The Modern Pantry

To The Modern Pantry in a Georgian townhouse building in St John's Square (right by Bruno Loubet's Bistrot in the Zetter hotel), Clerkenwell for Sunday late brunch. A lovely day, with pre-prandial drinks high up on an urban-living terrace then on to this great little restaurant that gives 'fusion cooking' (Pacific Rim) a good name. Very New York in style (open all hours, no airs and graces, just great food and great service - at last!). 

Recognised by Michelin with a bib gourmand and the AA (2 stars), the prices reflect its popularity. However, when the food's this good then you never mind paying. Scallop sashimi with mustard seed, miso-marinated (or sugar-cured?) shrimp omelette with smoked chili sambal, tofu and sweetcorn fritters, onglet (skirt) steak cooked perfectly, casava chips with chili marmalade and creme fraiche, peach salsa, affogato made with great Caravan espresso coffee poured over Jude's hokey-pokey honeycomb 'ice-cream with soul', and much more...

Chef-owner Anna Hansen (UK New Zealander of the Year 2010) has a wealth of experience under her belt (she trained with London's originator of fusion cooking, Peter Gordon) and it clearly shows. When the food's this good it's time to push the boat out and I broke one of my main rules, by splashing out on a fine vino - but the company, location and food were too enjoyable to note the detail, just that it was a lovely, oaky 2006 Italian Barbera, worth every penny of the restaurant's mark-up. Service was excellent: friendly, generous and knowledgeable. Artwork ('A Visual Feast') from Selina Snow (see pics at bottom for a contrastingly arty take on British food). A joyful experience, bu wtf is umeboshi butter?

* Waitrose guest chef: Anna Hansen (link left to recipes, from Waitrose Food Illustrated Jan 2010 edition)

* Anna features in Coco (pub. Phaidon), a book showcasing 100 of the world's top up and coming chefs 

 

* Matthew Norman hits the nail on the head in his Guardian review:

"...Low expectations can distort the critical judgment, the relief luring you into inflating the competent into the outstanding, but by any standards the Modern Pantry is a gem."

Karl Ford, photographer

Great scenic (mainly around North Shore, Mass and Vermont) and creature photos from photographer Karl Ford, whose website is here. Pic below is of West Beach, Beverly Farms.

Cantilever staircase

The Bank of England leaves interest rates the same, for the 15 month running, but the economy is still going round in circles. BBC story here.

Top pic: the cantilever staircase in the Bank of England building is said to be the longest in Europe. Bottom pic: St Paul's Cathedral's cantilevered staircase, used in the Harry Potter films.

The ampersand

The joy of typography and the ampersand: 365, For Haiti, Mesmerising curves, Half & Half or not: Shitampersand

Happy Buddha

Fine example of a Happy Buddha Japanese Netsuke

Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance

Original above and on the Oren Lavie site here
Frame-by-frame: HME Gallery
Parody below

Jim Denevan - outsize art

The largest artwork in history, with over 1,000 circles created by sand artist Jim Denevan, in Nevada, USA, 2009. Nine miles in circumference across the desert setting. Awesome achievement - larger than the lines in Nazca, Peru. The design is based on a mathematical theorem called an Apollonian Gasket and features triples of circles at tangents to others. Jim is also the founder and organizer of a worldwide moveable feast called Outstanding in the Field. His main site is here.

Churchill and Roosevelt statue

Called 'Allies', this statue by Lawrence Holofcener was unveiled in 1995 by the Bond Street Association to mark 50 years of peace. After their stand against Nazism in World War II, Winston S Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt helped found the United Nations. Churchill’s mother was American and he and FDR were distant cousins. It stands (or, rather, sits) between New Bond Street and Old Bond Street, London.


Pic: Sion Touhig (Getty Images)

London snow scenes

A green parakeet, surviving the recent cold spell in Redhill, south London.

From the BBC:

Parakeets are originally from India. So why are they able to survive - and thrive - here?

Bedecked with emerald green feathers and a rose-red beak, the ring-neck parakeet brings a touch of tropical glamour to suburban gardens in London and the South East.

"They actually originate from the foothills of the Himalayas, so they don't need it to be that warm to live comfortably," says Andre Farrar of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Photos: LBC

Drive-by shooting

Drive-by shooting. Geddit?


From Eden TV (Sky 532, Virgin 208)

The Times is 225

Happy Birthday to The Times, 225 years old today. 


Article here on Times Online.

Georgia O'Keefe - Red Poppy

Georgia O’Keeffe, 1956, by Yousuf Karsh

In perhaps one Karsh's most famous photographs, Karsh travelled from his studio in Ottawa, Canada to Abiquiu, New Mexico, to capture American painter Georgia O’Keeffe for a portrait around 1956. He later wrote that he had hoped to find in her “some of the poetic intensity of her paintings.” Instead Karsh found “the austere intensity of dedication to her work.” He made a quiet portrait of the distant O’Keeffe during a moment of repose in her home.

