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| Saturday, November 30, 2019 |
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| 13 min. reading |
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Suggestions for your senses,
every Saturday at 9 a.m. |
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Good morning!
This week, we think differently about time with the kinetic sculptures of Humans Since 1982, pick out holiday presents at Matter’s “Friends Like Family” pop-up, expand our palates with Casa Bosques’s out-of-this-world hoja santa chocolate bar, take in David Hartt’s installation at a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed synagogue, and flip through Aesop’s new book.
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 On Ep. 28 of our Time Sensitive podcast, Spencer talks shop (and yes, time) with Craig Robins, the developer of Miami’s Design District and the co-founder of the Design Miami collectible design fair. |
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The name of Stockholm-based studio Humans Since 1982 is a nod to the birth year of its two founders, which might shed some light on their ongoing project “A Million Times,” a collection of kinetic sculptures with analog clock hands that have been programmed to rotate each minute to display the time in a digital format. The choreographed clocks remain their best-known work, and it’s the type of mash-up between retro and cutting-edge technology that a pair of elder millennials—old enough to cherish analog, young enough to be digital natives—would think to create. Seeing each of the synchronized hands turn and rearrange in harmonic unison to the next formation is visually arresting, like watching a finely tuned marching band or a Sol LeWitt composition in motion.
They’ll install their latest in the series at Gallery All’s booth next week at the annual Design Miami fair, on view Dec. 4-8. That’s not all we recommend to see there. Here, three other highlights to spot at this year’s edition:
- The minimalist, Modernist furniture used in the films of French director Jacques Tati are among the most memorable details of his work, often avatars of a satire on consumerism. As it turns out, he also designed some of them. Head to Les Ateliers Courbet’s booth to take in a capsule collection of three Tati-designed chairs, as seen in his 1958 film Mon Oncle, from the only edition to ever be produced.
- Korean designer Seungjin Yang made a splash at the New York and L.A. launches of his playful balloon-shaped armchairs at The Future Perfect’s Casa Perfect. Now, the gallery brings his wares to Miami for the first time.
- Crosby Studios founder Harry Nuriev is no stranger to social media, and his latest design—a clear sofa sectional filled with disused Balenciaga clothing, catnip to hypebeasts and art lovers seeking commentary on waste—has already generated buzz.
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Nobody wants a last-minute gift ordered off of Amazon—and the lazy convenience is certainly not worth the toll it takes on its holiday workers, not to mention the environment. Fortunately, it’s also the season of pop-up shops and plenty of studio sales offering rare finds and deals, so you have no excuse. Coming up soon, in New York City: “Friends Like Family,” a tightly edited holiday store—organized by partners Jamie Gray, owner of the design gallery Matter, and interior designer Olivia Sammons—will feature gifts from a range of independent designers and studios, including Rodrigo Bravo (whose work is pictured above), Ana Kraš, and Objects of Common Interest, as well as aesthetically forward wares from candle and fragrance maker D.S. & Durga, smoking accessories label Tetra, Belgian design studio Muller van Severen, and others. Starting Dec. 12, and available at Matter through Jan. 4, 2020 (yes, we’re actually that close to the new decade), the sale will donate a portion of its proceeds to the Robin Hood Foundation.
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| Casa Bosques’s Hoja Santa chocolate bar of white-bean cacao with hoja santa. |
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Rafael Prieto, creative director of the New York City– and Mexico City–based studio Savvy, and the founder of Casa Bosques and Casa Bosques Chocolates, tells us about hoja santa, the special aromatic herb found in his latest concoction.
You’ve been making chocolate for nine years now. How did you start?
I love chocolate. I was traveling in Europe, tasting and trying different chocolates, and it was interesting because Belgian chocolate, for example, is called Belgian chocolate, but the cacao comes from other countries. So I got curious about this traveling line of cacao. Later, when I was back [in Mexico], designing a restaurant, I randomly met and started talking with a pastry chef, asking, “Where do you get the chocolate for this cake?” The conversation went on, and then it just clicked in my mind that I wanted to make chocolate. We got our first beans in Mexico, and from there it has been an exploration of different flavors.
Tell us about your latest ingredient, the hoja santa leaf. Where does it come from, and how does it taste?
