Britain's most famous luxury car marque brings woodland magic to London Craft Week
At this year’s London Craft Week (12–18 May 2025), Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is bringing a captivating artistic display that reimagines the British countryside in exquisite detail and craftsmanship.
Created by artisans at the marque’s Goodwood headquarters, the triptych artwork draws on the flora and fauna of the British Isles, presenting a woodland scene across three evocative moments: day, evening, and night. The centrepiece is a kingfisher, depicted in each panel using a range of complex techniques, transforming leather, wood, metal and thread into an immersive natural tableau.
Chloe Dowsett, Bespoke Specialist at Rolls-Royce, explained the concept behind the triptych. “We wanted the three panels to talk to each other, to be connected,” Chloe explained. “The reeds at the bottom of the first panel, which are made of metal, in rusty red and mandarin orange, are matched in the second panel with grasses in leather dyed in similar hues.”
Paul Ferris, also a Bespoke Specialist at the marque, gave further details about the cohesive nature of the artwork. “For the first time we had the chance to create something that had nothing to do with…
Mesmerising mythology at a major new sculpture exhibition in Norfolk
Mythological beasts stalk the grounds of Houghton Hall – in a good way. The stately home in Norfolk is presenting Stephen Cox: Myth, an absorbing new exhibition of the work of the British sculptor. Arranged across the park gardens and interiors, this is the most comprehensive retrospective ever of the Royal Academician’s sculpture. Covering more […]
A landmark exhibition uncovering the artist’s overlooked prints
Everyone is familiar with JMW Turner’s matchless oils and watercolours. His 1839 masterpiece, the oil painting The Fighting Temeraire, is regularly voted the greatest British artwork of all time. To mark the 250th anniversary of his birth, the Whitworth gallery in Manchester is mounting an enthralling new exhibition of his prints, equally magnetic, yet far […]
Raven Smith curates a witty, gripping library for London’s newest literary-minded hotel
There is an exciting new chapter about to begin at Templeton Garden. To mark its official opening this month, the newly launched luxury lifestyle hotel from Miiro has forged a literary partnership with Raven Smith.
The very popular author and American Vogue columnist is presenting a specially curated selection of his best-loved books for guests and locals to enjoy. The project speaks volumes for the literary ambitions of Templeton Garden, which is located in a part of London with very strong bookish traditions.
The bespoke edit, entitled “Templeton Garden x Raven Smith,” includes such gripping novels as Don’t Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier, Alex Garland’s The Beach, Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley.
The collection also features Smith’s own witty novels Trivial Pursuits and Men, which The Observer called, “Wise, sharp and naughty”.
Left: Raven Smith with a few of the books carefully selected for this imitative at Templeton Garden. Right: The cosy library at Templeton Garden A snug, where armchairs and quiet corners beckon you to settle in and lose hours in a good story.
Guests and neighbours of the hotel – a leafy oasis in Earls Court – can grab a book, settle into an armchair in the very comfortable library at Templeton Garden and lose themselves in another world. In addition, each guest will be left a book in their bedroom, accompanied by a note from Smith outlining the reasons behind his choices.
The author has been thrilled to work on the project. “Pulling this edit together was a fantastic walk down the memory lane of my bookshelves. There’s a bit of everything in there – some classics, some jump scares, all bangers! As a Londoner, and a life-long book lover, working with Templeton Garden to celebrate its launch and share the world’s greatest stories – in my opinion! – has been an absolute joy!”
Nicola James, Templeton Garden General Manager, also welcomes the edit. “We have a long history of great writers living in this neighbourhood, with the likes of Beatrix Potter, Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock all calling it home. As we opened our doors at Templeton Garden, we wanted to honour that legacy while also giving a platform to new voices and conversations.”
She adds, “The library is one of my favourite spaces in the hotel, and I’m excited to see it become a focal point for local residents and guests – a space where everyone can read, tell and swap stories, and disconnect from the outside world.”
Thanks to the talented Mr Smith, the venture looks set to be an absolute bestseller.
A life-affirming portrait of the artist’s wondrous 70-year career
David Hockney 25, the largest ever exhibition of the peerless British artist’s work, is having a profound effect on its visitors. One critic has written that the show left him in tears. The exhibition, which runs at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, underscores Hockney’s status as one of the greatest artists of the last hundred years.
Described by the Guardian as, “A joyous pilgrimage of colour and sincerity, with a blast of high emotion,” David Hockney 25 offers an extremely comprehensive survey of his unrivalled seven-decade-long career.
