Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday, along with monthly travel and beauty guides, and the latest stories from our print issues. And you can always reach us at tmagazine@nytimes.com. STAY HERE A Hotel in the Dolomites With 11th-Century Frescoes and Strudel Cocktails
Atop a hill in the ancient Dolomite village of San Lorenzo di Sebato, Italy, is a building that’s taken on various identities over the centuries. Initially a Benedictine convent, it served as a military hospital and eventually became a hotel. Now, following a six-year renovation, it’s been reborn as the serene Castel Badia, a 28-room retreat with a stand-alone two-bedroom chalet in the convent’s former bakery. Architects preserved the property’s Gothic vaulted ceilings, Romanesque mullioned windows and crypt and chapels whose walls are covered in 11th- and 12th-century frescoes and oil paintings. Earth-toned rooms feature traditional loden wool fabrics, skylights and deep soaking tubs. The spa’s thermal baths, steam rooms and saunas will be especially appealing to those who ski the 120 miles of piste on the neighboring Kronplatz mountain, whose lift is a five-minute drive from the property. Treatments use herbs like arnica, hypericum and sage from the apothecary garden. The restaurant is a warren of wood-paneled stuben, or traditional South Tyrolean farmhouse living areas, with inlaid ceilings and antique tiled stoves. The chef Alberto Toè, who is from Treviso and most recently cooked at Milan’s Horto restaurant, revives ancestral recipes like fish broth tortelli alongside new inventions like nettle-kombucha ravioli and strudel cocktails, fortified with apple, butter and raisin-infused rum. From $580 a night, castelbadia.com. COVET THIS A Glossy Tea Set From a Parisian Editor
The French publication Tools magazine celebrates a single form of craftsmanship with each issue, bringing together commonplace examples (hair braiding in To Weave) with archival research (Frisbee patents in To Spin) and in-depth features on traditional artisanship (lapidary work in To Cut). This year, its founder, Clémentine Berry, is launching a parallel venture, called Tools Editions, which will produce related home objects and publish books. In collaboration with the Paris-based ceramist Virginie Mercier, Berry created a limited-edition golden yellow tea set inspired by the ceramics that filled the magazine’s inaugural issue, To Mold. Comprising dainty cups with large, rounded saucers; bowls raised up on marble-shaped feet; and a clean-lined pitcher and tall vase, the set is a re-edition of one created by Berry’s father-in-law, François Bauchet, a French designer best known for his work in contemporary furniture and industrial design. He conceived of this minimalist glazed earthenware ensemble in 1999, in response to an invitation from the French Ministry of Culture, and had it produced in Vallauris, the artist town next to Antibes that was a particularly vibrant hub for potters in the mid-20th century. When Berry first encountered the original at Bauchet’s home — one of only 10 sets that had been made at the time — she loved the way its blocky outlines highlighted rather than concealed the marks left behind by the mold. “I was interested in the way he traced the joints of each object, drawing attention to these places,” she says. “That’s going to be the theme of the objects we produce. You’ll be able to get a sense of the tool that shaped them.” This collection took three years to get just right, involving a chemist who worked for months to approximate the vivid lead-enhanced glow of the ’90s-era enamel and a porcelain artisan near Limoges who fashioned new, highly precise molds. They’ve now been used to cast 50 tea sets and will likely withstand the production of only another 50. “After that, it’s enough,” says Berry. From about $48 for individual pieces and about $1,180 for the complete 14-piece collection, tools-inc.com. EAT THIS Sticky Toffee Pudding Takes New Forms
Sticky toffee pudding, a supple date cake soaked in a buttery brown sugar sauce and served warm alongside a dollop of dairy, has been a British mainstay for over half a century. Now, chefs in the United States and Britain are reinterpreting its nostalgic pleasures. The chef Patty Lee of Lei, a cozy wine bar and restaurant that opened last year in New York City’s Chinatown, first tried the dessert at a friend’s house in Ireland. “I’d seen it before and wasn’t very attracted to it,” she recalls. “Very grandpa.” But tasting the combination of chewy sponge, not-too-sweet toffee and ice cream changed her mind. At Lei, Lee transforms eight-treasure rice, a quintessential Chinese New Year dessert she grew up eating, into her own version of the confection, swapping date sponge for a mix of sticky purple rice, white beans, black sugar and a seasonally shifting array of fruits that are molded together, steamed to order and finished tableside with a dark, glossy toffee sauce crowned with an orb of ice cream. “We didn’t expect to run it all year,” Lee says. “But some days it was the most popular thing.” At Lord’s, an English bistro in Greenwich Village, the dessert takes the form of brown sugar cream cheese ice cream swirled with repurposed edge pieces of sticky toffee pudding from its sister restaurant Dame. In Ojai, Calif., the chef Maeve McAuliffe of Rory’s Place makes a seasonal persimmon version in homage to autumn, grating the fresh fruit into the cake batter and topping the dish with florets of persimmon and candied hoshigaki. Even in its place of origin, the dessert is being reimagined: At Henri, a Parisian bistro in London’s Covent Garden, the chef Jackson Boxer serves sticky toffee madeleines glazed with miso-spiked toffee alongside roasted-vanilla ice cream. WEAR THIS Evil Eye Jewelry for Protection in the New Year
