Ever the trendsetters
Financial Times | 27 Mar 2004
Mattia Bonetti and David Gillare are preparing to show a new collection of furniture in New York and London. Caroline Phillips takes a peek.
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“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
Mattia Bonetti and David Gillare are preparing to show a new collection of furniture in New York and London. Caroline Phillips takes a peek.
For Sarah Stitt, 36, work is therapy. She had a miscarriage in 1994 and coped with her bereavement by painting a series of pregnant women, some with angels above. A year later, she became pregnant. But just five days after the birth, she was back in her studio, “hormonally insane” and painting to prevent herself going mad.
She first “found salvation in art” when she was at St Martins , aged 19. “I drank and drugged excessively,” recalls Stitt. “My rebellious youth ended with a nervous breakdown and painting was the only thing that helped me.” In 1993, she suffered a second breakdown. “I was severely depressed, suicidal and confronting the demons of my past.” So she “paid with paintings” for inpatient treatment in a therapy clinic on the Greek island of Skiathos.
In 1982, the late Geoffrey Ward had a plumbing installation company. Camden Council insisted that he could not run his business from retail premises – without a window display, he could no longer be classified as a shop and would have to close.
Mr Ward had a zany designer radiator that he had imported for fun. He put it into the window of his Kilburn premises. People started asking to buy it – those were the days of the ubiquitous white panel radiator – so Mr. Ward decided to change jobs. He started to import sculptural radiators.
The former debt collector has some extraordinary kit in his kitchen. A rotavapor machine that distills natural essences, a water and oil bath, a canister containing liquid nitrogen and a gleaming machine that turns purees into edible shaving foam. There’s a desiccator and pump to suck moisture out of chips, test tubes, overhead stirrers, mini filtration units and magnetic mixers. And now he falls delightedly upon Fishers laboratory catalogue. “Heat pads! You put them in a beaker of water with magnets underneath and it keeps it stirred. Can you see the vortex it’s creating?” he asks ecstatically.
Top chef Rowley Leigh starts his FT cookery column this week and tells Caroline Phillips about his robust, refined style.
Niall MacArthur, the founder of Eat, tells Caroline Phillips about his ambitions to expand his 26-strong chain beyond its base in London.
Caroline Phillips meets Heston Blumenthal, the Willy Wonka of modern British cooking, and samples his distinctive brand of innovative and investigative cuisine.
The designer turned novelist tells how real life has inspired her first foray into fiction. Bella Pollen, once an internationally known fashion designer trading under the name Arabella Pollen, has just published her first novel, All About Men.
After three failed marriages, the time has arrived for Sian Phillips to dote on her cats.
For Joan Bakewell, it has been The Unmentionable. Ever since it was “exposed”, the broadcaster has refused staunchly to discuss her seven-year affair with playwright Harold Pinter.
Richard Ingrams, former editor of Private Eye, looks away as he shakes my hand. He’s imposingly tall and wearing his habitual cords, a jumper full of holes and undone laces.
The poster outside the Brighton theatre shows a tough, tight-lipped guy: Dennis Waterman playing an ex-con in the new thriller, Killing Time. The real Dennis stands in front of his image reading a review, wearing shades, loud check shirt and gold medallions. Dennis in this incarnation is lean and taut with a knuckle-crushing handshake.
As we stepped off the Dodekanisos Pride ferry onto the Greek island of Symi for our late August beach holiday, our thoughts were on sunbathing…
Welcome to Brent — once called the drive-by-shooting capital of the UK. Before that it was the People’s Republic of Brent, ravaged by poverty and…
People say one of two things when I tell them I’m going to Bhutan. Either: “Where the hell’s that?” Or: “oooh, you’re so lucky, I’ve…