David Hockney himself, who remains enviably vigorous and engaged at the age of 87, has curated the exhibition, which occupies all 11 rooms of the Fondation Louis Vuitton and features more than 400 works created between 1955 and 2025. The pieces are in a range of different media, including oil and acrylic painting, ink, pencil and charcoal drawing, immersive video installations, and digital art (works on iPhone, iPad, photographic drawings).
Emphasising Hockney’s mastery of both draughtsmanship and colour, the show opens with a collection of iconic paintings from the 1950s to the 1970s. These cover his origins in Bradford (Portrait of My Father, 1955), before moving on to his time in London and then California.
The swimming pool – a leitmotif for the artist – plays a central role in A Bigger Splash, 1967 and Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972. Meanwhile, his seminal series of double portraits is illustrated in Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, 1970-1971, and Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968.
During the 1980s, Nature takes on increasing significance in Hockney’s work – as shown in A Bigger Grand Canyon, 1998 – before he comes back to Europe to carry on with his investigation of familiar landscapes.
The heart of the exhibition focuses on the past 25 years, spent mainly in Yorkshire, Normandy, and London, seen in such beautiful pictures as May Blossom on the Roman Road, 2009, and Bigger Trees near Warter, 2007.
“David Hockney, 25” is a showcase of his astounding work over the past 70 years. The exhibition is likely to leave visitors as uplifted as the artist’s life-affirming motto that hangs over the entrance to the Fondation Louis Vuitton: “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring”.
David Hockney 25 The Fondation Louis Vuitton, 8, Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi Bois de Boulogne, 75116 Paris Until 31st August 2025 More information and tickets, HERE.
Whatever it takes to be an opera star these days, walking on stilts isn’t a widely recognised requirement. Nor is dressing up as a gorilla. But they’re useful sidelines for Aigul Akhmetshina, who has done both in her meteorically ascendant, if still young career.
Modern stage directors ask a lot from singers: you can find yourself delivering an aria upside down on a trapeze – unless your contract rules it out. Akhmetshina isn’t someone who expects to come on stage, stand at a designated spot, and sing. She’s agile, physical, alive, which, with the happy combination of a rich, expansive mezzo voice and feisty charm, has made her one of the most thrilling – and marketable – figures on the international circuit. Aged just 28.
“Theatre is complex: if I wanted just to sing,” she says, “I’d stick to concerts. And if the director asks for strange things, I’m happy to try – so long as there are explainable reasons. I’m not against radical stagings, though it’s a shame that young people come to a piece such as Carmen and may never have seen it done traditionally. There needs to be a balance.”
As it happens, Akhmetshina is currently the go-to Carmen on the world stage, having starred in an astonishing 13 productions during recent years, beginning at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden (the notorious Barrie Kosky show with a gorilla-suited heroine), then taking in the New York Met, Glyndebourne, Berlin, Naples, Vienna… with another Covent Garden run returning soon. This time it’s a production by Damiano Michieletto. It has no gorillas but is still far from traditional, set in a dreary, small town in Spain with a wardrobe of jeans and T-shirts as opposed to picture-postcard frocks and castanets.
Doing the piece so often, you’d expect Carmen fatigue to set in. But apparently it doesn’t.
“Every time there’s something new. I’m never sure how it will go because the character is so full of possibilities: aggressive, vulnerable, flirty, grounded, femme fatale… You think you understand her, but you don’t: she’s unpredictable, ungraspable. So no, I don’t tire of her, but I do find it draining emotionally, getting killed night after night in so many different ways. And I’m never satisfied with how I play her: if I were, I’d stop because the challenge would go. All I can say is I play her through my own life experience. We have things in common.”
I’m never satisfied with how I play her [Carmen]: if I was, I’d stop because the challenge would go.
– Aigul Akhmetshina
Akhmetshina’s life experience is, indeed, a story. Born in a village in Bashkortostan, a remote part of the Russian Federation, 1,000 miles from Moscow, she was raised by a single mother in circumstances where people sang but with no obvious future on the world stage. The young Aigul liked folk music and Western pop, particularly Amy Winehouse. But from that unpromising start, she got herself, aged 14, into a performing arts school in a distant town where she lived independently and paid her way by waitressing and performing in a circus-style cabaret as a stilt walker.
“I was a teenager living like an adult,” she says, “where I come from, it’s normal: you learn to work hard early. I grew up fast, feeling life was too short to waste.”
