Latest news with #WallaceCollection
Forbes
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Why Marylebone Is London's Most Underrated Neighborhood To Visit
Marylebone district, London, England, UK getty Although it is in central London, near all the main attractions, Marylebone Village is a far cry from the other hectic shopping areas nearby. And with a neighborhood feel, the area is more than just your typical shopping area, with loads of independent shops, bars, cafes and restaurants. Located just minutes from the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, the area offers an array of shopping, eating and cultural experiences in a picturesque setting, surrounded by period architecture and attractive green spaces. One of London's best art museums is in the area and well worth a visit. The Wallace Collection, on Manchester Square, bequeathed to the British nation in 1897, houses masterpieces from the 14th to the 19th centuries by artists including Titian, Velázquez, Rubens and Fragonard. A guest room at The Zetter Marylebone, London Darren Chung The Zetter Marylebone is a delightful 4-star boutique hotel, in a row of attractive Georgian townhouses, tucked away on a discreet side street, just minutes away from Oxford Street. When stepping inside the book and antique filled parlor, you'll immediately feel you're in a sumptuous home rather than a hotel. The decor is cozy and inviting and while the service is attentive, there's no formal check-in desk, contributing to a laid-back vibe. The property has a whimsical feel with 24 individually designed rooms decorated with antique furniture, floral curtains and fun curios inspired by London's quirky Sir John Soane's museum. If you want to stay somewhere with a typical British Victorian ambiance but with all the modern conveniences like Wi-Fi and decent showers, the Zetter Marylebone is ideal. The guest rooms also feature flatscreen televisions, Marshall or Sonos speakers, tea-and coffee making facilities, a minibar and free bottled water. The Parlor Lounge at the Zetter, Marylebone Andreas von Einsiedel The hotel's activities center around the Parlor, the hotel's lounge, a comfortable space where guests can enjoy breakfast, afternoon tea, drinks and small plates. The cocktail menu has the classics along with some experimental options like Absinthe Colada and the very tasty Green Sorrel Sour. The Parlor at Zetter Marylebone is also the perfect setting for afternoon tea with finger sandwiches, cakes, vanilla and lavender scones and a great selection of loose-leaf teas. A full vegan afternoon tea menu is also available. Rates at The Zetter Marylebone start from £400 per night. Studio suite at Holmes Hotel, Marylebone, London Ben Carpenter Photography Holmes Hotel, a 4-star on Baker Street, is made up of four Georgian townhouses with 118 hotel rooms that range from cozy doubles to luxurious, 50 square meter duplex loft suites. The rooms and suites are individually styled, blending original Georgian features with rich textures and bespoke furniture. Other welcoming aspects are the plush Egyptian cotton bedding smart TVs with Chromecast and a gym. The Loft Suites are like spacious London apartments, while the heritage deluxe rooms offer attractive period details. Sherlock Holmes plaque outside of museum at Baker Street 221b getty The hotel is inspired by Baker Street's most famous resident – Sherlock Holmes and there are quick mysteries to solve on each floor as well as vintage curiosities, hidden nooks and velvet reading chairs. And for a more extensive dive into the life of the Victorian detective, The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker street (the address of Conan Doyle's fictional sleuth) is a five minute stroll from the hotel. The bar and restaurant at Holmes Hotel Ben Carpenter Photography For all-day dining, Kitchen at Holmes, an expansive all day bar and restaurant is open to both hotel guests and non residents. Mediterranean-inspired dishes are offered by Head Chef Stefano Motta (the lobster spaghetti is excellent). The restaurant spills out onto a buzzy outdoor terrace on Baker street. A double room at Holmes Hotel starts from £250. Where to Eat and Drink Cafe Murano, Marylebone, London John Carey Chef Angela Hartnett's eagerly anticipated Cafe Murano Marylebone opened last week on 26 July and judging from the busy, buzzy atmosphere, it's destined to be one of the most popular restaurants in the area. Like her Cafe Murano in Bermondsey and Covent Garden, the Marylebone location is a more casual restaurant than her Michelin-starred Murano, in Mayfair, originally co-owned with Gordon Ramsay. And, unique to this location, the restaurant has a breakfast menu too, with dishes like grilled sweet peaches with yoghurt and smoked trout crostini. Drawing inspiration from the chef's southern Italian heritage, the dinner menu features traditional cicchetti , primi , secondi and dolce , with hand-rolled pasta, generous plates to share and regularly changing specials. New and exclusive to Marylebone is half chicken Salmoriglio, roasted to perfection in a zesty sauce of lemon, garlic and fresh herbs. The second new dish is the extremely moreish r igatoni al ragù bianco, a white bolognese-style pasta from Tuscany. Other standout dishes are lamb and pea arancini and braised octopus