The T List: Six things we recommend this week

A California hot spring retreat, ginger ale from a beloved Japanese restaurant — and more.

View in browser|nytimes.com November 27, 2024 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 New Guesthouse Filled With Danish Design in Todos Santos, Mexico Left: the property's primary bedroom outfitted with Vipp lighting and furniture. It features sliding window shutters woven from branches of the local Palo de Arco tree. Right: the roof terrace set with pieces from Vipp's outdoor collection. Anders Hviid By Natalia Rachlin The Danish brand Vipp was founded in 1939 with a single design: a waste bin. In the decades since, its product line has expanded to include a full furniture range, lighting and home accessories. In 2014, Vipp opened its first guesthouse, a contemporary prefab cabin near Lake Immeln, in southern Sweden. It now runs nine vacation rentals in Europe and, as of today, is taking reservations for its first in North America, a five-bedroom home in Todos Santos on the Pacific Coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula. Sofie Christensen Egelund, the third generation co-owner of Vipp, was introduced to the region by the Mexico City-based architect Pablo Pérez Palacios, who's behind the property's design. The 3,800-square-foot home has a rooftop pool and open interiors that highlight natural materials: The walls are made of rammed earth, while window shutters are woven from branches of the local Palo de Arco tree. Furnishings include some of Vipp's own pieces as well as the brand's signature kitchen, a modular system with minimalist hardware. Pérez Palacios sees the final space as "an ongoing dialogue between Mexican and Danish design sensibilities." From $2,500 a night, vipp.com. TRY THIS Skin Care From a Japanese Sake Maker Sake lees, a byproduct of the sake making process, are a key ingredient in Dassai's moisturizing lotion (left), which is available at the Dassai brewery and tasting room in Hyde Park, N.Y. (right). Courtesy of Dassai By Mahira Rivers Sake brewers in Japan are said to have especially smooth, baby-soft hands from years of dipping them into vats of fermented rice wine. This stems from the fact that sake lees, a byproduct of the sake making process, are full of amino acids and are believed to have moisturizing properties. These lees, also known as sake kasu, are a familiar ingredient in Japan and are repurposed into everything from marinades to fortifying sipping broths. This spirit of no waste, or mottainai in Japanese, is also behind a line of sake kasu beauty products created by Dassai, a premium sake brand from Yamaguchi, Japan, best known for its junmai daiginjo sake, which is made from Yamada Nishiki rice polished down to at least 50 percent of its original size. In 2020, the company launched Dassai Beauty, which now includes a moisturizing lotion, face mask and bar soap enriched with sake kasu. "To use our byproducts in this way helps to reinforce our brand's commitment to sustainability," says Kenzo Shimotori, president of Dassai USA. It's also consistent with the brand's effort to reach American consumers. Dassai recently inaugurated a 55,000-square-foot brewery and tasting room in Hyde Park, N.Y., where the skin care is available to purchase. From $5 for bar soap, dassai.com. SEE THIS The Italian Designer Repurposing Car Parts and Stone Slabs to Create Furniture An installation view of the Italian designer Enrico Marone Cinzano's Piego chairs in his "Obsessed by Nature" exhibition at the Friedman Benda gallery in New York. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Enrico Marone Cinzano. Photo: Izzy Leung By Gisela Williams The Italian designer Enrico Marone Cinzano took a circuitous route to his current occupation. He started his career working in finance, then in 2001 co-founded the fashion line Project Alabama. After experiencing a severe injury to his spine in 2007, he sold the company and traveled around the world to seek out healers and alternative medicine practitioners. During that time, Marone Cinzano says he learned how to cook, make candles and scents and grow medicinal plants. "That's also when I started to make furniture," he says. When he builds a collection, Marone Cinzano often begins with material that's discarded or broken. He's used parts of an old motorcycle and leftover stone fragments that he sourced from a mason in Jaipur, India. "I might choose a piece of white agate and from that make a lamp," he says. In his first solo exhibition for Friedman Benda, which opened earlier this month at the gallery's Chelsea location, Marone Cinzano is presenting a new series of flat-pack chairs made of stone offcuts and lamps created from car headlights and rose quartz. Marone Cinzano said the title of the show came from his interactions with the makers with whom he collaborated; every time one of them had a query about a design, he would respond with an answer inspired by the environment. One day, an artisan commented, "You really are obsessed by nature, aren't you?" recalled Marone Cinzano. He replied, "Yes, I am." "Obsessed by Nature" is on view through Dec. 14, friedmanbenda.com. CONSIDER THIS A Silent Retreat Held in California's Natural Hot Springs Rocio Navarro leads a group in meditation in a hot spring in California's Death Valley.  