Karen Burshtein
writer, translator, editor
Award-winning journalist and author. My beats: Travel, Food Design, Fashion, Art, Interiors. Mideast. South Africa. French culture + society. Finnish culture +design. Young Adult books.
Architectural Digest
How Designers Are Flipping the Swatch on Toile de Jouy
How exactly did a thick cotton fabric festooned with frolicking shepherdsses, bales of hay, and general pastoral merriment become one of today’s biggest design fixations?
We’re talking about toile de Jouy, the classic 18th-century French printed textile with single-color, repeating motifs. Before we delve into its history, we know you’re asking: What’s the difference between toile and toile de Jouy? None, really, at least in France. The full name toile de Jouy refers to the cloth from Jouy-en...
pressreader.com
There's something about Marie: Why Marie Antoinette Mania is gripping France
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/national-post-latest-edition/20061014/282677567782175
TIME
THE WORLD"S GREATEST PLACES 2021
Contributed entries (Winnipeg and Odense) to TIME magazine's World's Greatest Places 2021 issue.
matadornetwork
Monaco is more than a millionaire’s playground. Here’s how to visit on a budget.
Fast cars and A-listers who yacht in for the day are par for the course in Monaco. The little principality on the French Riviera holds the record for the most millionaires per capita, due to its status as a tax haven. Signs of wealth are everywhere: Lamborghinis and Ferraris are parked outside Monte Carlo’s famous casino and the posh Hôtel de Paris. And visitors gawk at them the way they might gaze at the Matterhorn, or the Eiffel Tower. In other words, glitz is part of the landscape.
However...
BBC
Kent Monkman's The Scream: Images that define atrocities
Some paintings have become the defining images of a social or political catastrophe. But can art really shape the narrative of war and atrocity, asks Karen Burshtein.
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Canadian Cree artist Kent Monkman's graphic and gut-wrenching painting The Scream (2017) depicts a chaotic scene. Mothers are held back by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Mounties) as they lunge toward their children, who have been snatched from their arms by Catholic priests. That scene encapsulates the anguish of the all-...
The Globe And Mail
Cardamom knots are to lockdown 2.0 what sourdough and cinnamon buns were to our first confinement
So here we are again. Sheltering at home for many of us across the country, except everyone’s feeling slightly less spirited than the first time around. There are a lot fewer jam sessions with neighbours on the balcony. And those online sourdough courses are feeling stale. But there’s one thing the internet is excited about: kardemummabullar, Sweden’s favourite sweet treat, cardamom buns.
These buns are the fix we all need now. They fill the house with a woodsy, floral aroma, even store-bough...
The Globe And Mail
Winnipeg condo on a very challenging site an exercise in designing wonderful on a dime
The last time I met Johanna Hurme was to talk about parallelograms. I was writing about a rhombus-shaped house designed by 5468796, the boundary-pushing, award-winning Winnipeg architecture studio Ms. Hurme is a partner in, with Sasa Radulovic and Colin Neufeld. Now, we are talking circles. 5468796′s 62M is one of the city’s most surprising new condo complexes: A disk-shaped building that rises on concrete stilts in an industrial area of Winnipeg. (It’s name comes from its address, 62 MacDona...
azuremagazine.com
The Man Who Brought Finnish Design to Toronto
In July, Toronto lost the creative spirit that was Janis Kravis. An architect who also designed products and interiors, the Latvian-born Kravis established a groundbreaking retail space in the swinging sixties: Karelia. It was the city’s original concept store – where art, lifestyle and shopping converged.
Kravis arrived in Canada as a teen (after he and his family spent several years in Sweden as refugees) and went on to graduate in architecture at the University of Toronto in 1959. Soon the...
Fodor's
Europe’s Most Famous Elevators Are Also Its Scariest
Step right up for the paternoster grand tour. Quickly, now!
On a visit to Budapest, I stopped at a beautiful Art Deco office building designed by famed Hungarian architect Ödön Lechner, the Hungarian Gaudi. Now, usually, I’d have been happy enough just to look at the architectural wonder that is the building, snapping pictures of its tiled zoomorphic roof, but I’d been tipped off by my hotel concierge that what I should be looking for could be found inside: a paternoster.
The paternoster is a...
The Globe And Mail
THE GROVE, CHANDLER'S CROSS, ENGLAND
The Grove, a sprawling 18th-century manor in Hertfordshire, might not be located in the most beautiful part of the English countryside, but if it was good enough for Queen Victoria, who stayed at the 120-hectare estate when it was in the hands of the Earl of Clarendon, it's good enough for us.
Ideal for locals, the Grove makes sense for visitors too. Sandwiching a night or two between action-packed days shopping and touring in London and sitting in the departure lounge at nearby Heathrow airp...
Travel + Leisure
T+L Reports: London Likes it Fried
England's love of tradition keeps chipping away at the Cool Britannia veneer. A host of hungry Londoners (and Hollywood A-listers) have been eschewing British Moderne cuisine for tried-and-true fish-and-chips. When Britney Spears recently stayed at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, rumor has it she bypassed room service and sent out for nothing other than the deep-fried treat; Kate Moss and rocker Noel Gallagher have been sighted getting newspaper-wrapped "take-away" at chippies around town. F...
pressreader.com
And A Side Order of Style. A European Architecture tour of McDonald's
Anti-globalists who think Ronald McDonald is the devil in a clown suit won't want to hear this, but many of its continental outlets are very geographically sensitive.
Condé Nast Traveller (UK)
The Hot List 2015
Ham Yard Hotel, London, UK
When a hotel group reaches property number nine, one could be forgiven for a little ennui. Yet hotelier and designer Kit Kemp continues to refresh and reinvent. Her Firmdale Hotels company added Ham Yard Hotel to its London roster in summer 2014, and it will open a second New York address this year. Kemp's most ambitious project to date, in the heart of Soho theatreland, Ham Yard is dubbed an Urban Village and constructed around a courtyard which provides not only a...
Condé Nast Traveler
7 Reasons to Visit the Middle East in 2020
Whether you're looking for far-out hotels in the desert or high-end shopping hubs, there's something for every type of traveler.
Though travelers today might think about the region for reasons other than their next vacation, its heady mix of cultures and landscapes has long captured the western imagination. Now, fresh experiences provide new reasons to go, from Airstream trailers in the desert and ground-breaking museums, to innovative food scenes and impressive conservation projects.
Futuris...