Jaime Gillin

Articles and Essays

Art & Culture

Open Estate

In this Brussels mansion, nothing has a price tag, but almost everything is for sale. Here, two design experts curate their fantasy house. In 2010, Ike Udechuku and Kathryn Smith moved into a neoclassical house in the Saint-Gilles district and set out to create what Udechuku calls “a gallery of the living experience.” Several times …

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Mix Master

Both a gallery and a residence, an Antwerp home redefines the boundaries between public and private, art and interior design. Veerle Wenes has always been interested in hybrid creations, in the blending of disciplines. When she was invited in 2009 to cocurate an exhibition at Belgium’s Musée des Arts Contemporains, she opted to display “very …

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Consumer Retorts

Chris Houston, the charmingly curmudgeonly owner of Modern Artifacts in San Francisco, is not your typical retailer. Though his shop is packed to the rafters with an eclectic and highly covetable range of vintage furniture, lighting, art, and craft, Houston takes a slow and thoughtful approach to retail and commerce. At his workshop in the …

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Old Ways, New Path

On a wooden platform in the middle of the village, dozens of young women gather, dressed in intricately embroidered aprons and jackets—the traditional costume of the Dong, one of the many ethnic minority groups of southwestern China. Nearby, a large group of villagers huddles around a bonfire. Everyone in Dimen, this tiny town about 400 …

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Splendor in the Grass

The San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, or Sparc, is not your average pot club. There’s no peephole or scary-looking security guy, no skunky couches or blackened windows. Instead, a collegiate “community liaison” stands by the door answering questions from passers-by and checking membership cards and paperwork. (There’s no fee to join, but you need …

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