Food and photography

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome to venerable and cosy Kyritz, ten thousand inhabitants and borough rights from the High Middle Ages, in the beginning, a thousand years ago, known as Chorizi, today a city of pride with its heritage of ancient withered stone walls and medieval half-timber dwellings of clay, plaster, or red brick with steep roofs of reed or schist, situated in Brandenburg, 60 miles northwest of Berlin, old Prussian heartland with Kaiser and Iron Chansellor, from 1952 to 1990 part of the Bezirk Potsdam of East Germany, and today a pastoral idyll in reunited Germany.

Once upon a time, this old Hansa town was nicknamed Kyritz and der Knatter, ‘Kyritz on the Rattle’; from nearby river Jäglitz, a torrent of water was led through the city with a chain of watermills on the banks constantly rattling while grinding grain. Today it is silent. Since long, the old current line is dried out.

As one would expect, the town hall is located in centre, an austere building remotely reminiscent of a petite Italian renaissance palazzo with its crenelated tower. In the old marketplace the dignified Peace Oak still stands, once planted by the Kyritz citizens to commemorate Napoleon’s final showdown and the end to nearly a decade of French siege.

From another angle, you might catch a glimpse of St. Mary’s church trough the lovely oscillating green foliage of trembling leaves, a Roman and early Gothic style red brick building dating back to the Middle Ages, partly burned down and re-erected over the years. Here, in a lovely Art Nouveau chateau across the square, food stylist and fashion designer Nora Eisermann and photographer Laura Muthesius run an exclusive holyday home, St. Oak Apartments, combining their passion for interior decorating and culinary cooking.

Laura’s dad owns the prominent house. She grew up in a small village outside the town and later moved to Berlin to study photography. There is where Laura met Nora. They still have a flat, a pied-à-terre, in Berlin. Once a Berlinerin always a Berlinerin, or like the famous Marlene Dietrich song goes, ‘Ich hab´ noch einen Koffer in Berlin’. They go there occasionally for provisioning or just to breath the Berlin air.

To a certain extent, their professional life has been about mise-en-place and mise-en-scène, cooking and photo. It all took off with their creative blog ‘Our Food Stories’ presenting enticingly laid tables in exotic and faraway places. Equally successful ‘Dinner Stories’ and ‘Designtales’ earned them cult status among followers. Quite recently they also released a book. Makes one think of another celebrated couple; are they in fact the Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas of our time? Not really. No one is no one else. You are what you are. It is what it is. Or, as Stein wrote, ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…’.

Now, at last, Nora and Laura have fulfilled a long-cherished dream. At St. Oak, they have the pleasure of offering their guests the real thing in a compelling setting, heavenly food in spectacular interiors, summertime preferably outdoors in the lush greenery of the gorgeous little backyard with terracotta pots and gravel on the ground, or frankly anywhere, on request, they may set a table for two in a chambre separé or lay a long table in the street, field or forest. Meals are prepared and cooked in their new Frama by Kvänum kitchen.

Health and sustainability are at the heart of their operation. Emphasis is on gluten free food. That is how they got started in the first place. In fact, it is all due to Lauras allergy. Early on, she was diagnosed with celiac, oversensitivity to food containing grain, or more precisely its gluten protein. Going to a café was a nuisance, she says, I always had to refrain from those tempting cakes. This is not so long ago, yet gluten free food was scarce. It was hard to find a place with a diverse non gluten assortment.

Nora asked me, if I had ever tried to cook or bake without gluten myself, can´t be that difficult. I pleaded not guilty. As she was already a fairly experienced cook, Nora started to test recipes herself, the first being pancakes, I remember it vividly, says Laura, I loved Nora’s pancakes, and I began sort of randomly photographing and portraying her cooking and setting the table.

Before long, Nora came up with a varied menu of appetising dishes from Früstück to Abendbrot, in between luncheons and dinners with entrées, main courses, and desserts, plus, to Laura’s delight, a frightfully delectable cake archive; Nora broadened her range, and before we knew it, we had a project running, says Laura. Composing recipes, preparing food, and arranging meals is a work in progress, so is Laura’s ‘still life’ photo. What started as a gesture of tenderness and care, turned into a mutual engagement and gradually became a mode of life.

Their history with Frama goes back to 2014; they were in Copenhagen looking for props, primarily ceramics, for ‘Our Food Stories’ and happened to run into to the Frama design studio with its both restrained and playful pottery and tableware on display in the window. The shop was shut. They waited until the next day, a decision they have no reason to regret, Nora and Laura became friends and allies with Frama, lifelong it appears.

When our kitchen concept was launched, they were thrilled. Now it is in place at St. Oak, their new FRAMA Modules by Kvänum interior. For years, Laura and Nora have ardently embraced the Frama aesthetics, those raw and rough walls included, scarred, torn and flaky, seemingly revealing traces, memories, dreams, stories, patterns of the past evoking the beauty of the perishable, brief, and unfinished, here in subtle contrast to the wonderful finish of the woodwork, modules on feet with veneered, plain doors, a modest décor almost steeling its way through the room and along the walls, all in praise of simplicity.

More furniture than fixture, says Laura, she instantly fell in love with it, and Nora has a crush on the feature wall with its warm grey and beige tones, so soothing, she says, whereas the Ginger of the joinery makes both cheerful, and the smooth drawers, says Laura, with that tiny handle like a thin leaf between the thumb and index finger, a marvel, and the open cabinets, says Nora, a blessing, and they could keep on for ever, amen. We absolutely adore it, they say.