A sunny Parisian cafe inside a 19th century artist’s studio

This spring, the recently renovated Bourdelle Museum in the Montparnasse district of Paris opened a bright new café-restaurant, Le Rhodia, named after the daughter of French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. The understated daffodil yellow dining room occupies the second floor of a 19th-century artist’s studio where Rhodia Bourdelle and her husband, Art Deco interior designer Michel Dufet, once lived. “We wanted it to feel like walking into someone’s apartment,” says Marc-Antoine Servella, co-founder of Parisian architecture firm SAME, who oversaw the cafe’s design. He furnished Le Rhodia with a mix of mid-century flea market finds and custom pieces commissioned from French artisans in materials ranging from travertine to oak, while retaining some original details like a wood-burning stove and a large oculus (designed by Dufet in the spirit of the liner cabin decoration for which he was best known). Museum visitors can also dine alfresco on the mezzanine terrace next to a colonnade of watchful bronze busts. The menu offers refreshing food, with culinary references to Bourdelle’s hometown in southwestern France and a Latin American influence — a tribute, says French chef Jean-René Chassignol, to the dozens of students from Peru, Chile and Argentina who learned with Bourdelle. in these workshops. Leaning on the lighter side, dishes include a black bean puree with pickled beets and corn nuts, and seasonal vegetable empanadas. Pastries, such as the Rhodia brioche with orange blossom cream or the honey and thyme-infused Madeleine d’Antoine, are served throughout the day. instagram.com/lerhodia_bourdelle/.

Look at this

Juan Pablo Echeverri’s Self-Deprecating Portraits

When artist Juan Pablo Echeverri died at age 43 last year, he left behind more than 8,000 self-portraits taken in passport photo booths from around the world. What he had started as a journal of hair and piercings became a concept art project as Echeverri evolved as an artist. This summer, a grid assembled from some 400 of those photos will hang at the James Fuentes Gallery in Manhattan; another has been on view at Between Bridges, the nonprofit organization in Berlin run by Echeverri’s former employer, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, who helped curate both exhibitions.

Echeverri’s sudden death from malaria came just as his career was taking off, with a show in León, Mexico, and work in the collection of the former president of his native Colombia. But it would be a mistake to see the portraits as a grim memento mori. “I don’t want to overload the work,” says Tillmans, who prefers to see Echeverri as he was: shrewd, cerebral and self-deprecating. The title of the passport series, “Miss Photo Japan”, laces a joke about Colombia’s past failure to win the Miss Universe pageant with the name of a photo-processing chain. The exhibition in New York also includes “Clown Identity” (2017), a series of double portraits where the artist shares the lens with street clowns in Mexico City. First, Echeverri would take photos of them in full costume, then he would ask the clowns to recreate their gaze on him, a way of embodying his position. Tillmans says the photos show how much Echeverri empathized with the clowns: Both were performers, putting on visual performance and wearing masks. “Are they to be taken seriously? Obviously, they are laughing. in. It’s deep, but he played it lightly,” she says. “Lost Identity” is exhibited from June 7 to July 29, jamesfuentes.com.

Texas-based hotel group Bunkhouse, known for its intimate, community-oriented properties like the Saint Cecilia Hotel and the San José Hotel in Austin, has recently expanded with openings in Salado, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky and, most recently, Mexico City. The Hotel San Fernando is located in Condesa, the neighborhood known for its Art Deco architecture and sprawling jacaranda-fringed parks. Nineteen rooms now occupy the Edificio San Fernando, a 1940s apartment building whose jade ceramic floors and stained glass windows were preserved in a renovation by Bunkhouse and Mexico City architecture firm Reurbano. Plum arches line a sage green foyer, from which guests ascend a spiral staircase to reach the rooms. Most of the furnishings were made in Mexico, including plywood furniture from design studio La Metropolitana, red lamps with opaque hand-blown glass shades from Oaxaca studio Oaxifornia, and works by local artists such as Pedro Friedeberg and Ricardo Guevara. Guests can enjoy rooftop dining, with pastries like vanilla shells for breakfast and small plates including tostadas and aguachile starting at noon. Hotel San Fernando opens on June 1; rooms from $215, bunkhousehotels.com.

covet this

Cartier revives its collection inspired by coffee

Cartier designers have a habit of creating precious jewelry from everyday objects. The Juste Un Clou collection transforms a construction nail into diamond-encrusted cuffs and collars, while the Cactus de Cartier, an array of pointed domes, imagines the desert plant as a cocktail ring. The Grain de Café collection continues this trend, using coffee beans as inspiration for bracelets, earrings, rings, necklaces and brooches. Created by the house’s manager, Jeanne Toussaint, java-themed charms first appeared in the house’s designs in 1938. Prince Rainier III presented Grace Kelly with a coffee set for her wedding in 1956, and her necklace, studded with small golden bean pendants, served as a reference for the new designs. This June, the company introduces six new pieces to the collection, from a rope-style chain strung with five clustered beans to a two-tone ring with dangling beans dotted with diamonds. They are all designed to move slightly, emitting an energizing jingle. From $7,250, cartier.es.

French ceramicist Ludmilla Balkis first began molding clay into pots, bottles, and bowls as a way of leaving her old fashion life behind. Inspired by the delicate work of British sculptor Lucie Rie, she wanted to find a free natural creative rhythm. of the directive to produce on a fixed schedule. Balkis had trained as a fashion designer, working with Phoebe Philo at Celine in London; She began making pottery in 2015. Her paper-thin structures, sculpted from reddish-brown clay she collects from the French coast and mixes with sand for a rougher texture, defy the force of gravity and threaten to topple over. Items she finds on long nature walks in the French Basque Country, where she has a studio, are often incorporated into the pieces. In his latest exhibition, “Stasis,” which will be on view starting next week at the Roman and Williams’s Guild Gallery in New York, a white sanded stoneware basin is imprinted with twigs, while a trio of lantern-shaped vessels have unfinished edges flecked with dry wood ash. “In a way, the movements and techniques (between ceramics and fashion) are similar,” says Balkis. “Covering a mannequin with fabric involves pulling and holding the material to create a three-dimensional design. In ceramics, intuitively I repeat that process: I am creating around an empty space, but I work in it as if it were an imaginary body”. “Stasis” can be seen from June 9 to July 15, rwguildgalleryny.com.

wear this

Danielle Frankel Floral Jewelry

Bridal designer Danielle Frankel Hirsch has previously designed collections of pearl jewelry to accompany the halter-neck silk blouses and tulle gowns she creates for her label, Danielle Frankel. But as part of her mission to shift wedding traditions in new directions, Frankel Hirsch chose a less expected medium for her latest accessories. “I started with the question ‘If we could mold flowers (in clay), what would that look like?’” she says. She started looking for references and found wilted flower images which were originally printed on cigarette cards and had been digitized as part of the George Arents Collection at the New York Public Library. He then discovered a Ukraine-based artisan whose specialty is creating realistic floral sculptures, using clay molded on a wire frame. Frankel Hirsch now sells a variety of flowers, including lavender anemone and pink magnolia earrings, and lily and rose brooches. She hopes brides will appreciate that each design is slightly different from the next and, unlike a bouquet, can be kept forever. From $1,250, daniellefrankelstudio.com.

From T’s Instagram

T Menagerie: an artist and her dove