A selection of contemporary pieces such as a Living Divani Extrasoft sofa, a B&B Italia Camaleonda sofa chair and ottoman, and a series of bright-blue stools by Max Enrich, echo MESURA’s boxy, sculptural design language while a bespoke coffee table designed by resident artist Sara Regal made out of waste materials from the construction process, further underlines the project’s interplay of art and design.
Espousing the same design principles as the main living area, the open-plan private zone is anchored by three free-standing, cubic elements, a bathtub, a sink and a bed, the latter featuring a wood-clad boxy headboard. Tying everything together, a colour palette of white and light grey tones both enhances the natural light streaming in from the large windows along three sides, and creates a neutral backdrop for the artworks on display.
“London’s favorite design fair is back” reads the London Design Fair’s website – and it is and it isn’t. The show, formerly known as Tent, is under new ownership, much smaller than in its pre-COVID heyday, and less tightly curated, but nonetheless it did contain some absolute gems. One of the highlights, not just of the London Design Fair but of the whole festival, was ‘You CAN Sit With Us’ curated by 2LG Studio, a London-based interior design and styling consultancy, founded by creative duo, Jordan Cluroe and Russell Whitehead (below left).
Photo: Megan Taylor
US Congress member Shirley Chisholm is credited with coining the oft-quoted expression, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring in a folding chair.” But with Russell and Jordan about, you won’t be needing one. You CAN Sit With Us (emphasis on “can” and referencing the 2004 movie Mean Girls) is a curation that responds to prejudice they have felt and still feel from the industry. They placed a long dining table at the heart of an installation designed to explore inclusivity and asked emerging designers to each design one chair, giving them a platform so they wouldn’t experience the same barriers.
Photo: Katie Treggiden
The project also included a collaboration with Granite + Smoke (pictured above with Jordan and Russell) whose colorful blankets featured the words from the exhibition title and with Custhom (immediately above). Other designers featured in the space include Ercol, Helen Kirkum, Wilkinson & Rivera, Sam Klemick, and Amechi Mandi.
Photo: Katie Treggiden
The other part of the fair that really shone was the British Craft Pavilion and the first stand through the door belonged to furniture maker Nick James. Nick describes himself as “a highly skilled craftsman and tree lover.” He’s an advocate of traditional woodworking techniques, uses British-grown wood, making everything by hand in his Newcastle-upon-Tyne workshop, and feeds his creativity by spending every Wednesday in his local woodland.
Photo: Katie Treggiden
Pamela Print spent 14 years in the fashion textiles industry and now relishes the slow pace of natural dying and hand weaving. Her Kantha III artwork (above) is hand-dyed using indigo and logwood plant dyes. As well as artworks, she also makes scarves, cushions, throws, and weaving kits.
Photo: Katie Treggiden
Will James runs Knot Design from a small studio and workshop in central London, making to order and celebrating the natural imperfections of wood. Like many of his products, the Dickens Wall Shelf (above) can be completely customized by size, timber, and number of shelves, so it’s just as perfect for a tiny nook as it is to provide “a sprawling display for your cherished collectibles.”
Photo: Katie Treggiden
Woven Memories cushions’ unique designs are created with an online tool that can turn any typed message into binary code and therefore a visual pattern. They are made from locally sourced and deadstock yarn to ensure their sustainability message is as embodied as the message coded into their designs.
Photo: Katie Treggiden
Barbara Gittings is a Brighton-based ceramicist, specializing in Nerikomi techniques. Inspired by a former career in textiles, these involve adding oxides or stains to the clay to color it and then joining, slicing, and rejoining layers of colors to build up patterns through the clay, which she then slab-builds, biscuit-fires, and sands down before a final smoke firing and polish. The result evokes the multi-layered effects of nature, such as the laying down of strata, weathering, and erosion.
Photo: Katie Treggiden
Pointing out negative spaces in the doorway opposite her stand that she is already convinced will inspire future work, Jane Cairns explains that her work (above) “is about finding beauty in the ordinary; about recognizing the accidental poetry in the unnoticed and overlooked,” she says. “Living in the city, this is often found in apparently insignificant visual details of the built environment – the space on a wall where something has been removed, a juxtaposition of materials, the sculptural qualities of found forms.”
