Attractions and Accessories for the Tennis Obsessed

29.08.2024 - 11:06 / nytimes.com

Clarksville, a historic district of Austin, Texas, has lately emerged as a stylish dining and shopping enclave. Among the area’s most compelling new businesses is La Embajada, a design shop housed in a 1923 Craftsman bungalow. Combining the hospitality and interiors expertise of its founder, Raul Cabra — who has designed tableware for some of Mexico City’s most celebrated restaurants, including Rosetta and Pujol — La Embajada presents a refined, regionally diverse selection of Mexico’s artisanal offerings. A series of small rooms display vintage and contemporary furniture, from stately midcentury armchairs and 1970s glass sconces to a minimalist agave fiber rug by the Oaxaca-based textile artist Trine Ellitsgaard. The house is also an actual residence. Cabra often stays in the bedroom up the creaky stairs, and he’s recently made it available for short-term stays (bookings include a daily basket of baked goods from Austin’s Swedish Hill). Guests can purchase the room’s handmade décor, such as a pair of sleek bedside lamps in milky white onyx, a 1960s La Malinche dresser and a bedspread from a Michoacan manufacturer that once supplied Herman Miller. Downstairs, glassware, candles and gifts fill a section modeled after a typical general store in a small Mexican town. But La Embajada’s heart is its inviting kitchen, where visiting chefs cook elaborate meals and staff prepare ice cream and coffee. In another twist, every bespoke detail — including a hammered copper sink, caramel-colored tiles and waxed pine cabinets — can be custom-ordered for one’s own home.

Tennis, everyone? The starchy sport, long the province of country clubs and corporate sponsors, has inspired a whole new creative class. Palmes, an online magazine that sells a streetwear version of the sport’s classic togs, is also a burgeoning community that aims “to break down the barriers to tennis,” says founder Nikolaj Hansson, with outreach such as free hitting sessions and lessons around the world. Tennis Club Milano Alberto Bonacossa in Italy’s design capital — featured in a new art book-travelogue “The Tennis Court, A Journey to Discover the World’s Greatest Tennis Courts,” by Nick Pachelli — dates back to the late 19th century but now doubles as a venue for opera, gallery openings and book signings. The Courts, a funky little public oasis in the California desert, also functions as a design studio. Fashion labels MCM and J. Lindeberg have incorporated the sport into their collections in the form of logoed racket bags and Borgian headbands. And the first New York solo show of the 75-year-old Scottish tapestry weaver Elizabeth Radcliffe will debut during this year’s US Open, at the Margot Samel gallery in TriBeCa (Sept. 6 through Oct. 12).