Design with a voice

Katie Eary is a new designer with guts and gusto. Her work is demure, crafted and of true statement and strong intentions. Graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2008, Eary rose to the top of her clas...

The songbirds of China

The 1930s Shanghai’s Jazz scene rivalled those of Paris or New York  but it was the female vocalists who defined the era. Glass speaks to two living legends. In 1934, jazz composer and pianist Duke Ellingto...

A bohemian apogee

Charlie Boyer and the Voyeurs emphatically wear their fuzz and glam influences upon their ruffled sleeves. Though to critique their stompy sonic platter this way would be pretty obtuse. Yes, début album, Cl...

ClerkenWell designed

Now in its fourth year, Clerkenwell Design Week is bigger and better than ever and is stamping itself into the annual calendar as a major international festival of design. Clerkenwell is purported to have E...

Rethinking China

“Study the past if you would define the future” – Confucius (551 – 479 BC) Modern China adores education. Learning for Chinese students constitutes an immemorial praxis of the highest cultural value. ...

Precious perfumery

About 100 years ago, it was perceived to be a scandal to wear perfume directly on the skin rather than on one’s clothes. In the same way that latex was until very recently seen as a fetish fabric, so perfume ...

Chen Man

What images does the city called Beijing call forth in our minds? Perhaps we would see the grandeur of the Forbidden City, or the sleek modernity of the CCTV headquarters. Maybe old memories of the hutongs ...

Portrait of a woman

Charlotte Rampling is one of fashion and cinema’s most enduring icons, immortalised by Helmut Newton, muse to Yohji Yamamoto, revered by legions of creative greats. Glass spends a day in Paris with a living l...

Design emerged

“We do not to have a signature but rather a handwriting. We like to tell stories in different ways.” This is how Meadham Kirchhoff have described their style. That the French-English designer duo do things th...

Hanoi joy

It’s a warm night in Hanoi and we’re eating coconut ice-cream on the steps of the opera house, watching people stream through the old building’s gates after a performance by the Vietnam National Symphony Or...

(Extra)ordinary Yung Ho Chang

According to Philip Tinari, a leading curator of art and architecture in China, Yung Ho Chang can be referred to as “a pioneer of contemporary Chinese architecture“. This epithet refers to the historical sign...

The actress

Olga Kurylenko has achieved the impossible. She has successfully established a serious acting career after achieving the mixed blessing of starring as a Bond girl in 2008’s Quantum of Solace. The question o...

Role model

Let’s be honest, model interviews are not usually terribly interesting. Cheekbones, acting ambitions and frivolities aside, there is often little else to talk about. Coco Rocha, however, is exceptional in m...

Old fashion

Call me old-fashioned, but Midcentury Modern is my favourite date in the London Design calendar. Held at Dulwich College in South London, the fair celebrates classic and future classics in furniture and items...

In fine feather

For birds, feathers serve three main functions, to fly, keep warm and to attract their partners. But for Kate MccGwire they serve a very different function – art. Since her graduation from the Royal College o...

Greats of grace

Clement Crisp, ballet critic for the Financial Times for over 40 years, talks to Glass about man’s most graceful form of expression and names the world’s greatest living ballerinas. From his London home, wher...

Great blazes

Coates and Scarry, as a gallery and as a team, is a labour of love. “Did you know that Chippy is my life-partner?”  Richard Scarry asks. He is sitting in the sunny Bristol apartment he shares with his partner...