Photo: Katie Treggiden
Each lamp by Margate-based Lux Pottery is a slab-built stoneware artwork in its own right, brought to life with a vintage-style lightbulb. She also makes wall hangings inspired by her surroundings in referencing mid-century design motifs.
Photo: Courtesy of Spark & Bell
Outside of the British Craft Pavilion, a couple of stands really stood out, one of which was Brighton-based Spark & Bell – a sustainable lighting company that is even creating its own sheet materials from recycled plastic.
Photo: Katie Treggiden
Another sustainable exhibitor of note was Studio Lia Karras, all the way from Winnipeg, Canada. Lia specializes in custom handwoven textile art for architectural spaces made with reclaimed and reimagined materials – often taken from the very buildings the resulting pieces are commissioned for.
Photo: Katie Treggiden
“I believe that abundance could look different,” she says. “I believe in living and working gently and leading a lifestyle and practice where beauty, quality, and sustainability are in balance. In all of my work, I strive to contribute without taking; to make the best possible use of the resources available to me by thoughtfully re-imagining the materials at hand. I strive to create something beautiful, functional, subtle, and tactile.”
Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author and, podcaster championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. She is also the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a program and membership community for designer-makers who want to join the circular economy. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine and Monocle24 – as well as being Editor at Large for Design Milk. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.
The festival of ethical photography in Lodi, Italy, has announced the winning projects in this year’s World Report Award | Documenting Humanity. Twenty exhibitions display the work of nearly 100 photographers from 40 different countries
The winners’ projects will be exhibited in Lodi until 29 October
Offices have been trending toward open workspaces for over a decade, as employers look to boost collaboration and maximize use of space.
But as states begin to lift shelter-in-place orders and employees prepare to return to work, more than 80% of landlords and office managers are already re-envisioning the workplace, according to a study of 400 participants by VergeSense, a San Francisco-based proptech company.
“Every client we’re working with has one overarching concern: how do I create a safe environment for my employees, both from a health perspective and from an emotional and mental health perspective,” said Verity Sylvester, co-founder of Branch, a New York City-based office furniture company.
Companies are creating structural changes to encourage social distancing in the office. Some companies have ordered six-foot long desks, permanent wall dividers, cubicles and “sneeze guards,” or sheets of plastic separating employees’ space, according to office furniture suppliers.
“The ever-popular ‘open office’ trend is going to have to be quickly rethought and adapted — Nobody wants to bring their teams back to a true open concept environment,” said Sylvester.
Had an interesting Zoom today with a group of architects and office planers.
A nearly 100% sell-out of plexiglass and plastic/cloth office dividers.
One very large tech company—just today made an order for ~5000 that just about zeroed our all in the US.
“We are about to see a reversal of a decades-long trend,” said Joe Learner, Savills vice chairman, director and Midwest Region lead. “For years and years, there has been a move toward densification and collaboration. Companies wanted more people into the same area, so they took away ‘me’ space and increased the ‘we’ space.”
But restructuring an office is not practical for small businesses — a full-height cubicle can cost several thousand dollars per employee, according to Sylvester.
“There’s a divide in what companies can achieve in outfitting their office for the new environment,” said Sylvester. “Small and mid-sized companies just do not have the resources to invest in brand new office furniture, especially as we navigate through a challenging recession,” said Sylvester.
Cubicles and sneeze guards are not the only expensive items on companies’ futuristic office wish list. Companies like Amazon are using short-term measures like thermal cameras to detect employees with a fever. But thermal cameras do not detect asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 and can reportedly cost between $5,000 and $20,000.
Social distancing sensors have also gained traction. Cameras and other sensors can track employee interactions, to flag areas of the office that need extra cleaning or trace who is at risk if an employee tests positive. One San Francisco-based sensor provider, VergeSense, had a 242% increase in the number of prospective installations this quarter compared to last quarter.