This year, ward off negativity with fine jewelry that features the protective evil eye motif in modern forms. The Greek jeweler Ileana Makri, who founded her namesake Athens-based brand in 1996, often returns to the symbol in her work; her Leda bracelet, made with sapphires and black and white diamonds, offers a subtle, everyday interpretation. Another Athens designer, Lito Karakostanoglou, approaches the motif through her Tu Es Partout collection: pupils and irises are hand-painted on enamel and framed with gold and diamonds to create all-seeing amulets. In Edinburgh, Grainne Morton incorporates the eye into several pieces, including her Glove and Face Charm earrings, which combine antique glass, vintage rhinestones and colorful gems in a long, sculptural silhouette. The New York designer Kim Dunham’s Brutus ring, a solid yellow gold signet with a .5-carat marquise diamond, is named after her late dog and loyal protector. Ron Anderson and David Rees, the New York-based designers of the label Ten Thousand Things, offer their hand-carved eye charm in 13 stone variations, including jade, tiger’s-eye, crystal and rose quartz, each one with a suspended bead in a contrasting color. In Brooklyn, the Octave Jewelry designer Ope Omojola makes her Seeing Stone studs by slicing into stone with naturally occurring color differentiation, such as this polka-dot agate from central Oregon, which she then sets in 14-karat gold. And Francesca Villa, whose atelier is in Northern Italy, recently released the Blue Eyes ring, made from handblown antique glass eye beads that were traded by European explorers as early as the 15th century. VISIT THIS A Miami Shop That Pairs Colorful Clothes With Whimsical Design Objects
The Los Angeles fashion brand Simon Miller is known for its bold, playful designs — recent examples include red-and-blue striped poplin pants and a crocheted handbag shaped like a pair of bananas. That colorful sensibility has translated into its store openings, first in L.A.’s Arts District and most recently in Miami’s gallery-dotted Little River neighborhood. For the company’s CEO and creative director, Chelsea Hansford, who was born in Florida, it’s something of a homecoming. “A lot of the brand’s DNA has its roots in a bold tropical spirit,” she says. The Miami location is made up of two casitas connected by a tropical garden. The building customers first enter has bright yellow interiors and one wall adorned with an oversized fuchsia flower by the San Miguel de Allende, Mexico-based design studio Mestiz. The fitting rooms feature handwoven light fixtures made from elephant grass by the Ghana-based studio Twenty One Tonnes. The second casita opens onto an accessories salon inspired by a 1970s Italian disco, complete with arched blue walls, a circular sofa upholstered in blue Kvadrat fabric and a red and orange chandelier by Verner Panton. The shop doubles as a design showroom, with some furniture available for purchase. simonmillerusa.com. SEE THIS 100 Artists Consider the Candleholder at California’s Blunk Space Gallery
The newest exhibition at the Point Reyes Station, Calif., gallery Blunk Space began with a freewheeling brief to 100 artists: Create, in a year’s time, a candleholder in response to the work of the multidisciplinary artist JB Blunk or to Blunk House, his longtime home in Inverness, which he built using salvaged materials. Next Saturday, the gallery will display the resulting creations, including candlesticks, candelabras and sconces. The exhibit is part of a series in which artists are invited to interpret an object from Blunk’s oeuvre: In 2023, Blunk Space mounted “100 Hooks.” “Every time a shipment was delivered, it was like Christmas,” says Mariah Nielson, Blunk’s daughter and the director of the JB Blunk estate and Blunk Space. Some of her favorites include Ian Collings’s holder carved from blue quartzite, Joel Tomlin’s piece made of salvaged wood and Marina Contro’s handwoven linen candlestick. Two of Blunk’s ceramic candleholders will also be on display. Tabletop works will be arranged on a long wooden pedestal that was custom-made by Nielson’s husband, the designer Max Frommeld (who also made a candleholder for the show), which will be draped with a heavy off-white linen cloth to suggest a dinner party setting. Many of the candleholders will be presented with beeswax candles “made by Franciscan monks in California,” says Nielson. “If a piece sells, I’ll include four or five candles.” “100 Candleholders” will be on view at Blunk Space from Jan. 17 through March 28, blunkspace.com. FROM T’S INSTAGRAM The Small Parisian Shop That’s Become a Retail Phenomenon
The Parisian designer Lauren Rubinski calls her new store, Rubirosa’s, “a candy shop for adults.” Inside the 450-square-foot boutique on the Left Bank’s Rue de Grenelle, the custom-made, ebony-veneered shelves are stacked with plush cashmere sweaters in 15 colors and neatly folded cotton poplin shirts, pajamas and boxer shorts in more than 35 vivid hues, from soft mint to deep crimson. Rubinski considers her debut collection a much-needed antidote to the prevailing pared-down, neutral look. With Rubirosa’s, she says, her goal was “to bring back the small shop, the kind you used to find when you traveled in Italy or France, where you would say, ‘It’s on the little street to the left, then to the right, and inside they have the best of everything.’ ” Click here to take a full tour of the new shop and follow us on Instagram.
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