— Noted.

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One of my favorite museums in the world is the British Museum in London. It is a beautiful space, the main structures designed by Sir Robert Smirke in 1823, and completed in 1852. In 2000, Norman Foster designed the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court which is the inner courtyard and also the largest covered public square in Europe.

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I will admit it. I find museums of anthropology to be challenging. It’s a task to find some kind of emotional connection to historical artifacts, perhaps also because of the underlying notion that the artifacts are so important, they must be delicately placed in a temperature controlled glass case, usually in a dramatic building. Halls are organized by periods and regions, and just one glance at the signs (e.g. Chinese Jade from 5000 BC – present) makes me want to head straight for the cafe and bury my face in a cappuccino.

However, The British Museum is lovely. I spent all day there wandering. The objects are beautifully arranged, with careful attention to color and composition. I found myself wanting to know more about the objects, drawn into the simple (yet carefully considered) context that they were given in their presentation.

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One of my favorite pieces was this white porcelain “moon jar” from Korea’s Choson dynasty (1392–1920). The moon jars served practical purposes of for storing rice, soy sauce, alcohol or sometimes displaying flowers. There are now only 20 left in the world. But the reason why the moon jar is so celebrated is because of the purity of the porcelain and the imperfections of the jar’s contour.

“This jar shows this exquisitely, with the imperfections in the clay and the glaze, as well as in the bulge around the centre that marks the join between the upper and lower halves of the body.”

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No future plans of making it to London? Check out, A History of the World in 100 Objects, a book that is edited in a way that reminds me of the British Museum’s curation (which is no wonder since it is authored by Neil MacGregor, the museum’s director). One of my favorite objects is #45: Arabian Bronze Hand, from Yemen, AD 100-300.

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For your moment of zen:

 

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I am fond of Food52, a website co-founded by The New York Times food writer Amanda Hesser. It is a place that makes food less intimidating (let’s face it, cooking it, eating it, and/or buying it can make or break my day), and will cheer me up just by looking at its beautifully art-directed photos. I recently discovered their online shop, which is filled with all kinds of goodies, objects that imbue the food-related philosophies the site preaches. Here are a few things that caught my eye:

 

Brass ladle, hand-forged in Japan:

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Spherical hanging basket, handmade in CT:

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Waxed canvas market bag:

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Twine and tags gift box:

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Alphabet cookie cutter set:

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Superior servers (I might buy these just for the colors):

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Flower vase:
vase

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“From a three screen slide show made for a lecture on The New Covetables given by Charles Eames during his tenure as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard, 1970-71.”

Some notable quotes:

” …somehow or another a bolt of cloth comes under that sort of heading of goods. The kind of goods that people sort of lay a great story on. The kind of things that you have a feeling of tremendous security about. And I don’t know if you remember quite, sort of, what goods are. But, this is the way a bolt of cloth looks. It’s fascinating because it is goods… ”

“These are goods… A ball of twine. Who would throw away a ball of twine? Because there’s something special about that ball of twine. Before the moment that’s it’s opened up and gotten into… Because as long as it’s somewhat of a seal, why, it’s an object to hold onto. Even the way that marvelous iron thing that the twine goes in so that the string comes down and in some sense you think it’s going on forever.”

“A keg of nails… boxes of candy are thought of as kegs of nails. But once into it, the beautiful mass of stuff which like a barrel of apples or a bushel of apples you think is going to last forever. Because once you open a keg of nails, how can you run through it?”

“Reams of paper. Haven’t you dreamed of reams of paper? It’s absolutely beautiful beautiful beautiful stuff… What you do with a ream of paper can never quite come up to what the paper offers in itself.”

 

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An-umbrella-tie

The only downside is having to choose between being stylish and being wet.

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I am so sad that Kiosk is closing doors at their soho location. Reliably quirky yet practical, foreign yet local, their products are unique and fun to visit and ponder. Their product descriptions are humbly written, always pointing the product back to its roots — something too easily forgotten about in this day and age. They have an online store, but when you’ve been in NYC for as long as I have, losing a physical store like this is (I realize this is a ridiculous metaphor but it’s true) a lot like having a friend leave town.

Join their mailing list to keep tabs on where they land.

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DSC_0028-1micro_webUPail-nr2-webshopblacktan_webDensity-clouds2e DJ32Beautiful handmade baskets and bags by Doug Johnston.

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bottle opener

Photo by Brian Ferry.

So simple and quite beautiful. Made by Fort Standard.

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