In a city where tradition meets the avant-garde in shops, cafés, even living room windows, Reggie Nadelson finds the heart of modern Dutch design. BY REGGIE NADELSON
Along Amsterdam's Prinsengracht Canal, in the heart of this cold, upright, lovely northern city, some of the tall, thin houses are four or five hundred years old. And some of the faces you see in this staid paradise of exquisitely correct social policy still resemble the merchants, matrons, and maids painted by Rembrandt. Go to the …[Read more]
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New Amsterdam
In a city where tradition meets the avant-garde in shops, cafés, even living room windows, Reggie Nadelson finds the heart of modern Dutch design. BY REGGIE NADELSON
Along Amsterdam's Prinsengracht Canal, in the heart of this cold, upright, lovely northern city, some of the tall, thin houses are four or five hundred years old. And some of the faces you see in this staid paradise of exquisitely correct social policy still resemble the merchants, matrons, and maids painted by Rembrandt. Go to the …[Read more] 
In Delta Junction, one winter pastime is tossing your coffee into the air, then watching it freeze in pale-brown crystalline sheets on the way down. Temperatures in the interior of the state, here at the last stop on the Alaska Highway, often sink to 50 below. Weather isn't small talk 2,350 miles north of Denver; it's life and death. You plug your car 
On the 12th floor of a dull gray office building on Fifth Avenue is Verdura—part showroom, part shop, and part archive. Call it the candy store. Even with the elegant rooms and the ever-so-polite glass cases, there's something intoxicating about Verdura's jewels, something luscious, sensuous, yummy: The vintage bubble-gum-pink topaz bow brooch mounted in gold with diamond ribbons, the fat heart fashioned of cabochon emeralds the color of glazed fruit and wrapped up with strings of diamonds, the