When you work in a field as creative as ours, artists come out of the woodwork all the time. Recently while I was putting together a tile story with Melody Saraniti at The Tile Gallery , she mentioned that her paintings are currently on display at Thomas Masters Gallery. Her pieces have great combinations of bold and muted colors. Check them out through June 11.

—GINA BAZER

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When you work in a field as creative as ours, artists come out of the woodwork all the time. Recently while I was putting together a tile story with Melody Saraniti at The Tile Gallery , she mentioned that her paintings are currently on display at Thomas Masters Gallery. Her pieces have great combinations of bold and muted colors. Check them out through June 11.

—GINA BAZER

" />

When you work in a field as creative as ours, artists come out of the woodwork all the time. Recently while I was putting together a tile story with Melody Saraniti at The Tile Gallery , she mentioned that her paintings are currently on display at Thomas Masters Gallery. Her pieces have great combinations of bold and muted colors. Check them out through June 11.

—GINA BAZER

" />

When you work in a field as creative as ours, artists come out of the woodwork all the time. Recently while I was putting together a tile story with Melody Saraniti at The Tile Gallery , she mentioned that her paintings are currently on display at Thomas Masters Gallery. Her pieces have great combinations of bold and muted colors. Check them out through June 11.

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The first off-line peek at the forces and faces behind the new online collective and home-design shop Hinge pleased the crowd at the Chicago Antique Market over Memorial Day weekend. Hinge founder Angela Stone has brought together a group of furniture and accessory designers, vintage dealers, and artists committed to using raw and reclaimed materials. The result? A mix of unadorned farmhouse antiques, sleek vintage pieces, and sustainable custom furniture—each with an artful edge and a whole lotta soul. Think old materials, new forms. She coined (and quickly trademarked) the Hinge aesthetic as “Farmhouse Modern.” Furniture designers Bladon Conner and Aaron Pahmier showed off their handiwork, including one-of-a-kind tables topped with 100-year-old reclaimed maple floorboards and a lovely black-lacquered vintage dresser with Burberry-plaid-lined drawers. Elizabeth Siegan’s  hand-drawn screen-printed linen pillows dotted the space along with photographer Emily Johnston Anderson’s poetic snaps. Stone grew up in coastal Southern Maine, where her dad was a furniture builder and mom an interior designer. “I am the polar opposite of what I grew up with,” she says of her folks’ far more formal style. When she moved to Chicago, she dabbled in design work with decorator Laura Soskin. “We were always looking for the perfect find for a client’s home and I thought, ‘Why does it have to be so hard?’” After a nearly sold-out booth at the end of Sunday’s show, we’d say she’s on to something. Sign up for Hinge’s newsletter,  to get info on studio open houses, furniture parties, and future Chicago Antique Market appearances. 

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List Price: $6.5 million
Sale Price: Not known
The Property: Laura Ricketts, one of four members of the Ricketts family on the board of the Chicago Cubs, is in the process of buying a $6.5-million lakefront house in Wilmette with her partner, Heidi Grathouse, real-estate sources in Wilmette confirm... Read more
Budget Beat: Tao Ran Ju Even Chinatown’s staunchest fans (we are among them) have to admit there’s a certain predictability to its restaurants. So when a newcomer does things differently, we notice. Read more
When Flamingo’s Fine Mexican Seafood in Mount Prospect closed last year, taking its famed fish tacos with it, we lost a surprisingly good restaurant. Read more
PRESTO CHANGO: On May 3rd, the poshy-posh urban oasis known as The Ritz-Carlton Chicago culminated its transformational charge into the 21st century by reimagining the fountain-bedecked 12th-floor café as an Art Deco brasserie and tavern and calling it Deca Restaurant + Bar. Read more
NICE BUY: From June 25th through 27th, Tula will pack its outdoor courtyard with jewelry, handbags, scarves, and belts from an international list of designers, including Chicago-based Lulu. Read more
5 Bits of Conversation … Overheard during lunch-hour martinis at Primebar (the Loop’s newest watering hole for the pleated-khakis set) Read more