Seen from the outside, Red Jane, a new bakery in the center of Chania, a Greek port city on the island of Crete, looks like a Berlin nightclub, with no obvious sign and a concrete facade covered in graffiti. Inside, it might pass for a New York boutique: There are Italian tiles on the floor and an exposed-brick ceiling and on a long red marble counter, lit by minimalist pendant lamps, pastries are laid out like jewels in a glass vitrine. Owned by Nikos Tsepetis, the hotelier behind the nearby beach resort Ammos (a favorite of the art and design crowd), the space is the first fully realized interiors project overseen by the London-based lighting and furniture designer Michael Anastassiades. Eyal Schwartz, the former head baker and co-owner of London’s E5 Bakehouse, created the menu. On its opening day this month, Red Jane sold out of its chocolate-filled croissants, koulouri (Greek sesame-topped bagels) and baklava swirls by noon. Locals lingered for an hour after, despite the fact that Tsepetis and Anastassiades designed the space without tables. redjaneproject.com.
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Remedios Varo’s Surrealist Paintings, on View in Chicago
The Catalonia-born Surrealist painter Remedios Varo was named after the Virgen de los Remedios, or the “Virgin of the Remedies,” who was believed to have protected and healed Spanish conquistadores during their invasion of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, present-day Mexico City. Varo, too, was drawn to Mexico City when, as a young artist living in Paris in 1941, she fled the Nazi invasion of France via Marseille. In Mexico, she produced her most celebrated canvases. The Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibition “Remedios Varo: Science Fictions” — the first major solo show in the United States dedicated to the artist in more than 20 years — is an assemblage of dozens of Varo’s paintings, drawings and ephemera from that prolific period when she worked alongside her fellow Surrealist expatriates Leonora Carrington and Kati Horna within Mexico City’s vibrant Colonia Roma neighborhood. (The trio were known collectively as the “three witches.”) Varo’s fascination with alchemy, pseudoscience and theosophy — an esoteric religion founded in North America in the late 19th century — are on full display in paintings such as “Star Catcher” (1956), which combines elements of medieval portraiture with cosmic fantasy: A figure in glowing robes holds a net in one hand and a small cage with a crescent moon in the other. Other works (“Discovery,” 1956 and “Vagabond,” 1957) show people on the move through strange landscapes, illustrating Varo’s own experiences of forced migration. “Remedios Varo: Science Fictions” is on view from July 29 through Nov. 27, artic.edu.
When the French jewelry designer Charlotte Chesnais was working for Balenciaga under the fashion house’s then-creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, she developed a range of handblown glass bangles to adorn the wrists of models for the spring 2012 runway show. Now, over a decade later, Chesnais has reprised the idea for her own jewelry label with a new summer collection comprising 50 limited-edition miniature glass hoops she refers to as doughnuts. Individually handblown in a variety of iridescent colors by the same woman who made the original glass bangles in a studio outside of Lille, in northern France, the doughnuts can be hung from hoop earrings or threaded onto necklaces and bracelets like charms. “They look like water that has been crystallized, or small ice cubes,” says Chesnais, who is known for her sculptural pieces defined by swooping arcs and spirals. One doughnut will be offered with every purchase of Chesnais’s lacquered Petit Wave earrings, which are available online, at the brand’s two Parisian stores and at a monthlong pop-up opening July 28 at Pepa, a fashion boutique in Cadaqués, Spain. The coastal village was once a frequent haunt of the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, whose work is a recurring source of inspiration for Chesnais, giving the project a full-circle feel. From about $390, charlottechesnais.com.
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An Elegant Hotel on the Grounds of a Mexican Brewery
When the Hércules Textile Factory opened in the city of Querétaro in 1846, it was only the second of its kind in all of Mexico. At its peak, the factory had employed 10 percent of Querétaro’s population and occupied more than 470,000 square feet but, by 2011, when Luis Gonzalez established his craft brewery, Cervecera Hércules, in a small section of the old factory floor, the original business had atrophied, finally closing for good in 2019. Over the last 12 years, Cervecera Hércules has inhabited more and more of the old factory, building a sprawling beer garden and workshops for bakers, coffee roasters and textile designers, as well as offices for Goma, the architectural firm that took on Hércules’s most recent major transformation: the opening of its namesake hotel. Set in the abandoned mill owner’s residence — a heritage structure with graceful Palladian proportions — the 25,500-square-foot Hotel Hércules contains 40 rooms that Goma restored with the lightest possible touch, leaving brick barrel arches and chipped plaster walls intact while injecting a touch of modern glamour with midcentury furniture recovered from antique markets in Mexico City, about a three-hour drive to the southeast. Complete with a spa, two restaurants, an olive grove and a swimming pool installed in an unroofed wing of the factory, the hotel, which opened on July 20, will serve as the brewery’s guesthouse, the equivalent of the chateaus and lodges attached to vineyards around the world. Rooms from $150 a night, hotelhercules.com.
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In New York, Shelley Niro’s Show of Resilience
Modern life and ancient tradition and sorrow and laughter mingle together in “500 Year Itch,” an exhibition showcasing the work of Shelley Niro at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. A Mohawk artist and filmmaker, Niro uses an array of mediums including beadwork, oil painting and photography to explore the trauma and strength of being Native American and female. Much of Niro’s work deals with memory and its complexities — how some tragedies are seared into Native American minds while easily forgotten by others. “The Shirt” (2003), a short film, depicts an Indigenous woman wearing jeans, aviator sunglasses and an American flag bandanna, along with a white shirt displaying a series of messages: “My ancestors were annihilated, exterminated, murdered and massacred … And all’s I get is this shirt.” But Niro also chooses to laugh in the face of grief. In a 1992 work called “500 Year Itch,” a photograph of Niro shows her dressed like Marilyn Monroe and smiling. Niro sees this work as a representation of endurance over centuries of oppression. “We’re still here, and we’ll still continue, and we still have the capability of laughing at ourselves,” Niro says. “Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch” is on view through Jan. 1, 2024, americanindian.si.edu.
Maison Madeleine, the Los Angeles-based furniture company, has collaborated with the American heritage brand Sister Parish on an unlikely piece: the daybed. “You see a lot of them in old-world French homes and around Europe, and even on the East Coast in sunny, porched rooms,” says Maison Madeleine’s founder, Leah Cumming. The solid oak beds feature scalloped details and upholstery in one of four fabrics from Sister Parish, the textile and interiors brand run by the namesake designer’s granddaughter Susan Crater and great-granddaughter Eliza Crater Harris. As Harris explains, the textiles are full of references to Parish and her design firm, Parish Hadley. “Mahalo is a woven check that was derived from a canopy bed that my great-grandmother had,” she says, though this iteration is woven from recycled polyester that repels water and resists mold, mildew and staining. Dolly, a flower and stripe design that Parish often used within her own houses, is one of the company’s most popular textiles. Parish Stripe, a classic blue ticking, and Sintra, a botanical print from the Parish Hadley archives, round out the selection. (The collaboration’s collection will expand in the fall with dining chairs in a woven floral jacquard called Georgina that’s made at a mill in Pennsylvania.) While a daybed may not seem like a staple piece, Harris emphasizes its versatility: “You could use it for a houseguest or to lounge on and read a book, or for your dog to lay on in the sun, or curl up on it with a glass of wine,” she says. “It’s actually quite practical.” $8,500, shopmaisonmadeleine.com.
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