you and the neighbourhood. When you walk through a neighbourhood, although people may see that you’re from the outside, the mere fact that you’re walking suggests that you’re at least visiting. More likely it lends plausibility to the appearance that you have some business there – you work in the area, or you’re meeting a local resident who might be a friend, a business contact, drug dealer, whatever. You might be a cop. Or notwithstanding the fact that you don’t resemble a native, you might be just too poor to live elsewhere.

Some say, ‘Why do you have to walk through an area for four hours, especially one that’s dangerous? Wouldn’t an hour or so be enough to get the flavour?’ I wish I could say that this is the case. It would certainly make my work easier. The problem is that you never know when you are going to see something really interesting or meet someone with a fascinating story or persona. It could be in the first hour, but it could just as well be in the fourth hour. I can’t emphasize enough how many times I have had the encounter or insight that made the whole day worthwhile near the end of my walk – those 20 preschoolers listening to a story about Jesus; seeing a man walking four pit bulls in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with two boa constrictors wrapped loosely around his neck; and a black-and-white mural in the South Bronx telling a tale of life and death there. Had I not walked the eight or 10 miles that day, I would have never seen such sights.

There’s a stereotype of the average New Yorker as a person who can be cynical, hard, and distrustful. Moreover, he must act this way to protect himself from the sometimes unforgiving environment in which he functions. Some of the people I met were like that, but the overwhelming majority were friendly, engaging, open, and helpful. This was especially noteworthy because they usually had no idea why I was even talking to them.

Overall there’s a spirit of helpfulness in the city that is, by most accounts, more prevalent than, say, 30 years ago, largely because of perceptions that the city is safer today than it used to be. I meet James Terry, a youngish-looking Parks Department employee at Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park, who originally hails from Georgia, and ask if I can use the park’s bathroom. ‘Sure,’ he says, ‘but I’ll have to take you in, because it’s off-season.’ We enter a subterranean area beneath the pool. It’s dark and gloomy with shiny brown and yellow bricks lining the walls. When his supervisor walks by, James suddenly puts his arm around me and says to the boss, ‘This is my cousin.’ He does this again with a broad smile to someone else a minute later. Seeing the look of skepticism that greets this claim (James is black and I’m white), he adds, ‘Adopted.’

‘Well, we’re all brothers under the skin,’ I say, jokingly.‘Oh, you’d be amazed,’ James says. ‘When we have our annual get-togethers in

Thomson, Georgia, I meet all these white people in the family – Italians, Scottish, you name it.’ James is a fount of information about the community. He tells me there’s a seven-course, fifty-cent lunch available daily at the community center on 123rd Street and gives me tips about various local hangouts. The park is safe, he asserts, ‘except for nighttime, when you get the winos and the riffraff.’

As I walked, I learned to expect the unexpected, or at least to be ready for it. You start out with an objective, you achieve it, but along the way something else happens.

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I was able to get a man I was meeting for the first time to show me his apartment in the projects. When I entered, I could immediately see that he loved the color red. Everything in the apartment was red – dishes, microwave, silverware, or, if you will, ‘red-ware’, coat hangers, chairs, sofas, the very walls – all were in a bright red colour.

‘When did you fall in love with red?’ I asked him. ‘Ever since I was a child,’ he replied.‘Why?’‘I don’t know, I just love the colour.’ And he didn’t appear at all embarrassed by it,

treating it as a basic component of his persona.Yet the way he had personalized his home was private until I walked in. Did he

realize that to an outsider this colour scheme might look weird? Perhaps he was proud of it. Maybe he wanted to see my reaction. What was the underlying meaning behind such a hobby? I can’t say.

Thus, we see that when you are allowed access to someone’s home turf, all sorts of things can emerge. And this is just another of the hundreds of examples I could give of why this was the most fascinating research project I’ve ever done.

This is an edited extract from The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City, by William B Helmreich, published by Princeton, press.princeton.edu.