Rocio Navarro By Angela Tafoya It's sunrise and a small group of people are standing alongside a secluded, grass-lined hot spring a few hundred miles northeast of Los Angeles. After a few minutes of meditation, they slowly step in and position themselves belly up, surrendering to the motion of the water. Rocio Navarro, a sociologist and water healing practitioner who draws on Michoacán tradition, guides them in breathing techniques and sensory awareness. She's been leading these types of ceremonies for 20 years. In mid-December, she's offering a three-day silent water healing retreat in California's Death Valley where participants will spend multiple hours a day soaking in the natural baths while being led in silent meditations and visualizations in and around the water. Navarro, who specializes in a combination of Watsu-inspired techniques, a form of aquatic bodywork developed in the 1980s, integrated with Indigenous traditions, says the water can affect a person's physical and mental state. "The rituals are about connecting to nature as our teacher," she says. From $2,000, rocionavarro.org. VISIT THIS Dorothea Rockburne's Geometric Abstractions, on View in London Dorothea Rockburne's "Interior Perspective, Discordant Harmony" (1985). © Dorthea Rockburne, courtesy of the artist and Xavier Fourcade 1985 By Laura Bannister Raised in Montreal, with escapes to a country house up north, the artist Dorothea Rockburne, 95, grew up steeped in nature: watching the northern lights, roaming snowy fields by flashlight, sailing a small boat across lakes. Later, studying at North Carolina's experimental liberal arts school Black Mountain College (under the choreographer Merce Cunningham, the composer John Cage and the mathematician Max Dehn), she became interested in topology, geometry and set theory, a branch of mathematical logic that sorts objects into groups, studying their relationships. Over her seven decade career — spanning abstract sculpture, painting and installation — Rockburne has often used concepts from mathematics to guide her precise, geometric configurations, which she renders in modest materials such as grease, linen and chipboard. In exploring subtle relationships between space and form, shadow and light, her work gestures to what she calls "the universal language of nature." This month, London's Bernheim Gallery presents the first European survey of Rockburne's oeuvre. Across four floors of the gallery's Mayfair townhouse, the exhibition includes 23 works produced between 1967 and 2013, some of which have never left the U.S. Viewers can marvel up close at Rockburne's "Egyptian Paintings" (1979-80), a lattice of triangles, squares and diamonds, or "Les Pensées de Pascal" (1987-88), a throbbing sunset of a painting, its gold leaf undercoat aglow. Her installation "Domain of the Variable" (1972/2018/2024) spans the ground floor, with a horizontal line bisecting not only the gallery walls but the street-facing ground windows. "The Light Shines in the Darkness and the Darkness Has Not Understood It" is on view through Jan. 25, 2025, bernheimgallery.com. DRINK THIS Bottled Ginger Ale From the Restaurateur Behind En Brasserie Reika Alexander, the owner of En Brasserie in Manhattan, is selling a bottled version of the restaurant's ginger ale. It contains over a dozen ingredients, including brown sugar, bay leaves and black pepper. Daniel Paik By Luke Fortney When Reika Alexander arrived in Manhattan in 2000, Japanese restaurants were at a fork in the road. "People knew about sushi and tempura," she says. But what about fresh tofu, clay-pot rice and kaiseki, an elaborate multicourse meal? Her restaurant, En Brasserie, was one of the many places that showed New Yorkers the way. Twenty years later, En is closing. "It wasn't my decision," Alexander says. The building's landlord would not renew her lease, which is about to expire; the last day is Dec. 22. After that, the restaurant will live on through Kasé, a Japanese food brand Alexander named after her grandfather. Earlier this year, she started selling En's dashi soy sauce online. Next month, she plans to add ginger ale — a version of the one served at her restaurant, made by simmering ginger, brown sugar and spices. The idea to sell the drink came from her customers. "So many people have asked me to bottle this," she says. Kasé ginger ale will be available online and at Happier Grocery in Manhattan beginning in mid-December; from $5, kasejapanesecooking.com. FROM T'S INSTAGRAM Holiday Ornaments That Are Out of the Ordinary Courtesy of the brand The Brooklyn-based floral designer Alex Crowder makes a point of limiting her materials to those grown within 200 miles of New York City. For the holidays, she and her team at Field Studies Flora have created three ornaments from plants that are abundant locally: spiky datura seed pods, pine cones, acorns and lichen. Crowder's aim, with the decorations and her floral business as a whole, is to "draw people's attention to materials that are often overlooked," she says. We included her creations in our roundup of unusual Christmas baubles — see the full list here and follow us on Instagram. And if you read one thing on tmagazine.com this week, make it: Courtesy of Art Mama Foundation and Aoyama Meguro. Photograph: Noritoshi Motoda What's Wrong With White Bread? After years of sourdough dominance, bakers are going back to basics. By Ella Quittner and Tatsumi Orimoto Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for T Magazine from The New York Times. To stop receiving T Magazine, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018