But even providers say sensors are too expensive even as a short-term measure, considering a COVID-19 vaccine would make social distancing tech redundant.
“Because we want people to have this technology, what we are charging only covers part of the cost it takes to provide it. This solution won’t be relevant a year from now, hopefully,” said Sonny Tai, co-founder and CEO of Actuate, a New York-based artificial intelligence software company.
For companies that cannot afford sensors and “sneeze guards,” there are low-cost options to keep workers safe. Instead of thermal sensors, companies can use thermometers and ask employees medical screening questions. And instead of cubicles, privacy panels can be a lower-cost alternative. But office consulting firms say that structural changes might not be necessary after all.
“Companies don’t want to look at the pre-vaccine period and make enormous investments. It is not the appropriate time because we need more information. We can use the existing work environment, following certain guidelines and inexpensive modifications,” said Learner.
‘People want to know that their employer cares’
When employees return to the office, they can expect fewer chairs and desks, with at least six feet of distance between them. Signs around the office will ask employees to walk in a single direction, like in many grocery stores. Many employers will also provide masks, hand sanitizers and wipes.
“From a re-imagination standpoint, that is a capital expenditure and required cost. But a lot of the things we’re talking about can be managed with relatively less expense,” said Sanjay Rishi, CEO of JLL’s Corporate Solutions in the Americas.
To encourage social distancing, businesses may stagger employees’ returns. Experts say that most businesses will initially reduce capacity to 50%, while some employees continue to work from home, at least part-time.
“In the short-term, keeping shifts of employees working from home allows them to remain largely net-neutral on the amount of real estate they have,” said Sylvester. “We suspect there will be a long, and potentially even permanent, period of alternating work schedules and optional work from home schedules.”
But some major new expenses will be necessary for most office suppliers: cleaning is going to be a particularly important part of workplace re-entry. Offices will need to be cleaned more often and more thoroughly — and companies will need to prove to employees that they are returning to a sanitized work environment.
“When it comes to cleaning, people want to know that their employer cares. At another time employees may not have felt that their employer did care, so it is more important now than ever,” said Jim Underhill, former CEO of Cushman and Wakefield and current CEO of Cresa, a Washington D.C.-based commercial tenant consulting firm.
Some companies are instituting “experience apps” to communicate with tenants, according to Eddy Wagoner, executive director and digital chief innovation officer at JLL Technologies, while for others, seeing is believing.
“I spoke with a large company that is having the cleaners come in a half-hour before employees arrive, so they can smell the cleanliness. A lot of cleaning usually happens off hours,” said Kate Wieczorek, manager of workplace strategy at workplace consulting firm Ted Moudis Associates in New York City.
Sanitization expenses can get pricey, especially when installing new technology. Touchless options for doors, faucets, cafeteria check-outs and conference room check-ins — which can cost about $1,000 each — are already standard in many facilities, but health concerns will likely accelerate demand, according to Bryan Murphy, CEO of New York City-based flexible office provider Breather.
Plus, old heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems may need to be replaced if they are not providing clean air for employees. That could cost up to $10,000 or more, but ineffective air filters and dry air conditions can amplify risk, said Murphy.
“Customers are not looking for the cheapest cleaning service anymore — they want the healthiest office,” said Adam Povlitz, president and CEO of Anago Cleaning Systems, a Florida-based commercial cleaning company with over 40 U.S. franchise locations.
Getting to the office safely
But there is one immutable problem that employers don’t know how to solve: getting workers and employees to the office. Long commutes, especially on public transportation, pose health concerns. And the last bit of the commute, the elevator to the office, threatens to create unsafe conditions for employees. Most employers say they have not found a full answer to this problem, but they plan to limit the number of passengers on elevators.
“Most of the problem is not where it is safe to go into the office, but how do I get to work? How do I get through the lobby and the elevator?” said Learner. “The biggest obstacle right now is getting people up to their space with the capacity in the elevators. Might need to stagger start and leave times.”
