🥬
When we cleared my grandma’s house after she died, none of my cousins wanted the ceramic cabbage because they lack vision, but I am a tasteful magpie. I like ceramic greenery because it makes a space look verdant without someone dming you that you’re overwatering your cacti every time you do a story. In a way, the cabbage is annoyingly similar to the cheap trompe-l’œil you can get at Arket but it most certainly isn’t the cheap trompe-l’œil you can get at Arket. It’s not an antique, I don’t think. Nobody in my family own any real art but we have a reasonable collection of Tate prints between us. It’s just a matter of time until the cabbage gets knocked off its pedestal and smashed to smithereens and I have to re-live the loss of my grandma (we were close) and then do a massive cope. Until then, it prospers.
Jun 3, 2021
Related Recs
🍅
Despite reading, and then re-reading, and then re-reading a Terence Conran coffee table book as a child, I have absolutely zero interior design sense. Several years ago I started buying ceramic fruits and vegetables as a joke. Doofpot in Greenport N.Y. was a mecca for Italian ceramics before it closed in 2019; now I spend days scouring Etsy for a perfectly plump tomato. Each one is completely ludicrous and absurd, but they make me laugh. There is obviously some symbolism at play here, trying to freeze a moment of ripeness and wholeness in time.
Oct 12, 2021
The clay in Iowa is very good quality, so I’ve been told. Maybe that’s why it seems like everyone I knew there–at one time or another–spent time at the wheel, and my life was filled with beautiful & useful ceramics. I have a pieces at home but I’ve moved so much that some got lost, or broke, or I left behind for safe keeping.
Pictured, some cups I wanted from Akar last time I was there.
Oct 23, 2024
🟫
Maybe not in the greatest condition, it’s got some scuffs, some chips and scratches; it could use a refinishing to polish it to its full glory but its bones are good, it was crafted with love and care, and few other tables are quite like it. Somebody picks it up out of curiosity because it’s free—hey, why not—and doesn’t take up too much space. They take care of it the best they can but grow tired of always having to use a coaster. They cover it with a cloth and it gathers dust and cobwebs sitting in a corner. They would have been happy with a table from IKEA; they didn’t want this table at all—they just needed a table. The table yearns to be the centerpiece to a room. Somewhere, a collector is searching far and wide for a table just like this one.
Feb 18, 2025
Top Recs from @raven-smith
🍰
Ottolenghi doesn’t call it slab cake, it has some French-adjacent name with an accent on the e, but it’s basically lightly gelatined fruit embedded in a cement of almond sponge. It’s important to me that the slab has squared edges because circular cakes are for sissies (I don’t make the rules). I would happily sell a kidney for regular access to squares of slab cake, but not both kidneys.
Jun 3, 2021
🍹
I have absolutely no ties to Italy that I know of, and the last piece I read about it was from a Black woman explaining the near-constant racism and ostracisation she experienced in the more rural areas, and yet here I am advocating an Italian digestivo. I prefer Greece as a destination, my spirit animal is feta, but would never have you chug ouzo like on a balmy night like a chav on a gap year. Like many an amaro, Meletti is bittersweet and you only have to add a dash of prosecco, ice and an olive to look suave which is much less time-consuming than a finishing school in Switzerland or one of the private schools with a riot club. It is a no-frills Aperol for grown-ups (it’s actually best in a half-pint glass, curveless like a supermodel). Drink Meletti, feel expensive.
Jun 3, 2021
🎵
I know what you’re thinking, another gay man with a penchant for pop, another bum boy obsessed with Kylie. But this is the best, most hornily, summery song ever written (Madonna’s Tell Me with the Marlboro men is excellent, but feels less seasonal). After the first note of Slow I can literally taste sea salt and sweat and spf50 on my lips. The video is heaving with ripe bikinis and the heavy gussets of men in Speedos. Saddle up.
Jun 3, 2021