Islands Are Metaphors of The Heart
A tasteful guide to visiting Menorca, playful interpretations of fruits, flowers, and veggies, purpose driven branding, and more.
Horstman is a journey through art, design, and culture, meeting the people whose work, homes, and habits shape the world.
Items of Note
Menorca sits just off the Catalan coast, a short hop from Barcelona by plane, or an easy overnight ferry that can feel like the start of a journey. Recognized by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve, it has quietly become the Balearic island for people who prefer serene landscapes and sleepy villages over dance floors and €5 gin and tonic specials. Life moves slower here and that is the point. Menorca is the most relaxed of the Balearics, a place where the loudest thing you will hear is cutlery on plates and the sea lapping against the rocks.
Mahon, Menorca’s capital, is quietly beginning to draw a new wave of creative talent from around the world, helped along by the arrival of Hauser & Wirth in the harbor and a growing group of ambitious galleries in town. The city is starting to feel like a small but confident cultural outpost, giving Mahon the feel of a destination in its own right for people who make and collect culture. I’m spending some time on the island for my partner Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick’s 40th birthday so I wanted to share with you the places that I feel are doing interesting and exciting things. If there’s anything you feel like I’ve missed please leave a comment and let me know.
Hauser & Wirth
Illa del Rei — @hauserandwirthmenorca
Menorca first landed on my radar with the opening of Hauser & Wirth, which came to life in 2021 on Illa del Rei, a former naval hospital set in the middle of Mahon’s harbor. Heavyweight artists such as Mark Bradford, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Miró and Cindy Sherman have all shown there, while the lovely restaurant Cantina, tucked into an olive grove, is available for lunch and libations, while the landscape of the museum has been overseen by renowned garden designer Piet Oudolf, all of which make the experience of visiting the tiny island all the more fantastic.
Pigalle Bakery & Café
Carrer de Bastió, 4 / Carrer de Bastió, 18 — @pigalle_menorca
When I first visited Menorca a couple years ago, Pigalle was a lovely bakery making incredible breads and pastries. Now they have expanded to a charming café that sits one block away, a compact space that feels more like a neighborhood living room. Menus focus on classic breakfast and lunch dishes, backed up by easygoing service and a sun drenched, regulars‑on‑the‑terrace atmosphere that makes it an ideal place to pass the time for an hour or two.
Nanai Atelier
Carrer de Bastió, 35 — @nanai.atelier.menorca
Nanai Atelier is run by Inga Luksaite, a Lithuanian-born designer and creative director who treats her Mahon space as both studio and salon, filling it with pieces she designs herself alongside work by local craftswomen and a sharp edit of clothing, ceramics, and objects for people looking for unique objects.
Bar Augustin & Candela
Placa de España, 29 — @augustin_menorca / @candela_menorca
Bar Augustin and Candela are two adjoining spaces run by a trio of creative food experts. Bar Augustin is the lively tapas and wine bar while Candela the more focused bistro next door, both turning out delicious, seasonal cooking, and most importantly to me, having one of the island’s best selections of natural wines.
Dr. Collectors
Carrer de Esglesia, 1A 1B — @drcollectors
Being in Menorca just as Dr. Collectors opens here feels like genuine serendipity, especially since Olivier Grasset and Béatrice Grasset are bringing their iconic French‑inflected, LA-honed point of view on clothing that shaped their La Brea store to a new address in Mahon. They have always cared less about fashion than about clothes with a lived-in soul, reworking vintage classics with hand-dyed fabrics and a mix of Americana and French workwear, and it’s awesome to see them start their next chapter in Mahon.
Scarpetta
Passeig dels Porxos, 68 — @scarpettamenorca
Italian chef Raffaele Ros, has brought a refined, coastal spin on southern Italian cooking to Binibeca with his restaurant Scarpetta, located in a whitewashed fishermen’s village near the sea. Their focus is on handmade pasta and Mediterranean seafood, all served on a terrace overlooking a sleepy cove.
Son Blanc Farmhouse
Finca son Blanc Nou, Camino de Son Blanc — @sonblancmenorca
A 14-room farmhouse hotel near Ciutadella that pairs traditional Menorcan architecture with quietly inventive interiors, giving guests private gardens, outdoor bathtubs and a pool-and-yoga set-up that suits both design-conscious weekenders and longer creative retreats.
Cova d’en Xoroi
Carrer de sa Cova, 2 — @covadenxoroi
A bar and nightclub built into a cliffside cave on the south coast, where people arrive for sunset gin-and-lemonades and end up dancing deep into the night above the Balearic Sea.