58 GUESTBOOK

Extraordinary homes for

extraordinary people.

Moya Pepper0203 126 4574

moya.pepper@sothebysrealty.co.uk

Bishops Road, London, SW65 Bedroom House£6,950,000

REpORT

60 GUESTBOOK

For those wanting to explore London’s contemporary residential architecture, the trail often takes an unexpected turn. Tucked

away in cul-de-sacs, clandestine cobbled alleys and behind unassuming façades lies some of the city’s most innovative housing stock, hidden tranches of domestic design waiting to be discovered

words JOnAThAn BELLillustration huGO BARROS

THE TWIST IN THE PLoT

Travel through London’s domestic landscape and you’re initially struck by the consistency of design. Each era had its defining architectural style, and each style endured, for better or for worse,

adapting over the centuries to the changing landscape of the city. Whether it’s the precise but fragile rows of Georgian terraces, or the sturdy, elaborate Victorian villa, or even the countless inter-war suburban villas that flow in ribbons out from the centre, joining the dots of the newly-installed under-ground stations, the building of London was once orderly and organised. As the city expanded, land was snatched up and new tracts laid out at lightning speed. Pattern books and the comfort of conformity ensured the design of the city never strayed too far from an established norm.

And yet all is not what it seems. As the casual traveller walks through the city’s 21st-century streets, they can see where the old order has buckled and given way, swept aside by damage from the bombs of World War II, the building of roads or simply old-fashioned social change. Terraces that were once proud and united began to sprout gaps and spaces, while spacious gardens and obsolete coach houses gave way to cul-de-sacs, infill devel-opment and little closes of houses.

London is now far more organic, made up of a patchwork of styles and periods, with old and new sitting cheek by jowl, rubbing up against each other – occasionally the right way, often the wrong – to create one of the most charismatic built fabrics of any city on the planet. Those once neglected back streets show signs of constant reinvention, as changes in use, pressures of space and architectural invention have eked the most of every last square foot of space.

Naturally, all this off-the-beaten-track development has created a very different slant on living. Whereas cities like LA perch their modernist marvels on the canyon edges, there are precious few prominent spots in a place as dense as London. That’s why contemporary architectural innovation tends to be covert and clandestine, squeezed into back lots, tucked into mews, sandwiched in unlikely sites and even hidden behind existing façades.

Discovering these hidden tranches of domestic design is one of the delights of modern London living. Where once there was nothing save for overgrown gardens and abandoned workshops there now sits some of the most acclaimed contemporary architecture of recent years. Occasionally this is done on a grand scale. Murray Mews in Camden is a case in point. A long, slender mews, it originally housed the stables and storerooms of grand villas. Except that in the 1960s, in the wake of the war and before the advent of gentrification, Murray Mews was seized upon by a group of socially progressive architects. When zoning laws changed to allow small-scale development in what had been a disregarded backwater, the creative flood-gates opened.

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right: At the end of a cobbled lane made up of garages and workshops, architect marcus Lee has created a family house that transcends its location. far right, top: The Anderson house by architect Jamie fobert was created on a near non-existent plot, squashed between other houses and cleverly lit from above. far right, bottom: Threefold Architects' innovative residential building on murray mews ©

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Among those taking advantage of cheap land and progressive clients were the young Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, as well as a veritable coterie of north London archi-tectural mavericks, including Peter Bell, David Roberts, Hal Currey of Arup and the late Tom Kay, a campaigning designer who spent a grand total of £13,850 in 1972 to house his family and create his own architecture studio on the Mews.

Not every development is as varied or pioneering as Murray Mews. And as land values have risen, developers have become wise to the value of the backlot plot, making it unlikely that such an experiment could be repeated today. Nevertheless, the idea still holds fascination, and a substantial number of major new London houses have worked their magic on sites dismissed by less imaginative developers. In the heart of Hackney, cheek by jowl with light industry, high-end renova-tions and rapid change, the architect Marcus Lee has created a bespoke family house that transcends its location. Red cedar and Siberian larch are used for framing and cladding respec-tively, allowing a flowing interior that offers up surprisingly verdant views for such a tucked away site.

