London will soon be able to lay claim to the world’s largest living wall, Rick Stein and Designers Guild have teamed up on a one-of-a-kind shepherd’s hut and a rather unique-looking Bernini sculpture pops up in Amsterdam.
The Great British hut makeover
One of Rick Stein’s Cornish shepherd’s huts has been given a new lease of life by Designers Guild. The collaboration is to celebrate 50 and 55 years of the Rick Stein Group and the British interiors firm, respectively.
Would-be holidaymakers will find the shepherd’s hut in the grounds of Stein’s Cornish Arms pub in St Merryn, near Padstow. There’s a cosy living area, kitchenette, double bed and ensuite shower room — plus under floor heating.
Designer’s Guild — whose flagship store sits pretty on Chelsea’s King’s Road — is famous for its colourful and botanic-inspired fabrics and prints. True to form, they’ve used a luxurious Rose de Damas linen, Foret Impressionniste-print bedding and hand-painted roses inside the hut, and incorporated plenty of additional texture with velvet and bouclé upholstery.
And if that wasn’t enough, Stein is reintroducing his 1975 menus and prices to match
The limited edition offer, available across five of the Group’s restaurants on select bookings, will see grilled lobster with butter reduced to £2.80.
Participating restaurants are: Rick Stein Barnes, Winchester, Marlborough, Sandbanks and the original Seafood Restaurant in Padstow.
Diners hungry for insane prices will need to make a lunch reservation for between February 6 and February 9. Booking goes live at 10am on January 24 (tomorrow).
Bookings are now open for stays from February 6 onwards, from £170 a night. Visit the Rick Stein website to book and make sure you read our own guide to North Cornwall for more information on the local area.
Off the wall
A Brent-based data centre was ‘surprised’ to find out that their living wall — which was granted planning permission towards the end of last year — will be the biggest in the world when construction finishes in 2028.
According to plans, Pure Data Centres’ (Pure DC) new building — which will be used to store data, software and applications — will be encased in its own shell-like structure, supporting 750,000 individual native plants, covering a total of 7,400 square metres of space.
The world record for largest living wall is currently held by Khalifa Avenue in Qatar. It measures 7,000 square metres.
Once operational, the living, breathing masterpiece will store carbon, support insect populations and, most importantly, absorb air pollutants from the surrounding area — equivalent to removing approximately 13,400 cars from the neighbouring North Circular. Plants that have these extraordinary abilities and can cope with already high pollution levels number bergenia, euphorbia, rosmarinus and geraniums among their ranks.
Quiz of the day
1) Nephology is the study of what?
2) Which 1960s singer was born Sandra Goodrich?
3) What activity takes place in a natatorium?
4) A black velvet is made by mixing stout with what?
5) Which Prime Minister followed Sir Winston Churchill’s first term?
Chiseled to perfection
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has announced the arrival of a 72-centimeter-tall sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) — the only work by the world-famous Baroque sculptor in the Netherlands.
The terracotta study model — of a scowling Triton — was commissioned by the then Pope for the Fontana del Moro, still standing in Rome’s Piazza Navona. Triton was a minor Greek sea god and the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite whom he lived with in a golden palace on the ocean floor.
Though typically depicted with a human upper body and fish-like lower one (in Roman and Greek time, Triton was a generic term for a merman in art and literature), Bernini chose to gift him human legs with which to stamp on some kind of sea monster.
The Greek deity was a familiar subject of Bernini. Other model sculptures exist and his Neptune and Triton, carved between 1622 and 1623 and originally the centrepiece to a complex Roman water feature, is on display at The V&A.
The Rijksmuseum Triton is on loan from a private individual whose direct ancestors include Cardinal Flavio Chigi, the Pope’s representative and someone who would have had direct contact with the artist.
That’s all for today — we’re back tomorrow.
Quiz answers
1) Clouds
2) Sandie Shaw
3) Swimming
4) Champagne (or sparkling wine)
5) Clement Atlee