with potatoes and aioli. Opso from Chef Nikos Roussos offers a new approach to modern Greek food. Yes, you'll find a Souvlaki kebab with Greek yoghurt and classic Greek salad but also on the current menu is lightly cured sea bass in smoked aubergine broth and lamb shank with fresh black truffles. And across the road is Chef Roussos's Kima an equally delightful seafood restaurant that embraces a 'fin to gill' philosophy meaning 'use-all, waste-not' with dishes using the entire fish from head to tail. Caldesi, founded in 2002 by Chef and Restaurateur Giancarlo Caldesi and his wife Katie, is rightly loved for its authentic Italian regional cuisine. Try the spaghetti vongole or the seabass ravioli, both house favorites. Fischer's offers a classic Viennese menu of schnitzel, sausages and strudel, from early morning breakfast and afternoon coffee and cake, to a late-night dinner. Once you've eaten a sausage roll at Ginger Pig on Moxon Street, all others will pale in comparison. With an extensive deli, this is a great place for a hot takeaway roast lunch. Each night the shop hosts butchery classes, where you can learn the tricks of the trade. La Fromagerie, next door to Ginger Pig, has been one of London's most popular cheese and wine bars since opening in 2002. The shop features a walk-in Cheese room where you'll see cheese maturing and dedicated eating areas to enjoy cheese, wine and product. Where to Shop Daunt Books storefront getty Marylebone High street is the main shopping street but don't miss Chiltern Street for its eclectic range of menswear shops. Founded in 1990, Daunt Books remains one of the few independent booksellers in the UK. Housed in a graceful Edwardian building with long oak galleries and graceful skylights, Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street is one of London's most beautiful bookshops. Independent boutique KJ's Laundry, on Marylebone Lane, sells interesting and highly wearable brands from all over the world. From covetable womenswear, handbags, jewellery and shoes to lingerie and beauty products, you'll find an ever-changing repertoire of new finds made by saavy owners Jane Ellis and Kate Allis. Established in 1997 in Wales, Toast began with nightwear and loungewear and today's collections include simple, modern and functional pieces intended to last. The Marylebone boutique has a great range of clothing, homeware and accessories, produced in collaboration with artisans, weavers and mills from across the globe. The London outpost of Belgian ' haute chocolatier ' Pierre Marcolini can be described as a ' maison ' that, like a high fashion house, releases seasonal 'collections.' This is no ordinary chocolate producer. Pioneer of the 'bean to bar' movement, Pierre Marcolini has created his own chocolate from cocoa beans in house since 2001 and you can taste the difference. Agnès b, founded by French fashion designer Agnès Troublé, combines art and fashion in this light and open space on Marylebone High Street. Since 1989, Cologne & Cotton has sold gorgeous bed linen, bath products and soaps, table linen and eau de cologne.
Spectator
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Grayson Perry has pulled off another coup at the Wallace Collection
This show was largely panned in the papers when it opened in April, with critics calling it 'awkward and snarky', applying that sturdy English put-down 'arch', and generally carping at 'rich insider' Sir Grayson Perry for posing as an outsider artist. Word-of-mouth reviews were completely different, however, almost as if gallery-goers, free from the necessity of taking an art-historical position, had just really enjoyed the whole bonkers experience. To get to the exhibition, which is down in the former cellars of Hertford House, you first walk through the Wallace Collection, past its gleaming ormolu and onyx treasures. The place is a portal into the ancien régime, yet still carries a feeling – imprinted into the small-scale neoclassical architecture – that this is a home. A fantasy home. A home for a fantasist. 'A poor person's idea of how a rich person's home should look,' as Perry puts it. The sort of place one might think one lived in, if one were having a mental-health crisis. Which brings us to Perry's invented persona Shirley Smith, formerly in the care of Claybury Mental Hospital, Essex, now living in a council flat in Islington, and suffering – or enjoying – delusions of grandeur. The audio guide begins with her voicing a letter to the 9th Marquess announcing she has recently discovered she is his heir and asking when she can move into her rightful home. A tragicomic conceit, and a rich vein for Perry, who makes many of the works in the exhibition in her persona – intense, repetitive line drawings of herself in fine clothes, and a truly hideous handcrafted version of Boucher's 'Madame de Pompadour' made by Shirley Smith out of wool and bobbins during art-therapy sessions. Because this is the Wallace Collection, the original 'Pompadour' by Boucher is hanging here, too, completely upstaged by Shirley Smith's garish stitching; when I finally noticed the familiar masterpiece, I burst out laughing, and saw it afresh – an achievement of the show. Perry has created Shirley Smith in the image of Madge Gill (1882-1961), the outsider artist, scribbler, weaver and