At that school, a teacher suggested she change her voice from soprano to mezzo: a key development. Unfortunately, she was turned down by the celebrated Gnessin Academy in Moscow, which meant she had no proper conservatoire education. But luck intervened when she entered a competition and was noticed by the director of Covent Garden’s Young Artists Programme. So, aged 20, she relocated to London, where she spent the next six months lonely, unhappy, struggling to learn English, and “wanting every day to pack my suitcase and leave. A lot of people had supported me to be here – my mother had spent her savings – I couldn’t let them down. And I’m stubborn. I’m a Taurus. We don’t give up.”
Her reward was that the Royal Opera swept her into a reduced-scale Carmen playing the London fringe. Then, at 21, she found herself parachuted into the real thing on Covent Garden’s main stage when the scheduled star was indisposed. “I’d had no rehearsals with the orchestra or on the stage; I was terrified.”
Almost immediately, the conveyor belt of Carmen bookings started rolling – to the point where she now feels she’s ready not just to perform it but direct it: “One day, maybe. It would be more traditional, full of light and colour. This is not a grey piece.”
Akhmetshina understands the need to explore roles beyond the one she knows inside out. And there are plenty landing at her feet now, not least at the New York Met, where the administration is so in love with her she can virtually do what she likes.
Obvious choices are the bel canto Italians: Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini (she’s just been doing Norma in Vienna). But she also favours late 19th-century French: Massenet and Saint-Saens (with the latter’s Samson et Dalila scheduled next season). And somewhere on her wish list are the low-flying coloratura heroines of baroque opera. “People tell me they won’t suit my voice. I disagree.”
“Of course I’d like to work in my homeland […] My family are there. They’ve never heard me sing. […] I can only hope better days will come.”
– Aigul Akhmetshina
Whatever she has coming, though, it won’t be happening any time soon in her Russian Federation homeland where she’s hardly known. And it’s a sensitive issue. She is keen to say she’s not a Russian national – “I’m half Tatar, half Bashkir” – which, in the light of world events, is understandable. Her current home is London, and she’s trying (with some difficulty) to get British citizenship. But, until that happens, she travels on a Russian passport. And there’s pressure to take a public stand on Ukraine, which she’d rather avoid.
To date, she’s never played the Mariinsky or the Bolshoi and has no plans to do so. “I’ve not been asked. I’ve never met Valery Gergiev [the supreme fixer of state-sponsored musical life in Russia]. And I’m booked up until 2031. But of course, I’d like to work in my homeland. My family is there, they’ve never heard me sing, except on video. At the moment,t I don’t see a possibility. I only hope better days will come.”
How can we not remember the iconic magazine and images of The Face? The magazine was the go-to for any would-be keeping up with the latest trends in music and fashion throughout the ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s Britian, and adorned many coffee tables and bedrooms. Therefore, when the National Gallery announced the launch of its exhibition The Face Magazine:Culture Shift, I had to pop along, for old times’ sake.
The Face was started by Nick Logan in 1980. The man responsible for music magazine Smash Hits in the 1970s spotted a gap in the market for a monthly magazine aimed at a youth audience interested in a broad range of subjects that weren’t being featured in fashion, teen or music publications. Culture Shift is the first museum exhibition of its kind and explores the impact of The Face in Britian as well as its influences still today. Curated by Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery together with Lee Swillingham, former Art Director of The Face (1992-1999) and Norbert Schoerner, a photographer whose work featured in the magazine throughout the ’90s and ‘00s, iconic portraits from the trailblazing publication are celebrated with fashion, music, and pop-culture colliding to provide a tour of its history.
Focussing on the captivating portraiture and fashion photography captured in the cult magazine, the display showcases how The Face shaped the tastes of the nation’s youth. Featuring photographs, magazine covers and spreads, and film, the exhibition uses the medium of portraiture to explore The Face’s monumental influence and its continued impact on the publishing landscape and the worlds of fashion and music. Organised thematically and chronically, Culture Shift includes over 200 images created by over 80 photographers – many of the era’s most talented (Sheila Rock, Stephanie Sednaoui, David LaChapelle, and Corinne Day), as well as the work of stylists and models, many of which have never been outside of the pages of the magazine.
The display opens with a selection of material from the early years showcasing the overlap between music and fashion under Art Director Neville Brody. The magazine’s power to promote music talent from unknown faces to turbocharging careers was on the rise between 1981-1986 and photographers were given the space and freedom to create iconic images.
