Kinfolk: Discovering New Things to Cook, Make and Do: 11

Kinfolk #11

by Kinfolk Magazine

THE HOME ISSUE The spring 2014 edition of Kinfolk explores the meaning of home, what it looks like, how different people arrange them and the qualities that the best ones share.

Whether you live with your best friend, partner, strangers or a lazy hound, your concept of home will change with every coat of paint. It’s what (and who) you fill it with that counts. If you're trying to cultivate a new abode or invigorate your old one, the Home Issue will encourage you to think in new ways about the space where you spend much of your life. The team has cast a wide net across its creative community to photograph some amazing homes and offer casual, comfortable entertaining ideas for our readers that will be relatable, no matter what kind of tiny box they might be living in.

This issue will feature the usual mix of photo essays, reflective essays, simple recipes, illustrated guides and lifestyle tips. This special 176-page issue features a 46-page Home Tours section with lots of images from around the world.


WELCOME TO KINFOLK ISSUE ELEVEN, THE HOME ISSUE.
The Spring 2014 edition of Kinfolk explores the meaning of home, what it looks like, how different people arrange them and the qualities that the best ones share. Whether you live with your best friend, partner, strangers or a lazy hound, your concept of home will change with every coat of paint. It’s what (and who) you fill it with that counts. This special 176-page issue features a 46-page Home Tours section with lots of images from around the world.
Kinfolk Issue Eleven includes such stories as:
• Photo essays on Becoming Your Home (Maia Flore), Dreaming in Cardboard (Neil Bedford), Making a Move (Leo Patrone) and California Dreaming (We Are the Rhoads)
• Essays on creating a well-worn home; living alone and loving it; the challenges of coupledom; the meaning of a good group house; the case for wearing slippers; what a house-sitter discovers; living as a modern nomad; how a new baby changes a home; the concept of home; the memories tied to a holiday house; and one writer makes a case for digital bookshelves
• An interview with Sir Terence Conran, the hugely influential British design titan
• The Gentleman’s Guide to Feng Shui; tips on moving and having housewarming & housecooling parties; tips on entertaining at home (Paris style) & a recipe for Vegetable Tempura; How to Be Neighborly (The Housemates Edition)
• Table for One: An essay on why you should create a decadent three-course meal for one + a menu including Oysters & Mignonette, Simple Cornish Hen with Mushrooms and Apple Blue Cheese Bread Pudding
• The Chef’s Kitchen: We visit the home kitchens of three London chefs (Fergus Henderson, Florence Knight and Skye Gyngell) and each gave us a simple recipe they make often at home: Tomato Pasta, Soft-Boiled Egg with Buttered Soldiers & Chickpea and Chard Soup
• Ways to feel at home while traveling; and how to successfully work out of your home
• Illustrated verses about neglected household objects
• A special Kinfolk Home Tours section featuring a dozen homes from around that world that we wish we could live in
—
“Featuring stone-walled villas in Spain to flower-filled apartments in Indonesia, the Home Issue contains a diverse mix of living spaces that represent alternative ways of nesting. What we’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter how you decorate your mantel, the hue of white on your walls or the number of earthenware mugs in your kitchen. Home is what you make it, and we’d like to celebrate the well-made. Welcome.” —Nathan Williams (editor in chief) and Georgia Frances King (editor)
Cover photograph by Maia Flore
Paintings by Katie Stratton

Genres: Lifestyle, Nonfiction, Food

176 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2014

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinfolk gets pointed out around the web for its somewhat-idealized portraits of life--I remember my wife showing me a "cooking in magazines/cooking in real life" list and all the cooking in magazines pictures were from the Kinfolk Instagram account--but since I read this issue on the back deck of our then-apartment building with a view of the beach and the sun sparkling on Lake Michigan, well, I shouldn't complain too much. Food can be utilitarian, but few people would be proud of living in a garret.

I loved the article where kids describe their dream homes. I'm sure we've all had thoughts about what we'd put in our dream house if we had unlimited funds and could ignore the laws of physics. Giant ball pits, secret passages, a hall full of suits of armor, a home movie theatre... I have to give props to the kid who wants to live in a pirate ship, though. That's way better than any of the ideas I came up with as a child, and frankly, I wouldn't mind living in a pirate ship now. It wouldn't even make commuting that hard--I'd just sail up the Chicago River and get off near the office.

The idea of a Housecooling Party sounds like exactly the kind of hipster pretension that leads to me mock Kinfolk even while I love reading it, but I don't think that's entirely fair. If you've lived in one place for a long time and developed an attachment to it, I don't see why saying goodbye to it is any less warranted than saying goodbye to friends if you're moving away from them. It's true that I had no real attachment to our old apartment as much as I liked the building, but I already have an attachment to our new one and I would like to say goodbye to it if we left. I've posted this quote from Dune before:

Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.
-Thufir Hawat, Dune

and while I still kind of agree with it, in a sense it's the sentiment of rootless young people. There's a feeling you have in a place that's home that you don't get elsewhere, and a housecooling is a way of acknowledging that.

A Manifesto for a Well-Worn Home appeals to me because of my personal aesthetics. I haven't really had a chance to put it into place because every other home my wife and I have had has been temporary with a definite end date, but now that we're in our current apartment and have no plans to leave I've been able to use all the old, worn wood that I want. Our dining room table is the table that my family ate at when I was a child. We bought a lot of wooden furniture at antique shops and thrift stores, and what's left was made for me by my father. I really liked the part of the article that said:

I would rather have one beautiful wheel-thrown bowl than a set of five from a factory. I’d rather spend too much on something special than spend just a little bit on mediocre things.

A lot of our apartment is purposefully empty for that reason. "Fewer things, more meaning" is a manifesto I can get behind.

The home tour of the home in Japan brought back memories of days watching the sun rise over the rice fields in Chiyoda, or seeing cranes hunt frogs among the waving rice stalks, or drinking tea at our kotatsu on cold winter evenings. We weren't as hardcore as Kuroda-san and her lack of electricity, but even as much as I love the city, there was something about living closer to nature that way that I appreciate. Even now, just moving a few blocks means the trees are taller and there are more small animals around, and that does make a difference.

This is probably my favorite of the Kinfolk volumes I've read so far, especially looking back on it now that my wife and I have moved into a new apartment and are actually decorating it with a consistent scheme. Living a rootless existence with no fixed abode is fine for the young (says the 32-year-old...), but now that I'm older I'm coming to appreciate the virtues of making a place your own.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love thinking about homes and how people make houses homes all over the world so I loved the home issue.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this issue. Plenty of visual content but held together with comment, interesting articles and lots of discussion pieces.

[Tepintzin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautiful photos, no substance. The home residents are all well-off artistes. The recipes are nothing you couldn't think of to prepare on your own. My curiosity about this series is satisfied and I will likely never pick up an issue again.