Employers are thinking through every aspect of office life to adapt to a post-pandemic world. But as extensive as these changes are, they may not be enough to make employees want to return to the office.
In fact, some 74% of CFOs say their company will reduce office space because employees have adapted to working from home, according to a survey of over 300 CFOs by Gartner, a Connecticut-based research and advisory firm.
“Businesses are gonna realize they have way too much space to utilize and they’re going to want to renegotiate their leases,” Barbara Cordcoran, Shark Tank judge and founder of the Corcoran Group, a New York-based residential brokerage, recently told Yahoo Finance.
Shrinking demand could cause up to a 15% decline in office rent prices over the next 12 months, according to Murphy.
Sarah Paynter is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @sarahapaynter
Claude Cormier was intrigued when he was asked to create a winter garden for the lobby of Montreal’s convention center in the late 1990s. But an interior “greenhouse” of living plants seemed to him completely unsuitable and unsustainable. What Montreal needed, especially in the winter, he thought, was color.
His solution: Lipstick Forest, the name he gave to 52 concrete tree trunks lacquered in bright pink.
When he first presented his design, he recalled, there was dead silence. But the project moved forward, and when the trees were finally installed in late 2002, Le Journal de Montreal, a city tabloid, panned them on its front page, declaring in a headline, “C’est Horrible!”
The public, however, disagreed, and the forest became a beloved city landmark. Mr. Cormier always said the newspaper had delivered his favorite review.
Mr. Cormier, an avant-garde Canadian landscape architect who created playfully subversive and much loved public spaces, died on Sept. 15 at his home in Montreal. He was 63. The cause was complications of Li-Fraumeni syndrome, a rare genetic condition, according to his firm, CCxA, which announced his death.
Bureaucratic confusion and public delight were typical reactions to Mr. Cormier’s work, which enlivened Toronto as well as Montreal. In reimagining a section of Dorchester Square in Montreal, he designed a fanciful Victorian style fountain, tiered like a wedding cake, to evoke the city’s “belle epoque” period.
Yet when it was installed at one edge of the square, it was fabricated to look as though it had been sliced in half; from the street, it resembles a two-dimensional cutout (with a realistic-looking cast-iron woodpecker pecking at its highest tier). The slicing was Mr. Cormier’s response when he was told to lose the fountain in his original design because the city needed more room for tour buses.
A fountain in Berczy Park in downtown Toronto also runs on whimsy: It is ringed by life-size bronze dogs (and one cat) which spout arcs of water. It was a project Mr. Cormier hoped would be financed by a public art fund, and when he showed his proposal, the park’s board members announced that dogs were not art. Mr. Cormier’s team returned with a 50-page treatise on the role of dogs in art throughout history, and the design was approved. (A cat park designed by him, on the west side of town, has yet to be built.)
Mr. Cormier oftenjoked that he was the love child of Martha Schwartz, the provocative landscape architect who made her name bringing contemporary art-like elements into her work, and who was his professor at Harvard, and Frederick Law Olmsted, the creator of urban landscapes like Central Park in Manhattan.
When Mr. Cormier conceived his first urban beach, known HTO, on the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto — his firm has since designed four — he was inspired by the well-known Georges Seurat painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” Its approach is a gentle slope planted with weeping willows; the beach is planted with yellow umbrellas.
His second beach, Sugar Beach, a Toronto public park near the Redpath Sugar factory, is planted with pink umbrellas, a nod to the refinery’s sweet product. There was resistance to that hue, however. Pink was too feminine and too frivolous, some thought. Mr. Cormier and his team lobbied hard and prevailed. They wore pink hard hats to the job site.
Pink was a totemic color for Mr. Cormier, who deployed it in a seasonal installation in Montreal called Pink Balls — 170,000 strands of pink plastic spheres suspended over Sainte-Catherine Street East, a predominantly gay neighborhood, that transformed it into a pedestrian mall.
The neighborhood had become run down and store vacancy rates were high, said Marc Hallé, a colleague of Mr. Cormier’s. The installation, which went up each summer for five years starting in 2011, buoyed the street’s fortunes by bringing foot traffic back into the area.