The magazine also spearheaded the role of stylists in magazine photography, such as Ray Petri, who in the 1980s redefined men’s fashion within the pages of The Face, introduced black models and using radical fashion brands.In the late 1980s and early 1990s the magazine adopted an aesthetic and style in line with the emergence of acid house music, a new clubbing scene and the explosion of rave culture. Many of the photographs of this era were black and white and featured unconventional models looking natural in contrast with high fashion glamour that dominated the likes of Vogue. Kate Moss’s career was launched in this period from her covers for the magazine.
The Face ceased publication in 2004, but fifteen years later it was relaunched returning to a radically altered publishing landscape. Navigating the new terrain, the magazine has continued Logan’s original vision for a disruptive, creative and inclusive magazine, championing fresh talent in photography, fashion, music and graphic design. Culture Shift closes with work from this new chapter.
The Face Magazine: Culture Shift National Portrait Gallery St. Martin’s Pl, London WC2H 0HE More information and tickets, HERE.
Vincent van Gogh once described the drawings of Victor Hugo as “astonishing things”, and people seeing the Frenchman’s artwork for the first time today may well be equally astounded. The exhibition Astonishing Things at the Royal Academy London is the first time in more than half a century that the public will be able to admire Victor Hugo’s haunting ink and wash drawings.
Although Hugo was globally renowned as a writer, responsible for such timeless novels as Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, what is less well known is that he was also a gifted artist.
Displaying more than 70 pieces from major European collections, Astonishing Things traces Hugo’s fascination with drawing, from his early caricatures and travel sketches to his landscapes infused with high drama and his magnetic, abstract experimentations.
Victor Hugo’s ink and wash drawings evince a captivating, often wild imagination, and yet they were hardly ever exhibited during his lifetime. Despite this, his art proved an inspiration to Symbolist poets and many painters, from the aforementioned van Gogh and Surrealists André Breton and Max Ernst, to contemporary artists such as Raymond Pettibon and Antony Gormley RA.
Left, Victor Hugo, Mirror with Birds, 1870. Hand-painted and inscribed wooden frame, oil paint, varnish. Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey. Photo: CCØ Paris Musées / Maisons de Victor Hugo.
Right: Victor Hugo, Octopus, 1866–69. Brown ink and wash and graphite on paper. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits
Victor Hugo was a very prominent public figure in 19th-century France. In addition to his work as a novelist, he was celebrated as a poet and politician. During a twenty-year exile on the Channel Islands, he became emblematic of the ideals of the French Republic: liberté, égalité, fraternité. But away from his very public persona, he sought refuge in drawings.
Astonishing Things is organised into four sections. The first is “Writing and Drawing,” which interrogates the relationship between Hugo’s artistic and literary work.
The second section, “Observation and Imagination,” investigates the artist’s drawing process, exploring the array of materials Hugo used, from fine pencil to wet inks.
Next, “Fantasy and Reality” examines one of Hugo’s most enduring artistic leitmotifs: castles. A wonderful draughtsman, he employed memory, observation, and imagination to portray a wide variety of castles, ranging in tone from the evanescent and romantic to the unremittingly bleak.
The final section focuses on another of Hugo’s abiding preoccupations, “The Ocean”. It features drawings associated with Les Misérables, such as “Chain” (1864).
The exhibition demonstrates that Victor Hugo’s drawings of dreamlike castles, chimeric monsters and hallucinatory seascapes are as vivid and visionary as any of his writing.
Prepare to be astonished.
Author: James Rampton
Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD21st March – 29th June 2025 More information and tickets, HERE.
Lead image: Victor Hugo, The Town of Vianden, with Stone Cross, 1871. Brown and black ink, brown and purple wash, graphite and varnish on paper. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits. Image cropped from the original due to formatting restrictions.
Iconic moments from Leica’s most celebrated photographers
Throughout most of the 20th century, the ability to view the world was not at the touch of a screen but through the pages of magazines that used photographers to bring events into your home. From wars to the first astronauts, to life in another society, those moments were captured by the correspondent photographer, the street photographer, the war photographer. Chances are they all carried a Leica rangefinder.
It was the camera that immortalised an era. In the right hands, Leica has produced some of the most emblematic images of generations. The portability and lens quality granted the freedom of use to capture the moment as it happened. Joel Meyerowitz, the famous New York street photographer, explains that the Leica rangefinder allows “the framing of the image through the viewfinder while keeping the other eye on the world around you”.
