Handmade Porcelain Painted With Brooklyn Blossoms

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Dinnerware that Brings the Garden to the Table

Pieces from the ceramist Melissa Goldstein’s new collection featuring cherry blossoms and poppies.Credit…Ngoc Minh Ngo

For over 20 years, Melissa Goldstein worked as a magazine photo editor. While researching imagery, she developed a fascination with Scandinavian ceramics, 17th-century botanical illustrations and Japanese woodblock prints dating back to the 1500s. It wasn’t until she moved to Brooklyn and began rehabilitating the overgrown garden behind her brownstone that she began combining her interests: “[My brand MG by Hand] was the merging of my research, the garden and making things for my family,” Goldstein says of the fine English porcelain ceramics she now sells in select shops and online. In 2008, the artist began hand-making everyday dinnerware in her home studio in Carroll Gardens, decorating the pieces with floral motifs in a cobalt stain. Black irises, poppies and flowering quince from her garden adorned vases, shallow banchan dishes and scalloped serving trays. Her new Poppy and Cherry collections, which were fired in a gas kiln for 12 to 15 hours, channel Dutch Delftware while depicting local flora. “I have a wall that separates my garden from my neighbor’s, and I’ve interwoven quince in it,” Goldstein says. “I’m very into blooming trees.” From $65, mgbyhand.com.

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A New Book Collects the Writings of Dorothy Dean, a Fixture of ’60s New York

Dorothy Dean, the writer, socialite and Warhol Factory regular, was a central figure of bohemian New York in the ’60s and ’70s. But despite her circle of famed confidants, she died in relative obscurity in Boulder, Colo., in 1987. Nearly a decade later, the writer Hilton Als recounted Dean’s life story for The New Yorker: She was the first Black high school valedictorian at White Plains High School in New York, a graduate of both Radcliffe College and Harvard, the first female fact checker at The New Yorker, part of a clique of white gay men she called “the Lavender Brotherhood” and a tough-as-nails bouncer at the nightclub Max’s Kansas City. Now, a new book compiles a selection of Dean’s unpublished writing and letters along with her newsletter of biting film reviews called the “All-Lavender Cinema Courier.” Titled “Who Are You Dorothy Dean?,” the book is edited by the Paris-based filmmaker Anaïs Ngbanzo and published by the press she founded in 2020, Éditions 1989, which focuses on biographical books and artists’ writings. On March 19 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Ngbanzo will also bring Dean’s acerbic humor to the stage with “Dorothy,” a play adapted from her correspondences with the artist Rene Ricard, the model Edie Sedgwick and the music journalist Lisa Robinson. “Who Are You Dorothy Dean?,” about $23, editions1989.com.

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Customizable Pajamas From the Linen Brand Matouk

For nearly 100 years, the linen company Matouk has focused on making Egyptian cotton bedding. Today, the company will launch its first clothing line with a collection of pajama sets made in Italy. Available in silky sateen and percale cotton, the long-sleeved sets will come in a selection of prints from the interiors company Schumacher, like the graphic, almost floral Levi, the polka-dot Celine and the botanical Pomegranate as well as solid colors and crisp white. All can be customized at the cuff or pocket with 20 monogram styles in 45 colors embroidered at Matouk’s factory in Fall River, Mass. You can also mix and match patterns, colors and trims; virtually any bedding fabric seen on their website can be turned into pajamas. “If there’s a special combination that a customer wants, we’ll happily make it,” says the creative director Mindy Matouk. “Some of my favorite moments have happened walking the factory floor and spotting a design that someone else dreamed up.” The collection is online now, and starting April 4 it will also be available at the brand’s newly opened House of Matouk on New York’s Upper East Side. From $475, matouk.com.