Sa Llagosta
Carrer de Gabriel Gelabert, 12 — @sallagosta
A small dining room in Fornells dedicated to Menorca’s most prized ingredient, serving lobster stews and other crustacean-heavy dishes that justify the trip north for anyone serious about seafood.
Líthica – Pedreres de s’Hostal
Camí Vell, km 1 — @lithica.pedreresdeshostal
This former limestone quarry outside Ciutadella that has been rescued and reimagined as a cultural landscape of geometric pits, gardens and open-air performances, offering one of the island’s most striking settings for a walk or a concert.
Our tomato infatuation continues. The recent permutation of this obsession started in September of 2020 when Loewe released their tomato scented candles, one of several plant-inspired fragrances (including beetroot, juniper berry, and oregano), as part of their debut Home Scents line. Yet our fascination with the plump, vine-ripened beauties isn’t new. Fashion brand Chloé partnered with furniture brand Poltronova to release a re-edition of the Tomato chair, originally designed in 1970 by French designer Christian Adam, coinciding with this year’s Milan Design Week.
Created during a moment of cultural and creative liberation, the Tomato chair proposed a new relationship between body and object; soft, generous, and instinctive. Its sculptural, organic silhouette moved away from rigidity, embracing comfort, sensuality, and freedom of form.
It’s funny how things come back into fashion this way. The shape of the chair is so charming and it’s impressive how the leather panels mimic the shape of a tomato so closely. The chair even looks comfortable, almost bean bag-like, like a chair you can melt into. Though one big question remains: why no red, green, or yellow versions?
If you find yourself in New York in the next couple of months you should check out a new solo exhibition of paintings by Sasha Brodsky at Margot Samel. Brodsky turns domestic interiors public spaces into soft, atmospheric spaces where color and texture create hazy, abstract works. Brodsky’s use of muted, layered tones and gently blurred surfaces make furniture and architectural details feel half-remembered, drawing on the idea of places as a psychological landscapes rather than a fixed space, so each canvas reads like an idea seen through memory rather than a camera lens.
Taking place in the Giardino delle Arti during Milan Design Week, Laila Gohar’s carousel for Arket took a surviving 18th century carousel and replaced its traditional mounts with massive fruits and vegetables, a surreal and playful concept that doubled as the launch of her first collection for the brand. The installation worked on many levels at once, introducing the clothes, of course, but also serving as a reminder that the simplest ideas can be the most effective. Climbing onto a giant fig or radish taps into memories of childhood, and in doing so, creates a “core memory unlocked” type of emotional connection that more complicated immersive activations will miss. Speaking with Wallpaper*, she described the activation in similar ways:
“A carousel is about joy. It is so symbolic of childhood and of play. I think as adults, we do not play enough. I wish there were more spaces dedicated to adult play. I also love the whimsical nature of our carousel and all the vegetables. It has been a dream of mine to make a carousel for a long time, and here we are.”
Spotted this nice bit of branding from Studio of Design and Art, or SODAA for short, which I felt I had to share because they are consistently pushing great work out.
Front Office is a project started by Ken Sakata, a doctor turned fashion documentarian and designer, who brings his knowledge of clothing to a curious audience on Instagram. SODAA helped develop the visual identity for the project, “a clothing brand shaped by research. Rooted in workwear, tailoring, and sportswear, our garments are functional, minimalist, and designed to bring the past into the present.” They translated Sakata’s dual background as researcher and designer into a system that balances expression with restraint. The identity works across everything from web to garment labels and social media, to collaborations with C.P. Company, The Woolmark Company, and Mammut, handling both expression and utility without losing coherence.
SODAA built the identity around two typefaces: ABC Arizona Flare for the brandmark, sitting between a Japanese Mincho and Gothic typeface, and Reform Grotesk as the workhorse. Every detail mirrors Sakata’s pursuit of knowledge and craft, creating a deliberate tension between the familiar and foreign, tradition and technology. The result is a confident brand without excess, a system built to last while still feeling relevant in the now.
Large amounts of absurdity and frivolity are incredibly important in trying times which is why I was so delighted by this hand-blown martini glass by Miranda Keyes. Shaped to look like a calla lily, the form is wonderfully playful, with the bowl extending down into the stem of the glass, and able to hold a single large green olive. Naysayers have commented that the point of the stem of a martini glass is to help keep the liquid cold, to which I reply, “you are no fun!” If i was served a martini in this glass at a bar I would immediately be filled with joy.
Final Thought
“The rules are in my head.”
