Honey Catches More Flies Than Vinegar… or Does It?!

We’ve been obsessed with incorporating interactivity in our plated courses for years by using recognizable utensils in unconventional ways. When given the task to create a honey-based dessert around the honey dipper… Pinch Food Design’s pastry chef Tori Fusaro came up with a spectacular combination of flavors and textures to wow both the eyes and tastebuds! Below are the recipes… it BEE-hooves you to try them!

Serves 4-8

Marscapone Mousse
375g of mascarpone
160g of cream cheese, Philadelphia
150g of crème fraîche
100g of caster sugar
1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped
2 oranges, juice and zest
2 lemons, juice and zest
60ml of Grand Marnier
3 gelatin leaves

Directions:
To prepare the mascarpone mousse, add all of the ingredients (except the Grand Marnier and gelatin) to a food processor and start blending. Slowly add the Grand Marnier until incorporated. Bloom the gelatin in cold water, then add to a dry pan and melt over a low heat. Add to the blender and blitz to incorporate. Once the mascarpone mixture is smooth, pass through a sieve into a tray (16 x 24 x 2cm) and leave to set in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Portion into rectangles approximately 2cm x 10cm and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Honeycomb Crumble
221g sugar
13g water
25g corn syrup
1 3/4 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:
Combine all the ingredients except baking soda. Boil to 300 degrees F. Remove from heat and whisk in baking soda. Pour into a greased pan. Let cool for 1 hour. Crumble.

Frozen Honeycomb-Molded Shortbread Glaze
180g all purpose flour
110g almond flour
110g butter, cold
90g confectioners sugar
2g salt
50g grapeseed oil

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a stand mixer, paddle both flours, butter, confectioners’ sugar, and salt on low speed until the dough forms a crumbly texture. Transfer to baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 25 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes to evenly brown the shortbread. Let cool at room temperature. Transfer the mixture to a food processor and pulse to a fine crumble. Transfer the crumble to a blender and blend in the oil on low speed. Once fully incorporated, puree on high until the shortbread becomes liquified. Pour liquid into honeycomb mold and freeze.

Vinegar Honey Drizzle
1 cup honey
2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar

Plating Instructions:
First lay the marscapone mousse portion on plate.
Then add frozen honeycomb-molded shortbread glaze on top of the mousse.
Add the honeycomb crumble on either side of the mousse.
Garnish with bee pollen.
Lastly, drizzle the vinegar honey on top using a honey dipper.

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from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/honey-catches-more-flies-than-vinegar-or-does-it/

Soho House Amsterdam Adds to Trend of International Chains Catering to Digital Nomads

Soho House, a private members’ club for creatives, expanded to Amsterdam this summer. The Soho House Amsterdam establishment has taken over the Bungehuis, an old 1930s university building on the Spuistraat that overlooks the canal, and spruced it up with their signature interiors and furnishings. The building now accommodates 79 bedrooms, a rooftop pool, an entire floor of club space, as well as Italian dining at Cecconi’s restaurant and a Cowshed spa on the ground floor.

And of course, it being located in Amsterdam, there will also be space to park 75 bikes and a workshop for repairs.

The six story high Bungehuis building is a distinct landmark along the Amsterdam canal, with a stark limestone and granite facade contrasted against bronze bay windows. What makes this space even more spectacular is that it is only one of two buildings in Amsterdam with a rooftop pool. If the Dutch aren’t used to lounging on roofs in the sun, this is going to change their game.

If you’re wondering how every Soho House around the world – there are 21 locations total – have a similar vibe, it’s because they have an in-house studio that handles the interior design of the spaces.

A global chain like Soho House is increasingly attractive to digital nomads and creatives. While many freelance workers spend their time in cafes, there’s also been a recent push for subscription-based spaces catered towards digital workers. The benefit is that they know they’ll have an area to work at all day, no pressure to keep on buying coffee or wander from one coffee shop to another every few hours.

To take it a step further, if these digital workers are also global travelers, and they want to avoid working in small, crowded tables or competing for a power outlet especially when they are overseas and need to get work done, Soho House could be the answer.

This year, Soho House has added DUMBO in New York, White City in West London and Little Beach House in Barcelona to their members’ only clubs chain, and they will be expanding to Mumbai and Paris soon after.

It makes sense given the growth of digital workers. According to a forecast by International Data Corporation (IDC), mobile workers will make up nearly three quarters of the total U.S. workforce. That means over 105 million workers in US alone will be mobile, and IDC expects that more than two thirds of them will not be office-based at all.