Similarly, the architect Jonathan Tuckey converted a former workshop in north London into his own home, with a conventional period façade offering little clue as the transfor-mation within. Dubbed the ‘Collage House,’ Tuckey added and subtracted, removing smaller structures to create a new rear façade and courtyard garden while preserving the patina of a century of work and industry alongside simple details and tough materials.

Other designers haven’t had the luxury of outdoor space. Caruso St John’s RIBA award-winning Brick House took four years to build. Finished with typical rigour and simplicity,

the Brick House is barely discernible from the road, tucked away in an awkward spot between existing Victorian buildings. Vast rooflights let into the sloping concrete roof create a secluded cave for living. Jamie Fobert’s first major work, the Anderson House, followed a similar geological approach, a top-lit retreat carved out of a tiny Central London site, accessed through a non-descript front door.

These secret spots are the capital’s architec-tural secrets, often the only chance for architectural expression in streets that are pushed for space or hidebound by planning stipulations. Next time you take a walk through unfamiliar London, seek out these nooks and crannies, or perhaps look out for an opportunity to make your own mark.

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5 Cabman s̓ Hut (Mr Bawden in London) from the series

‘Cuts From Memoryʼ by Christopher Brown

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ALPHABETCITY

Artist Christopher Brown has lived in London all his life and is in awe of his city. When working in the studio of great graphic artist Edward Bawden in the 1980s, Brown learnt how to make linocuts.

It’s a technique he uses in his book An Alphabet Of London, a celebration and re-exploration of the capital’s extraordinary buildings and towering landmarks. ‘People tend to rush around so much they never stop to look up and see how amazing some of the buildings are,’ he explains. ‘I’ve recorded my favourites in the hope that people might be inspired to open their eyes and experience them for themselves.’ Aimed at locals and tourists alike, Brown’s A-Z is a mix of the known, the delightful, the quirky and the eccentric – all packaged up in a way we can relate to: ‘I wanted it to have a beginning and an end, be a journey, but at the same time be varied. So the alphabet felt like the perfect way of ordering my selection.’

With this picture book for adults at hand, Brown’s London awaits as a playground ready to be explored. ‘Make it your own’, he suggests.

‘Go and have a wonder.’

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G 5

IS FOR GLOBE THEATRE, BANKSIDE

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U 5

IS FOR UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (AND UMBRELLAS), BLOOMSBURY

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E 5

IS FOR ELECTRIC CINEMA, PORTOBELLO ROAD

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S 5

IS FOR SHARD AND SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL

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T 5

IS FOR TEMPLE CHURCH, CITY OF LONDON

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B 5

IS FOR BANQUETING HOUSE, WHITEHALL, AND A BUSINESSMAN WITH A BOWLER AND A BROLLY

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IS FOR OLD VIC THEATRE, SOUTHWARK AND LAURENCE OLIVIER AS RICHARD III

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An Alphabet of London is published by Merrell. Christopher Brown studied at the Royal College of Art, where he met and later assisted the master of the linocut, Edward Bawden. He is an illustrator and print-maker and senior lecturer at Liverpool School of Art, Central Saint Martins and Camberwell College of Arts. He is currently working on an Alphabet of England, due to be released next year. For giclee prints of his Alphabet series and other work contact, info@centralillustration.com

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IS FOR KEW PALACE, KEW GARDENS

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A LITTle PLACE I KNOW…

5 TENNIS COURTS AT THE JARDIN DU LUxEMBOURG, PARIS

By AmY SERAfIn

Every time I play tennis in the Jardin du Luxembourg, I’m amazed that these courts exist, here in one of the world’s most beautiful public parks. They are part of a network of municipal courts available by

reservation and a small fee, as little as €4.50, making them one of the best deals in Paris. Unsurprisingly, they are popular, and difficult to reserve. But you can also show up with your racquet in hope that a court is free, which is often the case. If so, go to the little hut and sign up.

