Brooklyn Slate

Truly tough cheeseboards born and made in New York

Take two food-obsessed Brooklynites with a family history in rock mining, add an entrepreneurial spirit, and you have Brooklyn Slate Company. In 2009 co-founders Kristy Hadeka and Sean Tice started making cheeseboards using slate from Hadeka’s third-generation family quarry in upstate New York. The two saw the idea as “the perfect opportunity to participate in the local food movement” and since have hired on an …

Jean-Baptiste Fastrez

How a young French designer's radical approach yields soulful results

Toying with high and low, mixing handmade craftsmanship with mechanized production, contrasting natural materials against plastics—the work of emerging industrial designer Jean-Baptiste Fastrez is a study in opposites, shedding new light onto everyday objects by highlighting dissonance. But unlike many exploring the same concepts only to deconstruct design, this rabble-rouser sets up the tension as a means to give “soul” to an object. His latest …

Royal Salute’s Tribute to Honour

A bottle of scotch so expensive you'll probably never taste it

Crafted by Royal Salute as a liquid homage to the oldest crown jewels in the British Isles—The Honours of Scotland—Tribute to Honour is a blend of some of Chivas Brothers‘ oldest and finest whiskey in an over-the-top package. To create the Tribute, Master Blender Colin Scott selected a few casks of very well-aged whisky, all at least 45 years old. Individually, they’re probably among the …