“It was so simple,” Mr. Hallé said by phone. “Hang a bunch of balls over the street.”
It was typical of Mr. Cormier’s work, he added, which he described as both humble and monumental. “It was highbrow and lowbrow — not intellectual but visceral.”
The pink thread was a quiet bit of activism on Mr. Cormier’s part, Mr. Hallé said. Mr. Cormier, who was gay, came of age during the AIDS crisis, when there wasn’t a lot of joy in the gay community. His work, with its humorous and welcoming features, is designed for pleasure and for joy. “He was a pleasure activist,” Mr. Hallé said. “He changed hearts by making you feel good.”
Claude Cormier was born on June 22, 1960, in Princeville, a rural community in southern Quebec. His father, Laurent, ran the family’s dairy and maple syrup farm until his death at 44, when Claude was 17; his mother, Solange Cormier, was a teacher.
Claude studied agronomy at the University of Guelph in Ontario, graduating in 1982 — his focus was plant breeding; he wanted to invent a new hybrid flower — and then landscape architecture at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1986. He earned a master’s degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1994.
Mr. Cormier is survived by his mother; his sister, Louise; and his brother, Pierre.
His last project, Love Park, designed in collaboration with gh3*, a Toronto-based firm, opened in June. Built on the site of a former expressway ramp, it’s now an inviting urban oasis dotted with lawns and shade trees — and a menagerie of bronze woodland creatures — around a vast heart-shaped pond bounded by a low, red-tiled wall you can sit on. Mr. Cormier and Mr. Hallé called it an urban love seat.
Gardens are boring, Mr. Cormier told The Ottawa Citizen in 2000. “How can we make gardens that look the same as we were making 100 years ago?” he said. “Fashion, architecture, cinema, everything else has changed. Can we make gardens that represent who we are now with the values and culture and technology that we have?”
‘Andrea Branzi has left us. He was a giant of radical thought on human spaces, a sophisticated historian of italian design, a visionary artist capable of inhabiting other universes and parallel worlds with irony. He leaves us a powerful and generative legacy of works and texts; and a film produced a year ago by Triennale which is his intellectual testament. He left us thinking and dreaming. A few hours ago, we spoke with him and Nicoletta and Emanuele Coccia to resume the project of a ‘Great Paris’ crossed by 50 thousand large sacred cows -so that they could ‘reduce metropolitan stress’. Ciao Andrea, keep dreaming about us.
Andrea Branzi began his architectural journey at the Florence School of Architecture, where he earned his degree in 1966. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Branzi founded Archizoom Associati together with Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, and Massimo Morozzi, an experimental design group known for its groundbreaking projects, including the visionary No-Stop-City, an unbuilt project presenting an urban utopia where the architectural form disappears and only the essential remains.
‘A project that was of great importance for me, but also for my generation, for many artists that came afterwards was the No-Stop-City project,’ Branzi told designboom in 2003. ‘A fluid metropolis, where even the concept of modernity within order changes towards an idea of uncontrollable complexity and a world destined to a huge diversification. Today I see that this type of scenario is appreciated, shared by famous contemporary architects who recognize the radical movement and the No-Stop City project to be a genetic event, which intercepted a development in the culture of the project, becoming an example within the project itself.’
No-Stop City (1970) by Archizoom Associati
Some of Andrea Branzi’s notable furniture designs include the Superonda sofa (1966), the Mies chair (1968), and the modular Safari sofa (1968). These pieces were created with the intention of challenging conventional notions of how we use and interact with furniture. Later, he played a significant role in Studio Alchimia, founded in 1976, and collaborated with the Memphis Group in the early 1980s. In the mid-1980s, Branzi shifted his design approach away from the highly stylized aesthetics of postmodernism and embraced what he termed ‘neoprimitivism,’ blending elements of nature and artificiality.
The pieces featured raw sections of trees integrated into sleek and minimalist tables, chairs, and benches, all characterized by a grayscale color palette. Branzi’s impact extends beyond his design work. He co-founded Domus Academy, the first international post-graduate design school, and served as a professor and chairman of the School of Interior Design at the Politecnico di Milano until 2009.