In Europe too, three quarters of the Western European workforce is said to be mobile this year. This perhaps explains the Soho House expansion into three new European sites to tap into this trend.

For a $2,800 annual fee for membership with ‘every house’ within the Soho House network, you can tap into a global hotel chain that caters to “creative” digital workers. As Soho House builds its brand, it’s realizing that they’ve carved a niche for themselves, giving a comfy space to young, traveling millennials who want tap into a social network and be welcomed into similar social spaces wherever they go.

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from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/soho-house-amsterdam-adds-to-trend-of-international-chains-catering-to-digital-nomads/

Georg Jensen Solves a Design Mystery More Than a Half a Century Later

We’ve been asked to honor non-disclosures and embargoes for a multitude of designs – usually products falling under the realm of technology, automotive, or other products following the ebbs and flows of the consumer market. But several months ago we were asked if we could keep a secret, one made by request and invitation from Danish brand, Georg Jensen. This was something entirely different.

The Copenhagen-based luxury artisan brand would reveal they had been secretly researching and resurrecting a previously lost design, an unrealized sculptural piece by designer Henning Koppel that would see a new life decades later in celebration of his life. It was called the 1041, a name without any real meaning beyond its archival numerical designation.

Nicholas Manville, Senior Vice President of Design and Merchandising at Georg Jensen will do a commendable job of building anticipation about the impending reveal, offering us a tour showcasing the skills of the company’s artisans, silversmiths, and even a resident 3D designer/printer all dutifully working on a myriad of limited edition handcrafted pieces. For those unversed in the history of Georg Jensen, the tour permits a valuable education about the artist-craftsman founder and company history, one documenting Jensen’s inherent fascination of natural forms derived from days spent in the idyllic countryside of his youth, eventually manifesting into a globally eponymous expression of modern silver and hollowware.

The tour will eventually plateau, literally, upstairs in the cozy and object-filled confines of the company’s archives located within an attic where photographs are only permitted from the tightest of angles, lest anyone reveal any geographical indicators of the priceless archive housed within. “Please, no windows in your photos…it could divulge where in the building this archive sits,” says Archivist Ida Heiberg Bøttiger.

Photo: Gregory Han

Surrounded by decades of designs, art, sketches, jewelry and books dedicated to the brand’s storied history beginning in 1904, Bøttiger will rewind us back to 1954 – the date when Georg Jensen’s most famous and important designer Henning Koppel sketched “1041”, an organic expression, more sculptural than functional. Koppel would eventually destroy his abstract piece out of dissatisfaction after a single attempt to turn sketch into object.

99.9% pure silver is crafted into a $150,000 masterpiece. Photo: Gregory Han

The 1041 design was thought to be lost to history, the original sketch languishing forgotten in the Georg Jensen archives until 2016, when it was found again just in time before the Koppel centenary year. It’s discovery, alongside a single photograph of the sculpture made by Koppel before its destruction, would provide the modern artisans at Georg Jensen enough reference to ascertain Koppel’s original intent and realize a bit of “forensic design”.

Still, noting the previous limited resources and capabilities available in 1954, the resurrection of Koppel’s 1041 isn’t a perfect recreation, but rather a studied modern interpretation. 3D software and printing gave the Georg Jensen team tools Koppel could never even dream of decades ago, allowing a level of accuracy previously unavailable in manipulating silver upward and outward. The result is a stunning modernist expression evoking a cellular body in motion (the same technology, the different results, aided in the realizing of an exquisite level of detail across the Georg Jensen and architect Kengo Kuma collaborative tea set).

Ida Heiberg Bøttiger, Product Manager, Silver & Archive Manager at Georg Jensen, carefully shows us the numerical stamp adorning the very 1st Georg Jensen 1041. Photo: Gregory Han

Each 1041 is handled and crafted by a single Georg Jensen silversmith, hand-hammered from a single twelve-kilo sheet of fine silver to a width of 6mm at its thickest center, down to just 2mm at its edges. Silversmith Henrik Förster describes the process as tedious and demanding, but ultimately rewarding. Photo: Gregory Han

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art would play stage for the reveal of the very first edition of the Georg Jensen 1041 by Henning Koppel, its undulating beauty unveiled amongst an intimate audience in May. Koppel’s own daughter, Hannah Koppel, would join us that afternoon in celebration of her father’s birthday and his body of work (she too is an accomplished Georg Jensen designer and sculptor by her own right), looking proudly upon her father’s past manifested into the present with the exacting level of detail he’d undoubtedly approve of.