My favourite time to play is at 8am – not least because that’s one of the easiest times to get a court, as the French are not early risers. The park is wonderfully quiet, and the morning light mixes with the dust rising from the pathways to create a nostalgic mist in the air. There’s something about the Jardin du Luxembourg that looks exactly like a Jean-Jacques Sempé illustration. There are six courts, of which numbers 5 and 6 are a short distance away and less beautiful. The best ones are numbers 1 and 4, the end courts. The greatest side to play on is the one with the view of a 19th-century orangerie and palm trees.

People don’t dress like they’re at a tennis club when they’re hitting balls in an urban park. I’ve seen teenagers on these courts in jeans and Converse sneakers. Skinny French girls with shorts so revealing their derrières peek out. One morning, a guy decided to change out of his tennis clothes right then and there, stripping down to his black bikini underwear before dressing for the office.

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Perhaps it’s not the best place to focus on your game. There are other distractions. Passersby stop to watch you play. The odd security guard strolls by, like a character from Madeline. If you’re lucky, the sapeurs-pompiers, or firefighters, will jog past in a tight group like a school of fish, looking heroic with their crew-cut hair and red shorts. One always carries a walkie-talkie in case they have to go put out a fire.

Years ago, a friend of mine was walking through the park with his daughter. She was just a little girl, and stopped in wonder when she saw the courts, asking him what was this cage with people trapped inside. Little did she know how lucky they were to be there.

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Amy Serafin is a journalist and has lived in Paris for 15 years. She favours a Babolat racquet, and has a mean backhand

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5 THE COACH & HORSES PUB, SOHO, LONDON

By TIm BuRROwS

The first time I came across the Coach & Horses on a corner of Greek Street was during a ‘holi-stay’ with my now-wife. We had ended up in Soho for a bit of daytime drinking. We’d read the legend. More

than a pub, the Coach & Horses sounded like the living idea of what a louche pub should be: the essence of that literary boozer that all writers secretly want to live in, file copy from, and blur the boundaries of the working day until it becomes a liquid evening.

But the reality felt even more exotic, not because of any particular character frequenting the place – the clientele seemed a normal-ish bunch: Soho workers, older daytime-drinking gents, the odd thespy type – but more the time-warp décor, and its wholesale championing of a deeply unfashionable bar snack: the pickled egg.

When the British satirical institution, Private Eye magazine, had its office on Greek Street, this was its local. The writer and inventor of ‘British noir,’ Derek Raymond, and the Spectator’s famously sozzled Jeffrey Bernard used the Coach & Horses as a home from home. The place has ‘Norman’s’ written above the sign, in honour of the landlord Norman Balon, ‘the rudest man in Soho’, who retired in 2006 after 62 years’ service.

I was too young to have experienced the Norman era in full swing, but it hangs here like the cigarette smoke used to. Above the dumb waiter there is a cartoon of Norman in his element, berating a scoundrel drinker: ‘You’re barred!’ The current owners seem aware of this appeal, so the décor hasn’t changed much downstairs. The lit-up logos of disappeared drink brands – Double Diamond, Skol – reel in the modern time traveller. Strands of lost London traditions are kept alive here through traditional sing-along piano nights. Is the appeal mainly nostalgic? Perhaps. But London is forever changing, and somewhat idiosyncratically this was the city’s first vegetarian pub, a sign, perhaps, that Soho’s decadent, lascivious nature has been evaporating for some time.