Domestic Animals bench (1985) by Andrea & Nicoletta Branzi | image courtesy of Wright
In more recent years, Branzi’s designs have evolved into personal objects with a fragmented composition and subtle Yiddish irony. These designs reflect his ongoing exploration of innovative concepts and aesthetics in the world of furniture and object design. Branzi has received several awards throughout his career, including three Compasso d’Oro, honored for individual or group effort in 1979, 1987, and 1995. Additionally, he received the title of Honorary Royal Designer in the United Kingdom in 2008 and an honorary degree from La Sapienza in Rome.
His work was also featured in an installation at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in the same year. In 2018, Branzi received the prestigious Rolf Schock Prize in Visual Arts from the Swedish Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Andrea Branzi’s design legacy endures, with his works held in the permanent collections of esteemed institutions like the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, among others.
Safari sofa (1967) by Archizoom Associati | image courtesy of Poltronova
Featuring three-metre ceilings and views of the estate’s gardens, the property had a lot going for it to begin with. In order to enhance the sense of spaciousness and brightness, the designers merged the kitchen and living room into an open-plan social area, and applied a muted colour palette of light grey and white for the floors, walls and ceiling. The muted backdrop is punctuated by a series of chunky geometric forms sporting kooky patterns and vibrant pops of colours, from green marble and orange terrazzo, to walnut burl veneer, to stainless steel and glass blocks. In the hands of another designer, this excess of textures and finishes may have visually overloaded the space; in this case however they neatly come together, a testament to Mistovia’s spatial deftness and an eye for colour and pattern.
The designers have used a number of cubic forms to mark each functional area. Dominating the entrance, a wall-to-wall built-in wardrobe is clad in a swirly grey wood veneer originally designed by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass for Alpi in the 1980s. A pink terrazzo round table paired with HAY’s Rey lacquered wood chairs, originally designed by Swiss designer Bruno Rey in 1971, conjures the playful aesthetic of the Memphis Group, the design collective that Sottsass founded. Clad in walnut burl veneer, the organic patterns of the floor-to-ceiling cabinetry in the kitchen area are juxtaposed with the brushed steel counter and the black and white terrazzo supports of the breakfast bar by the window.
Bed-Stuy Townhouse is a minimalist townhouse located in Brooklyn, New York, designed by architecture firm Also Office in collaboration with Colony, the co-operative gallery and strategy firm founded by Jean Lin. Headed by Evan Erlebacher, Also Office approached each of the property’s three floors with a varying degree of intervention, ensuring the history of the home was not lost in the renovation process.
The ground level witnessed a complete modern overhaul, complemented by the introduction of a primary bedroom suite, a white oak sunroom, and a garden. The latter is notably designed as an extension of the suite, enveloped by lush greenery. The ground floor also offers a guest suite, tailored to be a soundproof sanctuary for the homeowner’s musical pursuits.
A custom circular staircase made of perforated steel spirals downwards, doubling as both a path to the new terrace on the parlor level as well as a striking sculptural element. The kitchen, living, and dining areas coalesce seamlessly, with Also Office preserving hallmark features such as wood casings and sliding pocket doors. In a delicate balance between the past and present, the wooden elements bear the marks of time, contrasting harmoniously with newly plastered walls and updated moldings.
Colony’s involvement brings a flair of modernity to the interiors. The parlor level, rich in historical accents, now boasts contemporary pieces. Jean Lin’s curation blends both vintage and modern works, and was, “drawn to the thread of time throughout the space, wanting to play a part in unraveling it into the present moment,” says Colony founder Jean Lin. A highlight is the living room, where wall shelves house the owner’s vast record collection, centered around a fireplace that serves as an architectural anchor.
Photography by David Mitchell.
Leo Lei translates his passion for minimalism into his daily-updated blog Leibal. In addition, you can find uniquely designed minimalist objects and furniture at the Leibal Store.