Hannah Koppel would invite us to her childhood home which she still lives and works from today, populated by many of her own designs, alongside those designed by her father. Photo: Gregory Han

Photo: Gregory Han

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from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/georg-jensen-solves-a-design-mystery-more-than-a-half-a-century-later/

Coast to Coast Lands in Nashville

Special thanks to Jean Lin of Colony for the following post.

September kicked off our Coast to Coast series with Design Milk where we, Colony, a NY-based community of independent furniture, lighting, textiles and objects designers, set out to explore the United States in the name of design, discovery and inspiration. Our travel itinerary was set to discover new talent and expressions of American design, art and craft. On the second leg of our tour we visited Nashville, TN, a bastion of southern creativity that contrary to popular assumption, doesn’t start and end with music.

Nate Schiebe’s Nashville woodshop \\\ Photo: Colony

Our time in Nashville felt like a treasure hunt, where one great studio visit led to three more friends we had to meet. With a bevy of art schools in close proximity, Nashville is home to a creative community teeming with hometown pride tempered with a fine art sensibility. With just a bit of exploration we were able to uncover a talented community of artists working to grow local industry without losing the city’s artistic roots.

Keep Shop at Noelle \\\ Photo: The Callaway

On the lobby level of Noelle, creative consultant Libby Callaway has curated Keep Shop, a luxury retail store that features a mix that’s heavy on local designers and makers, as well as vintage and national brands that are hard (or impossible) to find elsewhere in Nashville. In addition to apparel and jewelry, Keep Shop features home accessories, apothecary, books, independent fashion and design magazines, and a selection of electric Faraday bikes. Exclusive products from local favorites such as natural beauty and wellness shop Lemon Laine, children’s wear brand Arcade Nashville, and local womenswear brand Jamie + The Jones among many others.

An Emily Leonard painting hanging in her home \\\ Photo: Colony

Painter and Nashville native Emily Leonard has a gestural style that is rooted in southern landscape, but through a uniquely cultivated layering process impresses ethereal results. Says Emily of her work: “My pieces both take time and contain time. I want them to come upon the viewer as such – slowly and intimately, as if the viewer feels like he found this image instead of me. Iʼm interested in the experience of being in your body in a place.” This sentiment is expressed not only in her paintings but also in her beautifully considered home and studio, where charming and authentic details abound.

Photo: Becky Blevins

The epitome of the proverbial Nashville treasure hunt is Elephant Gallery, both an art gallery and artists studio space and home to all the eccentricities this community has to offer. Watching founder Alex Lockwood tour us through a building filled with both delightful and challenging art was like watching a Nashville kid in a Nashville candy store. Ceramicists Jessica Cheatham of Salt Ceramics and Becky Blevins create many of the noteworthy Nashville ceramic works out of their shared studio space.

Photo: Zeitgeist Gallery

Two Figures out of a Landscape, Vadis Turner, 2018 \\\ Photo: Vadis Turner

Photo: Alex Blau

Zeitgeist has been a staple on the Nashville art scene since 1994. Started by Janice Zeitlin in Cummins Station, it has served as a cultivation ground for new artists and a safe place for established artists to experiment and grow. The gallery represents such local artists as Alex Blau, a graphic, layered and bold painter, and multimedia artist Vladis Turner. Through her work, Vadis explores the transformative possibilities of feminist materials. Commodities created for and produced by women are translated into storied abstract paintings and sculptures.

Noelle Hotel \\\ Photo: New Hat Projects

Founders Kelly Diehl and Elizabeth Williams of New Hat Projects specialize in custom wallpaper and interior installations. Their practice is rooted in Nashville through and through, with a project and client list that reads like a design listings page of the city. Earlier this year, they launched Collection One, their first foray into wallpaper available by the roll.

Collection One by New Hat Projects \\\ Photo: New Hat Projects

JW Marriott Nashville \\\ Photo: David Mitchell

Thank you to JW Marriott for making our Nashville trip possible and for providing the team with a beautiful experience in the JW Marriott Nashville hotel. The modern interiors were designed by Stonehill Taylor with a nod towards the city’s industrial past and its southern roots.

