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Visit This
A Safari Lodge Perched High in the Mountains of South Africa
Sarah Dusek first spent time in Africa in her twenties, as an NGO worker in rural Zimbabwe. The experience, she says, “ignited a profound appreciation for Africa’s landscapes and cultures, and for the resilience of its people.” In 2009, she and her husband, Jacob Dusek, co-founded Under Canvas, a zero-waste luxury glamping outfitter with camps across the U.S., modeled after African safaris. Now based between Montana and Cape Town, the couple have brought the lessons they learned with their first hospitality venture back to the continent that inspired it. In South Africa’s Soutpansberg Mountains, surrounded by baobab trees in the province of Limpopo, Few & Far Luvhondo opened Jan. 1 with six Cliff suites: Inside, curved beams recall tree trunks, and earth-toned patterns take their cues from local foliage and rock formations. The property’s vantage point means you might catch glimpses of giraffes and elephants from your terrace. Chef Nhlakanipho Sokhela serves seasonal tasting menus in the lodge’s restaurant, along with alfresco barbecues and gourmet bush picnics. For even loftier views, the lodge plans to unveil a 25-mile-long aerial experience called Solfari. Via a solar-powered cableway inspired by clusters of weavers’ nests, guests can silently soar above the UNESCO-designated Vhembe Biosphere Reserve’s mountains and rivers to spy on herds of buffalo and stalking leopards far below. From $1,800 per person, fewandfarluvhondo.com.
Wear This
Watches Featuring Bright Art by Derrick Adams
The Swiss watchmaker Movado was founded in 1881 under the name LAI Ditesheim & Frères; it adopted its current name in 1905. Movado means “always in motion” in Esperanto, the language that was invented in the late 19th century in the hopes that it would become a universal lingua franca for international business. Though Esperanto never took off, Movado has been in business since, releasing minimalist women’s and men’s watches as well as regular artist-designed collaborations, the first of which was with Andy Warhol in 1987. Now, that tradition continues with a seven-piece collection of watches and wall clocks designed with the Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Derrick Adams. To Adams, the pairing immediately made sense: “Movado has a great sense of working with color-blocking and geometric form, both things I think about in my painting and art-making practice,” he says. Adams selected works that he felt best translated to the scale and circular form of a watch face. One watch features an image of a snorkel-masked swimmer clutching an inner tube, from his “Floaters” series (2016-19); another depicts an abstracted face recalling Cubist compositions inspired by his 2022 double portrait “Arting.” The latter’s strap features a bright pattern, which is not a print but a patchwork of individually dyed leather pieces. From $400, movado.com.
The Japanese term ikigai denotes a sense of purpose or passion in life. Ikigai Fruits, an online retailer that sells specialty fruit sourced from independent Japanese farms, was founded last year to showcase the result of such dedication — and to support the future of Japanese fruit growers. In Japan, where the average farmer is over 65, many businesses are shuttering with no successor to carry on the tradition. By selling soft, custardy crown melon, crisp soju pears and caramel persimmons to customers around the world, Ikigai Fruits hopes to play a part in reversing the decline. The company’s sakura pink Awayuki strawberries, for example, are grown at Berry, a farm in Mie Prefecture that was founded in 2017 and offers apprenticeships to people with disabilities or who are struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues. Strawberries, along with rainbow kiwi and fuyu persimmons, are currently included in Ikigai’s omakase box, which changes seasonally. From $89, ikigaifruits.com.
Stay Here
In the French Alps, a Newly Renovated Hotel Reflects Its Surroundings
Ever since the German Danish interior designer Gesa Hansen discovered the work of the French modernist designer Charlotte Perriand — whose portfolio includes the Les Arcs resort in Savoie, France — she’d been set on finding a project in the mountains. Hansen finally got the opportunity after a chance meeting with the French businessman Etienne Puech on the ski slopes of Chamonix, France, in early 2022. He had recently acquired La Couronne, the oldest hotel complex in the Chamonix Valley still in operation. The property was built in the mid-19th century in Argentière, the area’s renowned station for expert skiers and mountaineers. Hansen and the architect Nathalie Visnovsky were given carte blanche with one caveat: The result needed to appeal as much to families as to serious athletes. Hansen applied her signature Nordic style to the hotel, making liberal use of local oak and marble across 69 rooms (24 of which are in a new building extension), a spacious restaurant and bar, and an eight-person spa that houses a sauna she designed for Klafs, the German spa and sauna manufacturer. A mountain-topography motif appears throughout, from the guest room bathroom tiles to the custom-designed hallway carpet, while the chromatic scheme — autumn red, glacier blue, and Alpine spring green — reflects the changing seasons of Chamonix. “The minimalist aesthetic is perfect for the mountains,” says the designer. “It fits with the lodge spirit that I love here — the idea that once inside, you need comfort, warmth and little else to be happy.” From about $100 a night from Sunday through Thursday; $165 a night on Fridays and Saturdays, hotelcouronne.com.
See This
Abstract Paintings Inspired by the Night Sky, on View in New York
The painter Chris Martin lives and works between his homes in Brooklyn and New York’s Catskill Mountains, where he enjoys stargazing away from the light pollution of the city. The cosmic landscapes he observes upstate inform his abstract paintings, many of which approach panoramic proportions. A new show of such works, titled “Speed of Light,” opens this week at Timothy Taylor gallery in TriBeCa. Among the new paintings is “Staring into the Sun 748 Russell Hill Road,” a nearly 20-foot-wide diptych in which a spindly starburst-like form spreads across vividly hued bands that recall hilly horizons. Into both panels, Martin cut out recesses, some of which contain found images of sunsets and taxonomic diagrams of frogs. In a nod to the work’s title, Martin affixed a pair of eclipse-viewing glasses, left over from this past April’s solar event, to the canvas. Another painting, this one untitled, is installed in the center of the gallery, its collaged verso visible to viewers. Martin’s inclusion of found text and imagery on the backs of paintings is a recent development in his practice; he thinks of them “like hidden footnotes or a secret press release, visible only to the collector and the art handlers.” “Speed of Light” is on view from Jan. 16 through Feb. 22, timothytaylor.com.
At 222 Lafayette, the new location of Crispy Heaven, a SoHo bakery and cafe, the owner Fel Cassieli sells baguettes with a golden-brown crunchy crust, their insides meltingly soft. Crispy Heaven bakes all day, so a visitor is likely to get one fresh and warm from the oven. There are also loaves of sesame, raisin walnut, olive, and multigrain, along with potato caraway sourdough and dense dark rugbrot, the Danish-style rye that goes perfectly with smoked salmon.
Cassieli was a model living in SoHo when she taught herself to bake. “I didn’t know what I was doing but it was so much fun,” she says. “Friends said, ‘Why don’t you open a bakery?’ I thought they were nuts. But I did it.” In 2021, she opened on Grand Street, where she developed the breads and other dishes that she now serves on Lafayette from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.: scrambled eggs cooked in clarified butter and accompanied by a pile of bacon and bread with housemade seasonal fruit jam; bacon rolls with farm-fresh eggs and Gouda cheese; sandwiches with Italian ham or short ribs with caramelized onion on baguettes; spicy tuna salad. In a month or so, Casielli plans to add a dinner menu that will include her succulent roast octopus with saffron mayonnaise. And for dessert, there’s her subtle almond cake, a chocolate ganache and a sky-high apple crumb cake served with a big bowl of homemade whipped cream. instagram.com/crispyheavennyc.
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