No one knows exactly how many south Asian miniature paintings are held in public and private collections in the UK, but Hammad Nasar, co-curator of a new exhibition at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, estimates it is at least 100,000. “As a sort of a thought exercise: imagine if there were 20,000 works by, say, Turner sitting in museums in Lahore or New Delhi,” he says. “What would that mean? And to whom?”
Beyond the Page will feature more than 170 artworks, including miniature paintings going back to the mid-16th century and the responses of 20th- and 21st-century artists – from south Asia and beyond – to these works, and to the form in general. Not that “miniature” is a “terribly agreed term”, says Nasar. “It’s a bit like when people say ‘the Middle East’: the middle of where? East of what?” While the works are generally small, “they don’t need to be the size of your thumbnail. They more share an approach to materials, a rigour of application and a kind of intimacy of encounter, no matter what the scale.”
First emerging about 1200 to illustrate Buddhist and Jain texts, miniature paintings went on to depict secular as well as religious subjects – domestic, courtly and ceremonial moments. The works tend to be small because they were usually bound together, making a hybrid form of art and book. “The first audience wasn’t people filing past museum walls,” says Nasar, “instead they were gathered together, maybe after dinner, and the works would be passed from one to another, held in people’s hands and brought close to their eyes to better see the intricate details. It’s that kind of intimacy artists are still attracted to.”
The works on display have been imported to the UK for more than 400 years, acquired through gifts, purchases, commissions and less scrupulous methods. There is even an important branch of miniatures called the Company School of painting, in which colonial patrons commissioned local artists to capture themselves, their families and their surroundings, resulting in a remarkable record of the British in India.
But the traffic has not been entirely one way. In the 1960s, artists Zahoor ul Akhlaq and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh studied at the Royal College of Art in London and, independently, found themselves walking through the miniatures collection of the V&A on their way to classes. “Of course, they were already familiar with miniature paintings,” says Nasar, “but the intensity of these everyday encounters, and the opportunity to engage with scholars, saw them look anew at the work and expand their visions. They returned home to arguably the most important art schools in Pakistan and India respectively, and their influence over artists and institutions is still being felt today.”
Over the centuries, the miniature has symbolised many things: the vast wealth and power of those who commissioned the work; the impact of colonialism; and also of anti-colonialism, when adopted by local artists as an indigenous artform.
“It can symbolise different things, depending on which century and in which place you happen to be,” says Nasar. “The miniature is one of those Rorschach tests that allows different people to see different things.”
Small wonders: five key works from Beyond the Page
The delivery of presents for Prince Dara Shikoh’s wedding in December 1632, c 1640 (main image) This image from the Padshahnama, a history of a Mughal emperor, was presented to George III and is still held in the Royal Collection. It depicts a lavish wedding complete with splashes of bright yellow turmeric used in wedding rituals to this day. Its use as the cover for a 1997 edition of the Padshahnama saw it become an important source for south Asian artists.
Regifting … Hamra Abbas: All Rights Reserved 2004. Digital prints reworking details from the picture of Prince Dara-Shukoh’s Wedding. Photograph: Collection of Kamran M Anwar
Hamra Abbas – All Rights Reserved, 2004 This is one of four digital prints responding to the image of Prince Dara Shikoh’s wedding. Abbas, in a nod to the painting’s physical removal from India, here removes the gifts from the wedding guests. In another panel she depicts only the gifts, and in the other two she reproduces the copyright terms and title page from an art catalogue, underlying not just how important the actual objects are, but also how access to them is contained.
Officer of the East India Company, probably the surgeon William Fullerton, seated on a terrace. Photograph: Photo Studio/Victoria & Albert Museum
Dip Chand – Portrait of William Fullerton, c 1764 The Company School of painting has been described as the Instagram of its day. Here, Fullerton, a Scottish doctor who had made his fortune in India, is seen adopting an aristocratic Bengali lifestyle while retaining a British sense of dress. Company School artists were often among the finest of the time, employed by the British after the decline of local royal patronage.