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from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/coast-to-coast-lands-in-nashville/

Friday Five with Wendy Goodman

Since the start of her career, Wendy Goodman has covered both the fashion and design scene at noted publications, like Harper’s Bazaar, New York Times Magazine, House and Garden, and most recently at New York magazine as their Design Editor since 2007. She’s appeared on countless televisions shows including NBC’s Open House, Good Morning America, Ellen’s Design Challenge, The Insider, NY1, and WNYC, along with hosting various design talks around NYC. Goodman is noted for recognizing trends and finding up-and-coming talent, as well as documenting some of the most memorable homes of design lovers around the world. Those decades spent collecting stories on the private homes she’s ventured inside have led to her just released book, May I Come In?: Discovering the World in Other People’s Houses, where she shares 70 of them. And for those not familiar with this notable New Yorker, check out her popular Instagram feed for a closer look inside her visual world. In the meantime, read on to see what she’s picked as some of her favorite places around NYC in this Friday Five.

Photo by Brett Beyer

1. THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
The minute I climb the steps and enter the great hall I feel better, and no matter what show I am visiting I stop in to see my old friends in the Egyptian galleries.

Photo by Colleen Callery

2. THE STRAND BOOKSTORE
The Strand is my favorite bookstore in the world, and one of the greatest spots in New York City. May The Strand live forever.

Photo courtesy of Office AO Architecture

3. COS
I love the clothes and the leather goods at COS, and I WISH their oxford shoes fit me as I would never wear anything else, ever, but, alas, I am STILL searching for the perfect oxford.

Photo courtesy of Sant Ambroeus

4. SANT AMBROSEUS
The one on Madison Avenue, standing at the bar, having an iced cappuccino, is my idea of heaven.

Photo by Iñaki Vinaixa

5. LINCOLN CENTER
If I could rent a cot and live in the theaters during ballet season, I would.

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from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/friday-five-with-wendy-goodman/

Design Milk Travels to… Berlin

The Sony FES Watch U’s Main Function Is Fashion

The Apple Watch, and to a lesser extend Android Wear, have garnered the most attention for incorporating a slew of communication and monitoring technologies into a watch form factor. All the while Sony has been quietly working in the background on something more singularly focused on the app-front – the Sony FES Watch U, a completely customizable watch with an electronic ink face and strap display.

Although Apple and Android watches permit a degree of customization, the Sony FES Watch U raises the stakes to a notable degree by allowing wearers to upload and convert nearly any image from their smartphone via a compatible Sony Closet App to crop and position into a monochromatic design that stretches from watch face all the way across the length of the straps. This bit of customization magic is all made possible thanks to the same display technology found inside the Amazon Kindle e-reader.

Up to 12 design patterns can be stored locally on the watch for near-instantaneous changes to the face/strap design.

Like other electronic ink devices, the Sony FES Watch U is blessed with a high contrast ratio allowing legibility in direct sunlight without any visual degradation. This characteristic of electrophoretic displays makes Sony’s watch feel like the second coming of the Swatch watch, a slim and fashionable accessory intended to display personal style as much as the time.

The other inherent benefit of electronic ink is its battery-sipping requirements. Once a design is set to display, the watch goes into standby mode, requires nearly-zero power to keep the design on display (a small amount of power is used to keep and display time). This means unlike other smart watches requiring a charge every 1-3 days, the FES Watch U can go on for up to two weeks between charges.

With the recent announcement of availability across the European market at the London Design Festival 2018, it hints Sony will eventually bring this intriguing watch design to the United States in due time. Count us interested.

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from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/27/the-sony-fes-watch-us-main-function-is-fashion/

Society6 Has You (And Your New iPhone) Covered with These Tech Cases

If you just got the new iPhone XS, you know that the first order of business is protecting your new investment since smart phones cost as much as a computer these days (the XS Max with 512 GB is pretty much a computer but that’s a whole other topic). If you got the gold version like I did, you probably want a clear case that shows off the luxe finish. Society6’s got you covered – literally! – with their clear tech cases that add an element of art to your phone while protecting all sides and corners. Here are a few designs I’m eyeing.

(In case you’re wondering, yes, the iPhone X and XS are pretty much the same dimensions according to CNET!)

Honest Blob Says No Clear iPhone Case (This little guy makes me laugh with his apathetic look.)

Watercolor lines pattern | Navy blue Clear iPhone Case

Graphic 150 A Clear iPhone Case

Black Cat Clear iPhone Case

Seal Of Approval Clear iPhone Case (Love a good pun.)

For what it’s worth – F Scott Fitzgerald quote Clear iPhone Case (One of my favorite quotes of all time!)

Glitter and Grit Clear iPhone Case

World Map in Black and White Ink on Paper Clear iPhone Case

In an ongoing effort to support independent artists from around the world, Design Milk is proud to partner with Society6 to offer The Design Milk Dairy, a special collection of Society6 artists’ work curated by Design Milk and our readers. Proceeds from the The Design Milk Dairy help us bring Design Milk to you every day.

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