All posts filed under: Tried & Enjoyed

Blom-ista, silk flowers are back

Living in the country side has it’s advantages nowadays. But it is not exactly the best spot to discover new places to be. So it was quite a surprise to come home one day and see opposite the street a kind of barn that was transformed into an atelier with just a wooden sliding door and a small name tag on the wall. Just Blom-ista, by appointment. Nothing more. Very discreet, minimal without any window, and no clue what it actually was. My curious nature won, and the next day I pulled over my car as the wooden door was open and checked it out. The barn, concrete floor, white walls, was stuffed with large pots filled with all sorts of colorful flowers. But this is not an ordinary flower shop. This is a flower ‘bibliotheque’ or library. Blomista I met Kirsten Blom, the owner & ‘blomista’ in her atelier and she introduced me to her art & her profession. She’s a flower stylist for retailers, hospitality and events but she does not work with …

The new Fondazione Prada tower Milan

The new Fondazione Prada tower_Milan

The new Fondazione Prada tower Milan When in Milan for our annual visit to the Salone di Mobile, it’s always good to spare some time for a quick (or long) visit to the always interesting Fondazione Prada. This year we absolutely wanted to check out the brand new tower designed by OMA.  The ‘tower’ pré-opened the 20th of April 2018 with a real über-VIP evening with all star artists like Damien Hirst, Carsten Höller, Francesco Vezzoli, and Luc Tuymans, DJ Ricardo Villalobos, architects India Mahdavi, David Adjaye, Rem Koolhaas and Alejandro Aravena; curators Paola Antonelli and Deyan Sudjic and gallerists Jay Jopling and Nazanin Yashar and off course hosts Miuccia Prada and husband Patrizio Bertelli. Quite impressive, so how cool was this we were in Milan that exact week? April 21 st 2018 So we went to visit the tower the very FIRST DAY the museum was open. This report is really a first hand view on a brand new star project. The epic inaugural show “Atlas” was conceived by Miuccia Prada with Germano Celant, the veteran Italian curator, and features …

Damien Hirst Pharmacy 2 London

Damien Hirst Pharmacy 2_London

I am one of the lucky ones who visited Damien Hirst’s first original Pharmacy in Notting Hill. It blew my mind and what I most remember are the waiters dressed in blood red surgeon aprons, with an open back. Sexy as hell and so was the rest of the restaurant. Hirst wasn’t the super rich artist he is today and  his art was not that famous yet, so frequenting The Pharmacy was cool. The original restaurant was open between 1998-2003, the new one opened two years ago. I was there the week it opened, and remember taking a cab from the city to South London especially to be one of the first to discover it. The Pharmacy 2 is hosted in Damian Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery in Vauxhall, South London and is a real hommage to Hirst’s art installation The Medicine Cabinets series and butterfly Kaleidoscope paintings of 1992. Designed entirely by Hirst, Pharmacy 2 has etched glass windows depicting DNA strands, marble inlayed flooring and a bar of stainless steel and glass vitrine. Pharmacy Damien Hirst Pharmacy 2 is a …

Wild oysters_Netherlands

For the job I visit a lot of professional food fairs to check out new products, ingredients and dishes. I always try to find the real craftsmen who are responsible for the great food on the different stands. The goal is to find good stories that reflect the ‘zeitgeist’ of today. At the latest Tavola fair I bumped into Jan en Barbara Geertsema-Rodenburg, a cute couple  who presented their uber-fresh, handpicked oysters in the Waddenzee. The oysters tasted mild, natural & salty and super fresh (as I hoped for) but what really made me fall in love with this brand is the absolute fantastic packaging of the oysters. That mermaid!!! Red haired, topless and a lovely green fishtail, in unspoiled fisher men tattoo style. I love it. I could not resist to buy The original Wild Wad Oyster T-shirt and it became one of my favorites. Artisanal fishermen harvest Wild Wad Oysters on wild oyster banks in the Wadden Sea. They are Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas), a species used by oyster farms all around the …