Does your phone really need a strap? Or perhaps you do — at least that is what some of the reviews on the String Ting website say. “Makes me happy every time I see it,” one buyer wrote, of the Heavenly Sky, a phone strap featuring blue beads mixed with miniature puffy white clouds. And:…
When Muchi Gubwe was a fledgling hotel concierge in Cape Town, he would often refer to his seasoned colleagues as “moving encyclopedias.” “Forget Google,” Mr. Gubwe, now the head concierge at the Mount Nelson, a Belmond hotel in the city’s Gardens neighborhood, said on a video call last month. “These are the people you need…
Under a set of railway arches in the Haggerston neighborhood of East London, a pack of clay dogs was ready to be brought to life. A Boston terrier and a cockapoo were among the pack, the work of the ceramist Alice Johnson, who makes bespoke sculptures of people’s beloved animals through her business, Pottery Pets.…
There is a low buzz of banter and machinery in the workshop of George Horn Ltd., a family-run glove-making business in a converted woolen mill in the Stoneybatter area of central Dublin. A seamstress bends her head down in concentration over a whirring vintage Singer piqué machine, giving a glove its distinctive but delicate exterior…
Hatchards, the historic bow-front bookshop on London’s Piccadilly, wants to bring “back under people’s noses books that they should, they should read,” said Francis Cleverdon, the shop’s general manager. So, “what we are doing is we are republishing things, books that we love,” he said during a recent interview in an upstairs office. On the…
A favorite gift can be as practical as a new laptop or as profound as an introduction to one’s heritage. So, The Times asked six men and women with creative backgrounds from around the world to describe in emails the presents that have delighted them the most. (Their replies were edited for length and clarity.)…
A government shutdown won’t be disrupting travel plans this Thanksgiving after Congress agreed on Wednesday to a funding package that lasts through early next year. But clouds and crowds might make your trip a slog anyway. The Transportation Security Administration expects about 30 million passengers to fly between this Friday and the Tuesday after Thanksgiving,…
Thanks to Asprey, Britain and Japan now share something more than their love for tea. In October the British luxury retailer unveiled the Hikihaku Matchbox, a limited-edition jeweled clutch bag created with Japan’s traditional Hikihaku weaving technique. John Rigas, Asprey’s chairman since 2006, wrote in an email that the clutch’s boxy shape and name were…
Frankincense has a long history in gift giving, all the way back to the pharaohs of Egypt, Alexander the Great and at least one of those three wise men at the manger. Today, Muslims commonly exchange chunks of the resin at Ramadan meals breaking the daily fast, and its sweet and musky fragrance permeates many…
And in 2014, the comments section became the target of a harassment campaign. Jessica Coen: We were getting flooded in the comments with violent GIFs, really nasty pornographic stuff. We flagged it to management multiple times, and we were essentially greeted with a collective shrug. Madeleine Davies: To get the company to respond, we had…