In an age where cameras were clunky and large, Leica invented one with which you could take high-resolution photos on 35mm film. It was groundbreaking, so much so that the design and idea behind it have essentially changed very little in the past century. The first 35mm film Leica prototypes were built by Oskar Barnack at Ernst Leitz Optische Werke, Wetzlar, in 1913. But it was the camera introduced at the 1925 Leipzig Spring Fair – as the Leica I – that proved to be an immediate success. As Matthias Harsch, CEO of Leica Camera AG, notes, “With its compact format, the Leica I redefined photography, laying the foundation for modern photojournalism.”
At almost the same moment the Leica camera was created, surrealism became an artistic movement, with photography occupying a central role in its creative endeavours. Surrealists believed there was a super reality behind everything, and you just had to wait for it to happen. It was, in essence, how Henri Cartier-Bresson approached his images. Selecting a location, he would wait for the moment to be captured. The Leica was essential to Bresson for its ability to be anywhere, to photograph the everyday, people at their work or their leisure. In his lyrical view of French life, in Sunday on the Banks of the Marne (1938), two couples sit picnicking on the banks of the river, discovering a seemingly timeless order within the random course of everyday social reality.
It was arguably in the theatre of mid-20th century warfare that the portable camera found its greatest stage as war photographers could stay with the troops to capture images of the horrors that confronted them. The man who brought war into view was Robert Capa. Armed only with his Leica, he was famously the only D-Day photographer, and his images portrayed the horror of the Normandy beaches in June 1944.
In his own opinion, Capa thought that the greatest photograph he ever took was, Death of aLoyalist Militiaman, 5 September, 1936, during the Battle of Cerro Muriano in the Spanish Civil War. He claimed he never even saw the image in the frame; he simply held the camera far above his head and pressed the shutter.
READ THIS FEATURE IN FULL, INCLUDING EXCLUSIVE COMMENTS FROM JOEL MEYEROWITZ AND NICK UT IN THE SPRING ISSUE OF I-M INQUISITIVE MINDS. ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.
Author: Andrew Hildreth
Lead image: Yevgeny Khaldei, Raising a Flag Over the Reichstag, 2nd May 1945.
Despite the general acclaim by critics and public alike, Angelina Jolie missed an Oscar nomination for her performance in the biopic Maria. In this interview with Jenny Davis, the two-time winner of an Academy Award speaks candidly about how much this role meant to her and how she poured her own pain into her character.
Jolie is certainly no stranger to awards. The Hollywood superstar won her first Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for playing a sociopath in the psychological thriller Girl, Interrupted (1999). The second came in 2013, for her humanitarian work and for directing the film In the Land of Blood and Honey. She also holds three Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Tony.
“I think she was a good woman, who really cared and was committed to being an artist.”
Maria marks a return to the limelight for mum-of-six Jolie after a tough few years on the personal front, having been embroiled in a messy divorce from Brad Pitt.
Regardless, Jolie’s performance of Maria Callas is considered by most critics as one of her strongest, and the film a spellbinding and compelling biopic. Directed by Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín (Jackie, Spencer) and written by Stephen Knight (Peaky Blinders, Dirty Pretty Things), the film depicts the tragedy of the Greek-American singer’s final days in Paris in 1977, with flashbacks to the highs of her life, such as stealing the show as a last-minute replacement for another singer in Venice in 1949.
The film has also been very well received by the public, which for Jolie meant a lot, since in the time she spent learning about Maria Callas for her role, she realised that in the last part of her career, Callas had been unfairly treated by the critics, almost suffocated, at a time when she was alone and particularly vulnerable. “I read many of her last reviews and they were terribly mean.”
Jolie felt deeply touched by the sadness of Callas’s late life, by her loneliness and her failed attempts to reclaim her voice and perform again. “They were horrible to her, especially the critics, so I really wanted for people to care about her. I thought, ‘OK, we are going to have this last bow.’”
The film allows the viewer to understand more about Maria Callas as a human being, and its success is greatly due to Jolie’s Callas-like commitment. “I think she was a good woman, who really cared and was committed to being an artist,” Jolie comments, “but she was also in a lot of pain. It was important to me that my work will help others understand her life.”
Read the whole Interview with our cover star, Angelina Jolie,in the Spring issue of I-M Inquisitive Minds.Get your copy HERE
Featuring work by such acclaimed artists as Alexander Calder, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney and Jeff Koons, the BMW Art Car Collection is revving up for a world tour to mark its 50th anniversary.
This unparalleled collection represents a snapshot of the history of art since 1975. A fleet of astounding, artistically designed BMWs, it takes in such diverse movements as minimalism, pop art, magical realism, abstraction, conceptual art and digital art.