mystic. Several of her drawings and textiles are displayed, illuminating but tangential. In fact, the whole show is a constellation of clever tangents and compelling ideas, volleying from AI to the rococo, from 'craftivism' to – in a virtue-signalling tapestry by Perry that is unappealing to look at, but makes another synaptic spark – the problems of patronage. Delusions of Grandeur digs into the feelings that the Wallace Collection evokes; Perry himself has a kinky engagement with the armour, hates the shiny Sèvres and can't keep a straight face when he looks at the miniatures, which he arranges into a family tree of psychiatric disorders. He has a lot of fun with it all, believing an artist's job is to 'bite the hand that feeds him, but not too hard'. The mood is mildly subversive, the social-warrior sting removed by the fact that Hertford House is bequeathed to the nation, and you can stroll in at any time, for free. 'I Know Who I Am', 2024, by Grayson Perry. © GRAYSON PERRY. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND VICTORIA MIRO Perry puts his spin on the weaponry here, creating 'A Gun For Shooting the Past', a gaudy neon fake blunderbuss that sits beside a real silver-enamelled flintlock. 'This gun is a talisman of power over our history,' he riffs. 'It has no power in the here-and-now, it cannot kill anyone. It is for settling scores with the past, it kills memories… For those of us who are still controlled by painful experiences at the hands of people in the past, perhaps several generations ago, this gun can deliver cleansing fire.' The woman next to me beamed at it, in on the psychotherapeutic language, or simply enjoying the conceit. This work will live on, I think, but there is no new masterpiece here, nothing you want to buy a postcard of. In fact, as noted, many of the works are ugly, failures of one sort or another. But it's a very stimulating show, the most cerebral fun I've had in a gallery for a long time. I was hoping for a more complete engagement with Shirley Smith's style, but the glimpse of the numinous power of outsider art dwindles like a candle next to Perry's electric light. The promise that we will see the interior of Shirley Smith's home does not come off, and instead we get more and more Grayson Perry showing through the patina of Smith. But Perry is, I suppose, what people have come for, and he has pulled off another coup here.
The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘World champion of appropriation' Grayson Perry says he isn't bothered by AI using his work
Grayson Perry has said he doesn't 'really mind' if his work is used to train AI models, adding that throughout his entire career he had been 'ripping off' others. Speaking at the Charleston literature festival, held on the grounds of Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant's former home, the artist jokingly referred to himself as 'the world champion of cultural appropriation'. 'I've never worried about if anyone wants to use my work in a lecture or whatever they want to do with it,' he said. Nor does he expect any money from those uses – partly because much of his work's value comes from it being 'physical' and 'often unique'. However, the Turner prize-winning artist added he is in 'a luxurious position, being well-known'. He said he's never tried asking AI to make an image in the style of Grayson Perry. 'Maybe I should ask that, that would be interesting,' he said. 'Maybe I'll get cross then, maybe I'll be immediately signing a letter.' The 65-year-old said he has been 'tinkering' with AI and his latest exhibition, Delusions of Grandeur at the Wallace Collection, includes AI-generated self-portraits. 'My experience of AI is that it's not that good yet, so don't worry,' he said, adding that he's 'not sure' if the models will ever become 'amazingly creative'. But he does think AI is 'going to do all the mediocre stuff' in the future. 'If you're a birthday card designer, you're fucked.' Perry said he had recently used an AI tool and prompted it to create simply 'an artwork'. The result showed a canvas that 'looked like someone had just put all the colours on there', he said. 'I thought it was the perfect metaphor for what the internet does. It smooshes everything together into a bland paste. It does that with all culture.' He said AI art 'went through this brilliant phase' when it tended to have a hallucinatory, 'surreal, nice, interesting' quality to it. Now, though, AI has become 'almost too good', the artist said, describing it as being like 'a very, very pedantic 14-year-old' that says: 'Look at me, I can do a very realistic drawing'! Perry also said he thinks 'narrative is the most potent form of human art' – which is why he creates characters for himself – Claire, Alan Measles and most recently his alter ego 'Shirley Smith', who features as the 'artist' behind his Wallace Collection works. He said he is 'a bit envious' of artists of the past who 'had religion' linked to 'stories that everybody understood', which they could reference in their work. Though he's 'not spiritual' he said he loves the idea of religion. 'Spirituality has a relationship to religion like creativity has a relationship to art,' he said, adding that in both cases he's more interested in something definite than 'vague thoughts' or 'fuzzy woo woo'.