I discovered hoja santa a bit late, because I’m from the north [of Mexico], and hoja santa is from the south—Mexican cuisine is very regional. I think I was 17 when I had my first one. It has this almost anise taste to it, but at the same time it’s bitter. Hoja santa is very important in Mexican cuisine, but it’s always one hundred percent in savory dishes, in moles, teas, all sorts. It has a lot of spiritual and healing connotations, and represents a lot about our connection to the cosmos, ancient folk knowledge about energy. It is used for general well-being, a way to detoxify, protect your immune system. (And, in theory, it’s anti-inflammatory, but, you know, bloating is not such a thing in Mexico—that’s more of an American concern.)
Last winter, I was in Oaxaca, eating this specific quesadilla that had hoja santa, and I thought, Man, I need a chocolate with this. Hoja santa is a living thing, and I didn’t want to grind it or dry it like another ingredient, because then it loses its power. In the finished bar, a whole leaf is embedded and partly exposed in the middle of the chocolate—that took us, like, seven months, to get the leaf at the perfect balance of dried and slightly crystallized with sugar, for a little crunchiness.
From where do you source your cacao?
I always get it from different countries, but I wanted to make this one very Mexican, and I knew there was this ranch growing white-bean cacao. For a cacao bean to be white means that it’s very special and pure; nothing has happened to the field, no pollution, nothing.
You tend to feature uncommon flavors. How do you decide which ingredients to experiment with?
Pink peppercorn was the first one that I did, because I was very curious about mixing chocolate with different spices and flavors. The second was fleur de sel, then the third was rosemary. For the fourth one, I was living in Kuwait for a while, working on a project, and did one with cardamom, as a reminder of the Turkish coffee and tea they drink there.
Depending on where I’m traveling, the chocolate for me is almost like a journal. I taste something interesting, and then try to turn those flavors into a bar with something that resonates. |
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| “David Hartt: The Histories (Le Mancenillier)” at the Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Michael Vahrenwald) |
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“It’s often the case that curators invite artists to make projects; this time, the artist invited the curator,” says Cole Akers, curator and special projects manager at Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, who has organized an installation of artist David Hartt’s work at another site of cultural and historical significance: the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. On view through Dec. 19, “The Histories (Le Mancenillier)” references a 19th-century piano composition written by the American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and the sweet-but-poisonous tropical plant he named it after. Born in New Orleans to a Jewish father and a Creole mother, Gottschalk was “the first to synthesize the classical tradition with African American and Afro-Caribbean song,” Akers says, “anticipating jazz and ragtime by more than fifty years.”
Exploring the histories of Jewish and black diasporas in the U.S., Hartt has invited Ethopian pianist Girma Yifrashewa to create a contemporary interpretation of Gottschalk’s piece for the exhibition, as well as Haitian baritone Jean Bernard Cerin to perform live Jewish, Caribbean, and African-American compositions. Images, video, and elements of sculpture, such as tropical plants and orchids placed to capture leaking rainwater throughout the building, complement the sound pieces, which are broadcast using an elaborate brass-plated microphone designed by Hartt. A dialogue between cultures, histories, and geographies told through song, the installation is a dynamic rumination on time, memory, and place. Catch the last live musical activation of the exhibition’s run next Saturday, Dec. 8.
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The precise and pared-down aesthetic of the Australian beauty company Aesop might seem completely of-the-moment—the Apple or Muji equivalent of skin care—until you realize that, like both of those brands, its lasting power goes back to the ’80s (though it has been owned by a Brazilian company for the better part of the past decade). Once a cult brand, it now runs more than 235 stores worldwide, its translucent amber bottles ubiquitous in boutique hotels and upscale restaurants.
Aesop, a new monograph from Rizzoli, tells the origin story of how hairdresser Dennis Paphitis began selling the first products at Emeis, his emphatically “anti-salon” hair salon that sought to change the game by redesigning the entire experience around the senses (yes, we know, quite apropos for us to bring up in this newsletter)—and with the exacting tenacity of a Steve Jobs–like persona, to boot. Customers would enter into a space filled with natural light, kept preternaturally quiet, sparsely furnished, and, most notably, scented with an herbaceous aroma of French rosemary, sage, and Tasmanian lavender—a cocktail of essential oils, diffused in bowls of hot water, that would form the basis of his first products. It’s not hard to see how the salon, while short-lived, served as the road map to Aesop, detailed in the following pages. In the brand’s own words: “We prefer to be discovered through smell and sound, rather than through loud signage and florid displays.”
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Until next week...
Today’s email was written by Aileen Kwun.
Editor: Spencer Bailey
Creative Director: Andrew Zuckerman
Producer: Emily Queen
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