Each of the twenty automobiles is created in the artist’s own individual style. Over the next few months, these eclectic, charismatic “rolling sculptures” will be on show in all five continents. They will be calling at Johannesburg, Vienna, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Dubai, Zürich, Taiwan, Bratislava, Stockholm, Lake Como, Munich, Båstad, the Hague and Istanbul.
Alexander Calder was inspired by the French auctioneer and racing driver, Hervé Poulain, to produce the first ever BMW Art Car in 1975.
Ilka Horstmeier, Board Member for Human Resources and Real Estate at BMW Group, explains the significance of the anniversary tour. “The BMW Art Car Collection celebrates 50 years of artistic freedom and visionary design. The 20 vehicles have become international icons, telling stories of society, technology and performance. We are continuously developing the collection and bringing art and automotive culture together in a unique way.”
The BMW Art Car Collection began on 14th June 1975, when a BMW 3.0 CSL, brilliantly conceived by the American sculptor Calder, pulled up at the grid at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
On the start line, Calder reminded his racing driver Hervé Poulain that he was piloting a work of art: “Hervé, win! But drive carefully!”
Left: Cao Fei reinterpreted the BMW M6 GT3 in 2016 to express the changes in Chinese society, establishing parallelisms with the speed of racing cars. Right: In 1999, Conceptual artist Jenny Holzer expressed her criticism of western society by covering the BMW V12 LMR racing car with provocative messages such as “Protect me from what I want” and “The unattainable is invariably attractive.”
Since then, 19 other globally renowned artists have enthusiastically embraced the concept. Rauschenberg, for instance, who crafted BMW Art Car #6 in 1986, declared: “This car is the fulfilment of my dream. I would like to do ten more!”
Meanwhile, Cao Fei, who designed BMW Art Car #18, in 2016, underscored the emotional side of the work: “The car should not only race in a physical way, but also in the heart.”
And when Jenny Holzer was invited to create BMW Art Car #15, in 1999, she joked: “I thought it would be nice if women could participate other than standing around in bikinis!”
The good news is, the BMW Art Car Collection World Tour schedule is still developing and will continue throughout 2026.
So wherever you are in the world, strap in for a truly memorable artistic ride.
More information and details about locations, HERE.
The late French designer Christian Liaigre was considered a great minimalist. The simple elegance of his designs, whose uncluttered, fluid lines allow the natural grace of a piece to shine, is captured in his ravishing book, Liaigre: 12 Projects.
Published by Flammarion Press, this highly collectable re-issue illustrates that, in melding discretion with subtle luxury, Liaigre mastered the art of understatement.
This splendidly-produced volume, which features more than 600 breathtaking photographs, focuses on 12 of Liaigre’s most memorable projects from around the world. These include private and public interiors from Nantucket to Malibu, from Athens to Korea, and from the Caribbean to London.
In this large-format book, readers are introduced to Liaigre’s world of impeccable refinement. The tome covers the full gamut of his gifts as an interior designer and furniture maker.
Liaigre has created a realm where he makes stunning use of light and space and nothing happens by accident, from the siting of a window to the positioning of a table.
The designer, who died in 2020, knew that God is in the details. He understood the importance of, “Placing that perfect, soft rug beneath the tread of a bare foot first thing each morning and ensuring a door handle, grasped time and again, is designed as much for its elegance as the pleasure it imparts when touched.”
As reflected in the entrancing 360 pages of Liaigre: 12 Projects, the designer profoundly believed that design was another artform. “Our surroundings should function like a work of art, appealing to our emotions, swathing us in security as we cross the threshold.”
Liaigre, who had an exquisite eye and designed the Mercer Hotel in New York and La Societé restaurant in Paris, added, “Sometimes, we take inspiration from the Dutch Masters, flooding our interior with natural light. Early man ‘decorated’ his caves, responding not to an urge to impress, but to a psychological need to make the occupied space his own, as an expression of identity.“ Interior architecture and design are, on occasion, synonymous with timelessness, beauty, harmony, understated luxury. But every interior should be this way. Beauty calms the human spirit and brings people together.”
As his gorgeous volume reminds us, Liaigre realised the joy of living in world filled with beautiful things. “Like a great painter or writer, the creative decorator must rise above his private tastes and adapt, so that people will say, ‘My, how good we feel here!’”
Author: James Rampton
Liaigre: 12 Projects by Flammarion 360 pages. Hardcover. From Browns Books at £60. At other retailers, prices may vary.