'I hate flowers - I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.' Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)

Victoria & Albert Museum

...to the Vee'n'A Museum in South Kensington, London yesterday, seeking out iconic images of the 60s for my daughter's GCSE art course. The museum has a vast, eclectic selection but there are some dark and badly-lit corners. Our last museum visit, to the Kelvingrove in Glasgow, proved more satisfying. Nevertheless, we found three truly iconic images.

(above) detail from a Mary Quant designer dress, modelled by Jean Shrimpton, photographed by John French - three icons of 60s' fashion.

'The first chair to be conceived entirely as a single piece, but the materials and techniques took several years to develop. These early examples are made of fibreglass-reinforced polyseter, which was strong but also brittle and heavy. Polyurethane, polystyrene and polypropylene have all been used at different times since then.' Designed by Werner Panton (Danish 1926-98), manufactured by Herman Miller Furniture Company, Michigan, USA in 1967 out of moulded fibreglass and reinforced polyester. 

* Exploring Photography at the V&A

Two more defining photographs from the 60s: (left) Twiggy, shot by Cecil Beaton and (right) Christine Keeler, shot by Lewis Morley in 1963 and taken at the height of the revelations regarding her affair with the government minister John Profumo.

Spencer Tunick - photographer

Spencer Tunick (b 1967) is an American artist best known for his installations featuring large numbers of nude people posed in artistic formations: "A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it — if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.” Fascinating and, of course, provocative.

* www.spencertunick.com

* Wikipedia entry

St Edmund, King of the Angles

   

Sculpture of St Edmund (1976) by Elisabeth Frink stands outside the remains of the great Abbey in Bury St Edmunds. 

*Click on photo to enlarge.

St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk has many images of Edmund, King of the Angles, who was killed by the invading Danes in 869. A great Benedictine Abbey was built by Canute to house his remains and to celebrate his martyrdom; for over 1,000 years the site has been one of worship and pilgrimage.

The great, rich Abbey was sacked during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in the 16th century, but the smaller church built within the precincts of the Abbey remained, to eventually become a Cathedral in 1914. Recently the Millennium Project has seen the completion of the building with the addition of a tower, new cloisters and chapels. So, in 2005 the skyline of Bury St Edmunds changed with the completion of a magnificent 150 ft (45m) Gothic lantern tower. 

The painting, below left, by artist Ned Pamphilon, includes references to the many arrows that were shot into St Edmund to force him to renounce his Christianity (which he resolutely refused to do) and the wolf who, legend has it, guarded the severed head of the King.

  

Elvis is alive and well in Glasgow

Return to Sender, by Sean Read (1996). The King of Rock'n'Roll was seen in fibreglass and mixed media at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.

Old Willie - the Village Worthy

The captivating Old Willie by Scottish Realism painter Sir James Guthrie (1859–1930), associated with the Scottish Boys, on display in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

The Scottish Boys were a group of Scottish artists who revolutionised Scottish painting from 1880 until about 1895. They rebelled against traditional Victorian sentimentality and painted everyday subjects in a fresh new way, often capturing their subject by painting out of doors.

Most of them studied abroad, were influenced by what they saw (and what became known as Impressionism), absorbed the ideas of composition, paint application, subject matter and technique and became internationally acclaimed. Their young rebellious phase only lasted 15 years, and many of them went on to become traditional society painters.

* Kelvingrove

* The Painting Struggle blog

Crunch munch

George and Tony's Credit Crunch Ice Cream screen print by graphic designer and exhibiting artist DUNC4N, a graduate from Duncan of Jordanstone college of Art in Dundee. His style is understandably graphic, with blocked textures and patterns and typography always a feature. Simple, aesthetic and playful. Seen in Urban Outfitters, Glasgow.

Triptych inspired by Man Ray

*Click on the triptych to enlarge

* Man Ray was an admirer of the paintings of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and made a series of photographs, inspired by Ingres's languorous nudes, of the model Kiki in a turban. Painting the f-holes of a stringed instrument onto the photographic print and then rephotographing the print, Man Ray altered what was originally a classical nude (entitled La Baigneuse by Ingres). He also added the title Le Violon d'Ingres (1924), a French idiom that means 'hobby'. The transformation of Kiki's body into a musical instrument with the crude addition of a few brushstrokes makes the original a humorous image, but her armless form is also disturbing to contemplate. The title seems to suggest that, while playing the violin was Ingres's hobby, toying with Kiki was a pastime of Man Ray. The picture maintains a tension between objectification and appreciation of the female form; hopefully, my addition of the third image (though not my original work), on the left, brings that appreciation up to date.

iSketches - Jorge Colombo

Finger painting on iPhone digital canvas using Brushes app:

* www.jorge colombo.com

* NYPost article: Ringing the funk