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Category / Art & Design Awesomeness

The Last American Artist in Paris: Inside the Studio

When I step behind the facades of Paris in search of its hidden treasures, I’m usually not invited. At the promise of a medieval courtyard or an old atelier, I’m guilty of waiting for Parisians to come out of their buildings so I can slip through the doors before they close after them. But this…

A Portal to Bygone Bohemian Paris in the Oldest House of Montmartre

I‘m always looking for a taste of la vie bohème and ways to immerse myself in old world Paris; dare I say it’s become a bit of a habit of mine. So when I want to block out the noise of the modern city and really feel time travelling backwards, there’s one place that always does the trick. Follow me inside…

French Retro Futurism as told by 1950s Chocolate Wrappers

My favourite cartoon as a kid was The Jetsons, hands down. I loved how everything was in a glass dome and you could take a shuttle to a resort at “Las Venus” at the drop of a hat. You can often find me rummaging through Flickr’s online archives of vintage stuff, which is how I came across this series of retros-futurist…

The Louvre’s Secret Apartments

The Louvre; or, as we’ve prefer to call it, Paris’ most exhaustingly gorgeous tourist trap. In the MessyNessy guide, Don’t Be a Tourist in Paris, there’s even a chapter called, “Anything but the Louvre” that steers folks away from its selfie-stick jungles, and into the arms of more overlooked museums in the city. But this weekend, we decided to pay…

How Stuart Little Uncovered an Avant-garde Masterpiece Missing for almost a Century

We love a good story about a missing painting missing. This one starts in Christmas of 2008: a Hungarian art historian is at home with his young daughter Lola, watching the popular children’s film Stuart Little, when he notices a painting in the background that shakes him up so much, he almost drops his daughter…

Welcome to One of the Last Cinema Prop Houses in Paris

Alright, you can forget about all those other times, this time, I really did find Paris’ best-kept secret. It’s taken me almost a year to gain access to the 4,000 square meter prop house hidden in central Paris, one of the last three to still survive within the city. After several attempts at emailing them, I luckily discovered that I have…

Mucha and his Muse (Pioneers of a little movement called Art Nouveau)

During the late winter of 1894, a struggling Czech artist was working in an illustrator workshop, correcting proofs for a friend. It was the holidays in Paris and most other artists were out of town. All of a sudden, a woman rushes into the workshop demanding a poster for a theatre production called Gismonda. The production is set…

Drawing Boards for the Ballets Russes

Nineteenth century Russia was restless, and so was Léon Bakst. The young man belonged to a new generation of creatives, one ready to turn Realism on its head with one flick of a bejewelled, utterly fabulous wrist. Today, his name is “a byword for excitement, for colour and glamour” and a radical new approach to…

The Forgotten Charm of the Barbershop Occupation Mugs

Welcome to another show & tell of collector’s curiosity objects. This week: the barbershop occupation mug. Allow us to explain; in the 19th century, and into the 20th, barbershops were a central hub for the working class man. It was where they could gather, catch up on the local gossip, and maintain their appearance of…

Decoding the Secrets of Italy’s Storytelling Gardens

We live in landscape narratives — places where stories are embedded in the land itself, entangled in the vegetation or built into the architecture. A winding road, a tower, a house under construction or falling apart — in all these we find stories at work. Gardens are perhaps the ultimate landscape narrative where stories may…

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