NDTV
29-04-2025
- Business
- NDTV
Maharashtra Acquires Raghuji Bhonsle's Sword For Rs 47 Lakh At London Auction
Mumbai: The Maharashtra Government has acquired the famous "Raghuji Sword" of the 18th century Maratha general Raghuji Bhonsle for Rs 47.15 lakh at an auction in London, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Tuesday. Raje Raghuji Bhonsle, founder of the Bhonsle dynasty of Nagpur, had in 1745 led the battle against the Nawab of Bengal, D Fadnavis said on X. नागपूरच्या भोसले घराण्याचे संस्थापक राजे रघुजी भोसले यांची लंडनमध्ये लिलावात निघालेली ऐतिहासिक तलवार ही राज्य सरकारने खरेदी केली आहे, हे सांगताना मला आनंद होतो. त्यामुळे आपल्या मराठा साम्राज्यातील एक मौलिक आणि ऐतिहासिक ठेव आता महाराष्ट्रात येणार आहे. रघुजी भोसले हे छत्रपती शाहू… — Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) April 29, 2025 The sword was acquired not directly but through an intermediary due to some technical issues, the CM said. Sotheby's, which conducted the auction on Tuesday, said on its portal that the basket-hilt sword (khanda) was sold for 38,100 pounds. The estimate before the auction was between 6,000 and 8,000 pounds, it added. "The slightly curved, European-style single-edged blade with two fullers and imitation maker's marks towards the forte, the spine gold inlaid with Devanagari script, set in a traditional 'basket'-style hilt fully overlaid with worked gold, the grip covered in green woven wool," is how the global auction house described the sword. "The inscription in Devanagari script on the spine suggests that it was made for the Maratha general Raghuji Bhonsle (1739-55), who established a large kingdom centred on the city of Nagpur in the north of the Deccan," it said. "The long straight blade has been marked to appear European in origin. Indian imitations of European blades are in the Wallace Collection (inv. 1452, OA 1455, OA 1811 and OA 1873). Swords mounted with European blades made in centres including Solingen in Germany and in Venice and Genoa were known as firanghi (Frankish) and were sought after in Indian courts. "William Hawkins, travelling in India from 1608-13, reported that Jahangir had 2200 swords with German blades in his treasury (William Foster (ed.), Early Travels on India, 1583-1619, Oxford University Press, 1921, p.103)," it said. Raje Mudhoji Bhonsle of the Nagpur royal family congratulated and thanked the Maharashtra government for acquiring the sword. His representatives also took part in the bidding process on his behalf and had bid up to Rs 35 lakh, the member of the erstwhile royal family told the media. He had requested the state and central government to help with getting the sword back to the country, and chief minister D Fadnavis called him and assured that it will be brought back, Mr Bhonsle added. "I want to thank chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, culture minister Ashish Shelar and their entire team on behalf of Nagpur Bhonsle royal family. It is a proud moment that our heritage is coming back," he said.
The Print
29-04-2025
- General
- The Print
Maha Govt shells out Rs 47 lakh for ‘Raghuji Sword'
The sword was acquired not directly but through an intermediary due to some technical problems, the CM said. It is a historic sword belonging to Raje Raghuji Bhonsle, founder of the Bhonsle dynasty of Nagpur, who in 1745 led the battle against the Nawab of Bengal, Fadnavis said on X. Mumbai, Apr 29 (PTI) Maharashtra Government has acquired the famous 'Raghuji Sword' for Rs 47.15 lakh, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Tuesday. Sotheby's which conducted the auction on Tuesday, said on its portal that the basket-hilt sword (khanda) was sold for 38,100 pounds. The estimate before the auction was between 6,000 and 8,000 pounds, it added. 'The slightly curved, European-style single-edged blade with two fullers and imitation maker's marks towards the forte, the spine gold inlaid with Devanagari script, set in a traditional 'basket'-style hilt fully overlaid with worked gold, the grip covered in green woven wool,' is how the global auction house described the sword. 'The inscription in Devanagari script on the spine suggests that it was made for the Maratha general Raghuji Bhonsle (1739-55), who established a large kingdom centred on the city of Nagpur in the north of the Deccan,' it said. 'The long straight blade has been marked to appear European in origin. Indian imitations of European blades are in the Wallace Collection (inv. 1452, OA 1455, OA 1811 and OA 1873). Swords mounted with European blades made in centres including Solingen in Germany and in Venice and Genoa were known as firanghi (Frankish) and were sought after in Indian courts. 'William Hawkins, travelling in India from 1608-13, reported that Jahangir had 2200 swords with German blades in his treasury (William Foster (ed.), Early Travels on India, 1583-1619, Oxford University Press, 1921, p.103),' it said. PTI VT VT This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
