The Monocle Minute
On Design

This week’s dispatch is full of hidden treasures, from a pearl museum in Bahrain to a postmodern candle holder that lit up homes – and the design world – in the 1980s. Plus: we travel to the US to meet upstate New York’s flourishing creative community. But first, Mary Holland has some advice on breaking beige design habits with File Under Pop (pictured).

Until recently, travelling to Livingston Manor, two hours north of New York, would have probably been for spending time in nature or fly fishing. But over the past decade, the town has become a cultural hub with a slew of buzzy restaurants, shops and galleries. Corners is a new art-and-design space opened by UK designer and entrepreneur David McGillivray, who moved to Livingston Manor full-time. “There’s a big creative community in upstate New York, especially in this area,” says McGillivray.

Located in a glass-fronted, mid-century standalone building across the street from the Catskill Art Space, Corners stocks collectable books, magazines, Japanese stationery and Alessi espresso pots that might be hard to find elsewhere. “There’s a photographer in town who loves a certain type of pencil,” he says. A long-time art collector, McGillivray also stocks a selection of one-of-a-kind framed artworks and vintage posters which range between $250 (€232) to $2,000 (€1,859). “Making art accessible was part of the framing aspect,” says McGillivray, who works with art dealers and artists from Florida to Denmark. “The shop provides a little slice of the city for people who have moved from there,” says McGillivray, adding that residents have become fans too.
cornersnewyork.co

Until the 1920s, when Japan invented cultured pearls, a Bahraini pearl necklace was worth as much as a building in Manhattan. These gems harvested by divers from oyster beds turned the tiny island nation on the Persian Gulf into a wealthy trading outpost. It’s a heritage celebrated at the newly completed Siyadi Pearl Museum, designed by Anne Holtrop. The Dutch architect started working on the project in 2016, not long after he moved from Amsterdam to Muharraq (it was commissioned by his now-wife, Palestinian architect Noura Al Sayeh). The site was the Siyadi Majlis, part of the old residence of one of the country’s foremost pearl-merchant families. Holtrop discovered that the building’s history was embedded in its walls; it was constructed using slabs of coral stone and plastered with crushed oyster shells.

Despite its heritage, half of the building had been poorly rebuilt in the 1980s. By clearing this section, Holtrop made way for a new annexe, with rooms that vary in height and showcase pearl jewellery. Holtrop, who has his studio nearby, experiments with materials to riff on Bahraini architecture. The opaque, sand-casted glass doors, for instance, were inspired by traditional Islamic window screens. “I wanted to let in the light but not the view,” he says. Such an approach has led to the creation of a museum that strikes a balance between the historic and the contemporary; the perfect setting for introducing visitors to the most famous aspect of Bahrain’s cultural heritage.
anneholtrop.nl

Siyadi Pearl Museum is the winner of the 2024 Monocle Design Award for Best New Museum. Read about more winners in the May issue of Monocle magazine.

Born and raised in Milan, Alessio Ascari is a publisher and curator intent on pushing the boundaries of design discussion. Case in point is Capsule, an annual publication that he launched with architect Paul Cournet in 2022. Its third edition brings together designers, architects and creatives to discuss the industry. The magazine also hosts physical showcases throughout the year and has a clothing-and-homewares line.

Tell us about the origins of ‘Capsule’.
Capsule was born during the coronavirus pandemic at a time when my co-founder, Paul, and I were having some interesting conversations about design and architecture. We felt that something was missing in the publishing landscape. We drew inspiration from old design magazines that we had collected, including Domus and Casabella, from the 1970s. It was a golden age of radical design. Amazing architects such as Gio Ponti, Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini were using magazines to expand their practice onto the printed page, using it as a laboratory of ideas. This is what inspired us to evolve Capsule into Capsule Plaza, which takes place during Milan Design Week.

What does it mean to be a radical designer today?
There are many different answers. In the latest edition of Capsule, there is a page that is mostly blank, with a headline that says “Define radical”. What we want is for people, our readers, to define this themselves. The projects that we endorse and research for the magazine are linked to this word.

‘Capsule’ started off as an annual publication. Why hold showcases and exhibitions?
Since the beginning, the idea has been to translate ideas that we like on the printed page into a physical space. It’s about engaging communities. The most organic way of doing this is by organising events. We want to host more of these in the future, whether they’re in Miami, Paris or London.

For more from Alessio Ascari, tune in to ‘Monocle on Design’ on Monocle Radio.

With warmer temperatures gradually taking hold in the northern hemisphere, alfresco dinners are again becoming an imaginable prospect, which means that it’s time to stock up on candle holders that are light, durable – and not overly precious. One such option is Doppio Cono by Bergamo-based family workshop Manzoni Pietro. Produced in the 1980s and 1990s for US company Vietri, the piece is composed of two hand-carved, sycamore-wood cones, which keep the candle stable and prevent wax from dripping onto the table.

Pietro Manzoni founded his wood-working workshop in 1955, which is now known for its rounded bowls, kitchen gear and children’s toys in bright, water-based varnishes. “You could call them postmodern,” says Mariangela Manzoni, Pietro’s daughter, who today runs the workshop with her siblings Matteo and Gianfranco. “We’ll keep making them.” Though the Doppio Cono is no longer in production but the atelier takes custom orders, should the imminent summertime dinners call for it.

TechniSat has a reputation for being a top radio manufacturer with its satellite reception technology, experience in data-connection solutions and having the broadest line-up in the market. At the forefront of its offerings are the Digitradio 4 IR (pictured bottom) – a digital hybrid that blends internet radio capabilities with Bluetooth audio streaming – and the portable Digitradio 1 (pictured top).
technisat.com

TechniSat is our winner of Best Radio in the 2024 Monocle Design Awards. For more winners, pick up a copy of the magazine online or on newsstands now.

You might not know it but your life has most likely been made better by the creations of Kenneth Grange, one of the UK’s most prolific product designers and a founding partner at Pentagram, an interdisciplinary design consultancy. The list of everyday products designed by Grange is truly remarkable: the Intercity 125 train for British Rail, the TX1 model of the London black taxi, domestic products for Ronson, Kenwood, Morphy Richards, Bendix and others, razors for Wilkinson Sword, lighting for Anglepoise, cameras for Kodak, pens for Parker, post boxes for Royal Mail – and much more for major manufacturers in the UK, Japan and the US.

“There was great optimism [at that time] against a backdrop of very little extravagance,” says Grange, whose career is now being celebrated in a new book, Kenneth Grange: Designing the Modern World, written by design specialist Lucy Johnston and published by Thames & Hudson. It explores decades of groundbreaking work and offers readers an insight into Grange’s creative process, with detailed commentary, sketches, scale models and product photographs. You might even find something from your day-to-day life documented on-page.
thamesandhudson.com