You can't design a house without hand-painted tiles

Poetry for losers!

• “Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day.” Paying taxes always has a strange effect on me—like I start to search for meaning—so I’ve been reading poetry. And pouting.

  

• Hand-painted tiles by Agnes Emery, who originally trained as an architect. Order information here. Agnes has three homes in Marrakesh, according to World of Interiors (who else!). An advertisement for her work…

• Love this profile of Ruth Cortez, a server at the Fountain Coffee Room in the Beverly Hills Hotel, in W magazine. “Her first day was May 25, 1995.” She guesses that “80 percent of diners are regulars.” Now that’s a real restaurant.

• I read Natasha Stagg’s newsletter to keep tabs on the events that take place in New York. “On Friday, Joey and I went to a dinner launching the sixth issue of Zeitung, a German magazine made by lovely and smart people. It was at Food, the Lucien Smith venture that has gotten so much bad press, it has to be good to have stayed in business.” (I’m obsessed with restaurants that are impervious to critics. It’s so important to me.)