Golden Buddhist Sculptures

We'd love some of these for our personal collection. Unfortunately they reside at the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai.

HOLON DESIGN MUSEUM

We have meant to go to the Holon Design Museum for some time since it opened earlier this year, but somehow it took us until now to get there. So... we hit the road over the weekend to take a look at the Ron Arad designed structure. The orange-toned building really stood out in the gloomy Holon landscape and is quite impressive from afar. Alas, the moment we looked closely it was obvious that the building was poorly crafted and we imagined an overwhelmed construction crew who could barely piece together the architectural details. The exhibitions though were quite impressive and it's nice to know that there is a local museum interested in displaying the likes of Issey Miyake (love!) in an exhibition entitled, Mechanical Fashion. Our final thoughts: there's a new design museum in town only 20 minutes away from Tel Aviv and afterwards we can always stop for hummus in Yaffo. We'll be back...

Weekend #2

It was decided that we were to go away up North for the weekend, yet again (this is starting to become a pattern we can get used to). On Friday we spent some time in Akko. We wandered around the old city, saw the Khan El Umdan, entered the Templar Crusader Tunnel, visited the port and had an excellent seaside dinner at Uri Buri and bought his cookbook of course.

The clock tower above the Khan El Umdan.

Docked fishing boats at the port

Fishing

The top of St. John Church.

The next day we were joined by our dear friend N and traveled to Nazareth (we had such a great time the week before that we had to return). This time we came a little earlier on in the day so we could explore the market. There were all kinds of shops, many selling kitchen ware, but this perfume shop caught our eye.

Since a trip to Nazareth is never complete without indulging in some sweet oriental dessert we had to sample the divine knafeh at El Muchtar Sweets (we thought it was better than the knafeh at Mahroum Sweets that we tried last week). But to be fair, we don't think you can go wrong with knafeh anywhere in Nazareth, the capital of sweets.

We soaked in the landscapes...

... and drove around finally reaching Zichron Ya'akov. We decided to drop by the city cemetery and pay a visit N's grandfather, one of the founders of the city. Our weekend of northern indulgence culminated at dinner in El Babur and before we knew it we were on our way back to Tel Aviv.

El Muchtar Sweets
Toufik Ziad Road
tel 04 6556027
(there's another branch on Paulus the Sixth Street tel 04 646 1661/2)

The New Israel Museum

Here are some more photos from the new Israel Museum now open to the public. We warmly recommend, especially for the very contemporary curating.

The newly constructed Entrance Pavilion.

The Entrance Pavilion and Museum Shop.

The new hall of passage.

Some works we managed to capture at the Still/Moving exhibition. We snapped away (although it was forbidden). Works by Olafur Eliasson and Junya Ishigami.

Rothschild 12

We think the perfect time for a drink is late afternoon. There is something very luxurious about having a cocktail mid-day in the summer time (when we should be at work). Yesterday, we went out for drinks with D and had a lovely time at Rothschild 12, a bar/ night music hot spot by the owners of Brasserie-Coffee Bar fame. Next time we will try their food menu.

Rothschild 12
Rothschild 12
Tel Aviv
tel 03 5106430

Fashion Dept. Graduate Exhibition @ Shenkar

The Shenkar Fashion Department is maybe Shenkar's best known department and is most famous for producing Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz (class of '88). At the Graduate Exhibition 2010 we found the collections to be not as impressive as their sister exhibitions in Textile Design and Jewelry Design. Still though, their were a couple of projects worth sharing. Many of the collections focused on the details: the sleeve, the knot, the pleat, the jewelry.

The Sleeve: A jacket caught our eye from Annat Meshulam's collection For Dust Thou Art, and Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return. We are always on the lookout for a good jacket and this one, wool and beige, was beautifully constructed with sleeves coated in crumbling plaster.

The sleeve from the collection. More photos here and here.

The Knot: Lately we've been tying the bottoms of our long dresses into big knots and wearing them shorter for summer (by we I mean Rena, the dress wearing half of the two of us). So naturally, we were attracted to Omer Poizner's collection The Virgin which was filled with lots of large knots.

The Pleat: Meytal Shaul's collection Black Swan White Swan showcased a lovely black and white tie dyed pleated dress. Another photo here.

The Jewelry: Local Elegance by Yael Keila-Sagi's featured a summer dress with a richly detailed neckline: off-white rope coiled around a large flat stone with found turquoise jewelry. Another photo here.

Textile Dept. Graduate Exhibition @ Shenkar

At the opening of the Shenkar College Graduate Exhibition 2010 we were fascinated by the variety of  works produced by Textile Design graduates. Each individual project completely differed from the next. The variety of fabrics and techniques was quite astounding. It's been a while since we saw textiles this beautiful. We wish some of this vibrancy would leak into the local Tel Aviv fashion scene, where print, color and texture are a rare find. Somehow everyone seems to love their black/grey/white cotton monotones season after season...

This piece by Meytal Tzabary really caught our eye. The incorporation of the pastel crochet into the fabric with all the loose threads was eye-catching.

This series of blue and white geometric prints by Tali Zelnik could easily be made into a dress.

These hanging silk fabrics had various other materials embedded into them like pressed dried flowers. More photos of this series here and here and here.

This series of woven silk/cotton had feathers woven within. More photos here.

We found this pattern of black line drawings infused with bright colors  by Lital Gold, striking. We love a good pattern for spring/summer. Another print from this series here.

Shenkar Graduate Exhibition 2010

We went to the opening of the Shenkar College Graduate Exhibition 2010 (here's the exhibition info in English) with D and were surprisingly impressed with this year's line up of graduate design works. More to come soon...

Henna Party

Started the weekend belly dancing with friends at a contemporary take on the traditional Henna party. When the bride is a tzfonit (had a hard time finding the exact English translation, the best equivalent we could find is: a local version of yuppie) the Henna invitation reads: bikinis mandatory. We had a wonderful time dancing and swimming the night away, with just a bit of tradition... We made Savta proud and enjoyed copious amounts of cava.

BILL and Chimera

Summer has arrived and a recent gust of dance performances in Tel Aviv has left us pretty busy balancing work and play. Last week we went to the premier of BILL by Sharon Eyal and were truly amazed. The movement, costumes, lighting, everything was precise with just the perfect amount of crazy/wild. It has been a while since we have seen truly forward thinking choreography. We loved it and can't wait to see what she does next.

Last night we continued our summer dance binge at Chimera where we enjoyed 13 short dance pieces by the Batsheva Ensemble. If you hurry, there are 2 performances left over the weekend.

images from the Batsheva website.

Peres Center for Peace

Today was a gorgeous day and we took a walk through Tel Aviv south to Yaffo to check out the fairly new Peres Center for  Peace designed by Fuksas Architects. Apparently they have been opened since December (we stand corrected). We must re-visit some time during the week to check out the interior. Finally, a piece of architecture worth visiting!

Cairo!

The last two days we spent roaming the streets of Cairo, a beautiful, over populated fascinating city. We'll definitely be back. 

Zamalek neighborhood, as seen from a bridge over the Nile.

Inside the Sultan Hassan Mosque

A fellow explorer at the Khan Al-Khalili market.

Medieval gates at Khan Al-Khalili