Amid the cafes and boutiques of Athens’s Kolonaki neighborhood is a housewares shop that’s also a showcase for Greek craftsmanship. It’s the first brick-and-mortar location for Crini & Sophia, the brand that the former interior and set designer Maya Zafeiropoulou-Martinou founded in 2022. Its wood-and-rattan shelves, two-tone marble floors and furniture are all made by Greek artists, while one window is decorated with a vinelike steel and spray-paint piece by the Cypriot sculptor Socrates Socratous. The shop’s goods are designed by Zafeiropoulou-Martinou, whose inspirations include the colors in Francis Bacon paintings and the Amazon rainforest. Linens are produced in Portugal before being embroidered in Greece with patterns that often take cues from antiques on view at Athens’s Benaki Museum. Hand-painted ceramics and glassware are made in partnership with artisans in New York, Greece, Italy and France. When it comes to designing your own table, Zafeiropoulou-Martinou encourages layering. “The pattern isn’t just the plate or the tablecloth,” she says of her pieces, “but a puzzle of the two on top of each other.” From about $16, criniandsophia.com.
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On Long Island’s North Fork, a Midcentury Motel Opens Two Beach Houses
Silver Sands, a midcentury motel on Long Island’s North Fork, had seen better days by the time Alexander Perros happened upon it on a weekend drive in 2014 and experienced what he describes as “this combination of melancholy and nostalgia.” He had no grand plans, and yet Perros, who has worked on the business side of design companies, including Lindsey Adelman Studio, ended up acquiring the property with his friend the restaurateur Ryan Hardy. Open since last June, Perros’s reimagined version of it nods to the past while somehow still feeling current. Maybe it’s that the 20-room main building, which wraps around a courtyard with views of Peconic Bay, was painted with fresh coats of coral and teal, or a host of smaller touches, like the fact that the room numbers appear on vibrant ceramic shells by the artist Lucie de Moyencourt. Visitors could already opt for free-standing cottages or bungalows. Now, with the completion of two beach houses, the microresort, as Perros calls it, can accommodate larger parties who want their own space (they each have three bedrooms). For Plato’s Beach House, Perros and his wife, Anna Perros, who took the lead on the pre-existing structures’ interiors, were inspired “by the sea and sky — there are lots of blues, yellows and pinks,” he says. The second place, Casa de Buddy, had “deep, groovy ’70s vibes,” which they preserved with vintage pieces such as a snakelike De Sede DS 600 Modular Sofa and a playful palm tree lamp by the artist Mario Lopez Torres. Both houses have private gardens and full kitchens, though their occupants will likely still want to venture out for bocce or bird-watching, or to try the on-site diner, Nookies. There’s also an outdoor restaurant with an oyster bar whose offerings travel all of 200 feet from the water to the table. Rooms from $470 per night during peak season; beach house pricing on request, silversandsmotel.com.
In 1959, during an extended stay in Milan, the composer John Cage made a series of appearances on a popular Italian quiz show. After amusing audiences with his musical demonstrations (the array of instruments included radios, a blender and a watering can), Cage advanced to the final round, correctly naming 24 mushrooms in the Agaricus genus to win a five million lire (roughly $8,000) prize. Cage, an amateur mycologist who at times earned extra cash peddling mushrooms to Manhattan restaurants, put the money to practical use. He got himself a piano, and the rest went to his partner, Merce Cunningham, who bought a white Volkswagen microbus to ferry around his dance troupe.
That anecdote — about creative exchange improbably fueled by fungi — is the inspiration for the New York-based company Dance Heginbotham’s buoyant premiere, “You Look Like a Fun Guy.” Staged at dusk at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the new work by the choreographer John Heginbotham features a quartet of dancers cycling through gestures influenced by mushroom biology (hands fluttering open, sporelike) and Cunningham-style leg balances. Omar Zubair’s sound design includes ambient field recordings and a reworking of Chopin’s “Minute Waltz,” while mics strewn about on comically long cords recall mycelial networks. Throughout, an actor delivers Cage’s 1950 “Lecture on Nothing,” with lines that suit the occasion: “At any moment an idea may come along. Then we may enjoy it.” The composer’s sense of wonder and wit is recognizable in Heginbotham, too. “He looks at the world through a humor filter,” says the costume designer Maile Okamura, who created the show’s neon bodysuits. “It’s like the rose-colored glasses, but I don’t know what color humor is.” She pauses, thinking of the unitards set against vivid grass: “Green.” “You Look Like a Fun Guy” runs from Aug. 1 through 3, 2024; bbg.org.
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A Minimalist Destination for Perfume in Seoul
The Seoul-based art director Changyong Park launched the fragrance brand Written on Water in 2020 with the idea of pushing back against South Korea’s fast and furious consumption culture. He had found solace in fragrances while contending with upheaval at work: “Even if reality is in the gutter, a good scent can make it feel like paradise for a moment,” he says. Rather than establishing the brand’s new shop in a sought-after area like Cheongdam-dong or Seongsu-dong, Park chose to put it in Yeonhui-dong, a hushed neighborhood with a low-slung, residential charm. He transformed a drab quilt shop into a soothing all-white space furnished with wood benches and bookshelves displaying his favorite vintage magazines alongside Written on Water’s products. The brand name is drawn from “Paterson,” the 2016 Jim Jarmusch film that stars Adam Driver as a bus driver and poet, while the scents are inspired by the four seasons. Within the boutique, Park encourages you to slow down: lather your hands with the New Day Hand Wash, with notes of hinoki and eucalyptus. Light up a Lyrics incense stick (lotus flower, sandalwood). Dab on some Lovesong Hand Cream, which Park hopes “reminds you of the lingering scent of trimming flowers and arranging them in vases.” After some sampling, petting Park’s winsome mutt, Badoogie, is a must. writtenonwater.kr.
While scouring flea markets around the world, the New York-based vintage-jewelry dealer Julia Ferentinos found herself most drawn to archival treasures whose origins couldn’t be easily traced back to a particular era or region. So two years ago, when she began to work on Juju Vera, her own collection of contemporary home objects and bijouterie, the 32-year-old designer set out to similarly blur the boundaries of time and place. The hand-carved Modernist line, which nods to Ferentinos’s Greek Italian heritage and launched online in June, includes patinated cuff bracelets made at a Rhode Island foundry that specialized in intricate lamp bindings during the Gilded Age, and catchalls embossed with a motif drawn from the second century B.C. asarotos oikos mosaics once found in the homes of the Roman elite. A sculptural choker inspired by an Aztec collar features a central cluster of pavé diamonds and is polished with a textured, antique-like finish. “I wanted it to look like it had already had an interesting life — and would have an interesting life going forward,” Ferentinos says. From $275, jujuvera.com.
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