I think what I like most about it is its aura of glorious unreality set within the fabric of 21st-century London. It feels like a soap-opera set. You can almost see the walls wobble. One day, you imagine, it will be taken down by the production crew, somehow bringing to an end Soho’s glorious mythic role as London’s creative fulcrum. But last orders isn’t just yet – for now, the pub stoically remains. 29 Greek Street, W1, London thecoachandhorsessoho.co.uk

Tim Burrows is a writer. His favourite tipple is a nice golden ale, which is probably why he has never been barred

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On 18 September, the doors to the city’s brightest young companies were flung open for At Home London – a spirited celebration of London’s start-ups, presented by onefinestay, co-hosted by MOO and TransferWise, and coinciding with our fifth birthday.

The half-day of festivities kicked off at MOO HQ, where their design savants led conversation on the importance of great design to young businesses. Practicing what they preach, the arty walls of their well-curated office ensured chatter continued after the speakers had left the stage.

Guests were then invited into TransferWise’s cool quarters, where conversation concentrated on company culture. Rohan Silva (Co-Founder of Second Home) mused on London’s ‘bottom up’ attitude, pegging

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the Great Fire of London as the spark that ignited the city’s solidarity, before Robert Swerling (Co-CEO of The Up Group) and our own Greg Marsh were called upon to offer their thoughts on workplace culture.

All came out in favour of downtime for employees, before TransferWise put the theory to the test, offering attendees Estonian shots, a heady mix of tequila and tabasco, in their in-office sauna.

The revelry showed no signs of slowing as we welcomed guests including Jimmy Wales, Co-Founder of Wikipedia, into our new home for the evening’s entertainment. Champagne and delicate bites were enjoyed by the soft glow of an army of candles, the miniature crème brûlée a popular choice. After which the crowd were in lively spirits as Team onefinestay took on Team Moo and The Investors in a game of University Challenge. Questions ranged from the technical to the not-so, including the crowd-favourite ‘name that internet animal celebrity’ round. And though we may not have come first (or second), the whole day was the perfect way to celebrate five years as a fast-growing start-up –many happy returns, indeed.

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Choosing a neighbourhood to call home in a city can lead to a journeyof discovery towards your own uncharted values and wants

words mirAndA creSSwelldirector, Brand marketing, onefinestay

A NYLoN STATE OF MIND

WWhen my husband and I moved back to London after 14 years in New York, we knew what would make us feel at home. He fantasised about finding his ‘local’, that specifically English term for the pub

where they not only know your name, but what football team you support. My main concern was finding good food, and great coffee. Like my husband I felt it would all fall into place once I was greeted as a local, a regular, in the neighbourhood we chose.

We left our home, on one of SoHo’s cobblestone streets, in December 2013. Our place was a true haven, a cosy nest, full of light. But we loved even more the neighbourhood. It was a treat to step out into the quiet SoHo mornings and pick up a coffee from Saturdays Surf Shop. And in the evenings we invested countless nights to earn status at our neighbourhood Italian, Osteria Morini. Our reward – a table whenever, endless treats, and the occasional surprise of a fully comped meal. But what really felt special was the friendly greeting, the stories exchanged and listened to, the being remembered.

After finding our new neighbourhood – Angel, in north London – my husband set off in search of his perfect pub, and I started to build up that network of greetings and chit-chat, of discussing the weather and local issues. As it stands, the newsagent waves each time I pass. His neighbour, a family grocer, always takes time to chat. And I’ve found a coffee shop with incredible coffee. When I remark to Londoners how friendly everyone is, and see their surprise, I realise the truth in the Beatles line ‘the love you get is equal to the love you give’ – I’ve imported some New York neighbourhood vibes with me.

We often hear the same stories from our guests at onefinestay. When you find the right area in a new city, for a move or a shorter stay, everything just clicks. You settle in, make the routine an adventure, and create a notion of home that not only makes everyday life special, but strengthens your sense of self in the world, the ‘this is me’ feeling. And in that way, finding yourself in a neighbourhood not only takes you to the heart of a new city but also to your heart’s content.