Scenery Magazine

I have recently discovered Scenery Magazine. Love at first sight - the print quality and content are superb. Matte stock, considered layout, editorial restraint. Biannual publication from London. This is the kind of physical object that justifies its place.

Issue Four - 320 pages exploring personal spaces, interiors, and the emotive character of environments. Kate Moss photographed by Chris Rhodes, with the lead essay documenting her decade-long collaboration with designer Wendy Nicholls on her Grade II-listed Notting Hill townhouse. The writing moves between intimate domestic observation and cultural analysis. Moss propagating plants grown with Kate's grandmother. A cupboard dedicated solely to lace-trimmed trays. LED face mask routines while listening to cricket. Fred, her Staffordshire Bull Terrier, on powder-pink velvet. The granular detail that reveals how people actually live.

But the essay reaches further- examining the aesthetic relationship between Moss's home and Lucian Freud's studio through Nicholls, who worked with both. Stripped plaster walls, painted wooden consoles, imperfect patina. The piece concludes with Nicholls recalling that Freud told her she was "too finished" to make a suitable painting subject, yet this exactness was precisely what he sought for decorating his home. The distinction between rawness required for portraiture and considered refinement appropriate for living spaces.

Also featured: artist Setsuko Klossowska de Rola (widow of Balthus), milliner Philip Treacy, and a study of flowers including Freud's own dedication to Moss.

A hand-drawn directory of "London's most singular shops" documents ten heritage retailers through photography and precise detail. Among them: John Lobb - bespoke shoemaking since 1866, St James's Street, black-painted storefront with brass signage, lasts stored permanently for each client. And Taylors Buttons- operating since the 1830s in Marylebone, that small corner building marked by its yellow orb, thousands of button cards in wooden drawers supplying London's tailoring trade. Both parts of London I know well. Both demonstrate the same principle: longevity through doing one thing exceptionally well, relationships over transactions, standards maintained regardless of fashion.

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Now available in New Zealand at Handcrafted Modern, Auckland.