Eye to eye … Nusra Latif Qureshis Did you come Here to Find history? (crop). Digital print on transparent film in the form of a scroll. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist
Nusra Latif Qureshi – Did You Come Here to Find History?, 2009 These digital portraits, on a nine metre-long film scroll, include both the artist as well as historical figures. The transparency of the material emphasises the palimpsestic nature of both art and history.
Women in outdoor cloaks, c 1720–40 This work first appeared in book form, as a copy of an image on the reverse painted in the century before. Patrons would encourage their artists to copy older work, as well as alter the presentation of the art, in an ongoing process of curation, addition and subtraction.
Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now, is at the MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, to 28 January.
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The smell of espresso, ambient lighting and soft music: There’s a lot to like about your favorite coffeehouse, but what you might love most is that it’s a space that makes you feel both relaxed and productive at the same time.
If you’ve been spending way more time at home then anywhere else this year, your living room and bedroom might be looking a little worse for wear, especially if it’s also become your makeshift office. An energizing makeover might be exactly what your home needs.
But if you’re having a hard time deciding what home decor style you like, it might be as easy as thinking about the spaces outside of your home that make you feel good, like your favorite coffeehouse. If that’s the case, industrial home decor might be what you’re looking for if you’re not into the rustic desert vibes of Southwestern-style furniture or the minimalist aesthetic of Scandinavian furniture and decor.
But what exactly is industrial style furniture and what does this interior design trend look like? Visions of reclaimed wood coffee tables, vintage couches and exposed-pipe lighting might come to mind — and you wouldn’t be wrong.
To create the industrial home look at home, just think about your favorite coffeehouse. It’s an interior design style that combines both modern, urban elements with rustic, vintage ones — like hanging rope or wire lights with Edison bulbs, a vintage wood coffee table with repurposed metal hairpin legs, vintage leather seating with exposed brick walls. It juxtaposes natural and manmade materials (wood and metal) and cool and warm tones like gray, black, tan and brown.
The best part is it’s a home style that pairs will with pretty much any other decor style too, particularly midcentury modern furniture and decor. For your own personal twist, you might add art deco-inspired accents for a more glamorous vibe, or Southwestern furniture and decor to make it even cozier.
You might already know about destinations such as Wayfair and AllModern for industrial style furniture and home decor. But did you know that Amazon and Etsy are also worth browsing? Amazon’s own in-house brand Rivet carries industrial-looking midcentury modern styles, too. Etsy remains a prime destination for handmade industrial artwork, furniture and fixtures around the home, like this rustic entryway wall-mount coat rackand this industrial wall clock.
We’ve rounded up where to buy industrial-style furniture and home decor online for every budget.
Hals’s personal character — or a misunderstanding about it — also had something to do with his wavering reputation over the centuries, said Friso Lammertse, the show’s Rijksmueum co-curator.
One of the central 18th-century art critics, Arnold Houbraken, asserted that Hals was “a riotous drunk,” who spent most of his life in the pub, which is why so many of his portraits feature people clanking tankards or looking inebriated.
“One contemporary called him ‘lustig,’” Lammertse explained, a Dutch word that can mean “lusty,” or merely “merry.” “For a long time it’s been fashionable to stress the moralism of Dutch painting — but that has nothing to do with Hals.”
In fact, very little is known about Hals, the person, Lammertse said. Even the date of his birth, some time around 1582-84, remains a mystery. It’s known that he married twice, first to Anneke Harmensdochter, who died in 1615, and later, to Lysbeth Reyniers. He had at least 14 children, 11 of them with Lysbeth. He died, in his 80s, in 1666.
What is clear is that he spent almost his entire life in Haarlem, where he recorded the local population through 160 to 220 portraits, depending on which biographer you follow. He never painted landscapes, still lifes or domestic scenes, as far as we know — only his portraits survive.
The vast majority of his works were commissioned by his sitters, usually burghers or merchants, married couples, or groups like civic militias or provincial leaders. But about 20 percent of his portraits were not commissioned: He merely chose to depict interesting people from his surroundings.
