These Vessels Are Meant to Deceive

19.10.2023 - 22:53 / nytimes.com / Art Nouveau / Calvin Klein

The London-born, downtown Manhattan-based designer and art director Anna Karlin has always embraced a bit of creative tension. “I always just think everything is possible and I figure it out,” she says, having entered the interiors world as a self-taught product designer 11 years ago. Today, Karlin releases a new furniture and lighting collection that is a study in contrasts rather than bound by an overarching theme. Among nine new lighting series, the Mulberry set, made from sinuous oak bentwood and delicate horn-shaped silk shades, is evocative of Art Nouveau, while the Field headboard, upholstered in an abstract floral-patterned crewel embroidery, is a nod to Arts and Crafts. Other designs include wrought-iron chairs, lanterns made from ecru-hued fiberglass and colored marble side tables. A totemic bar cabinet, inspired by massive 18th-century Swedish wood stoves called , is clad in ceramic tiles adorned with glyphlike shapes that are a recurring motif in her work. Each piece revisits Karlin’s previous designs while experimenting with scale and material. “I’m really beginning to solidify my language,” says Karlin, who developed the collection over the past three years. “My alphabet is there, I just get to keep making new words.”

To transform a 1950s San Antonio motel into an upscale hideaway, the hotelier Jayson Seidman relocated the building’s front doors. Instead of its original entrance facing Broadway (a busy six-lane highway known for its car dealerships), the reimagined 26-room Ranch Motel, which reopened on Oct. 15, now looks toward Brackenridge Park, the city’s 343-acre green lung.

Seidman, who has developed hotels like Thunderbird Marfa and the Columns in New Orleans, wanted Ranch Motel to feel like a natural extension of Brackenridge’s soothing tranquillity. He opted for D’Hanis terra-cotta bricks, historically used in many San Antonio building projects, and preserved the original scalloped edges of desk nooks, arch ceilings and tile work. Rooms are furnished with midcentury chairs from the local vintage dealer Period Modern, low-lying beds and Mexico Lindo’s wood furniture fashioned out of old hacienda doors and shutters. The former parking lot is now a garden planted with jasmine, bamboo and succulents, and what was previously a playground has been leveled for pickleball courts. A large deck surrounds a modernist pool, big enough to accommodate 24 lounge chairs. Locals can purchase a membership to get regular access to the hotel’s outdoor spaces, as well as various indoor lounges, and day passes are available for $60 per person.

When Francisco Costa, the former creative director of Calvin Klein, visited the brand’s fashion archives three years ago, he recalls feeling a mix of sadness