It’s time to celebrate Halloween, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and All Saint’s Day or to simply scare the living daylights out of your friends and family. Mobilità Studio is celebrating with a 20% discount on all Halloween related prints, that is to say Bloody Mary, Last Word, Corpse Reviver, Death in the Afternoon, Zombie, Black Velvet and El Diablo.
The sale is from Monday October 31 to Sunday November 6. Just remember to use discount code HALLOWEEN at checkout.
Have a great week.
This favorite cocktail of the Rat Pack first appeared in 1937 at a British Industries Fair in New York. The Rusty Nail is a blend of Scotch Whisky and Drambuie (a liqueur made fromScotch Whisky, herbs, spices and honey). The original cocktail was called B.I.F. but soon after the fair it was forgotten, reappearing in NYC in the 1950s as the Rusty Nail and becoming the most popular cocktail around.
There are several different stories as to how the name came about. One is that it came from the rusty nails on the wooden crates of Drambuie. Another that it was a bartender using a nail as a swizzle stick. In all likelihood it has more to do with the color of the blend of Drambuie and Scotch.
The Drambuie liqueur was launched in 1910 but the idea of this blend of Scotch, herbs and honey dates back to the 1745 when the Scottish Prince Charles Edward Stuartcame back to the British Isles after an exile in Rome. Returning to his homeland to try to reclaim the British throne for his father he brought his liqueur recipe with him. His enterprise did not however work according to plan and being defeated in a battle in 1746 the prince had to flee to The Isle of Skye where the Clan MacKinnon helped him escape the British Isles for good.
To thank the MacKinnons the Prince gave the clan leader John MacKinnon the secret liqueur recipe where it has been treasured for generations. 100 years later the MacKinnons were persuaded by John Ross, a hotelier at the Broadford Hotel on Skye, to make a batch for his local customers. They liked it so much they called it “the drink that satisfies” or “an dram buidheach” in Gaelic. Changing the name to something a little easier to pronounce John Ross’s son James patented the name Drambuie in 1893 and in 1909 James’s widow Eleanor started producing the liqueur together with Malcolm MacKinnon.
The glass was designed by Finnish designer Anu Penttinen for Marimekko in 2010 and is called Sukat Makkaralla meaning “Socks rolled down”.
Rusty Nail
2 parts Scotch Whisky
1 part Drambuie
1 Lemon twist
Stir ingredients with ice. Strain into chilled glass and garnish with a lemon twist.
Enjoy it like you’re Dean Martin.
The history of Tom Collins might have started as a practical joke. Tom was supposed to be a load and burly man who sat in taverns in New York in the late 1800s badmouthing people. The victims were told by their friends about Mr Collins trying to slander them and were encouraged to find him. However, when going to the tavern asking the bartender for the non existent Tom Collins, they would instead receive the sour cocktail. The prank became known as The Great Tom Collins Hoax of 1874.
This is probably just a good story though. More likely is that the Tom Collins started out as a John Collins, named after the head waiter at Limmer’s Hotel on Conduit Street in London where he worked during the 1870s and 80s. Limmer’s was famous from the early 1800s for being a buzzing place with great drinks. They were especially known fo their gin punch, essentially being the same thing as a Tom Collins. Originally Jenevera.k.a Holland Gin was used in the cocktail but when the customers started preferring the sweeter Old Tom Gin the theory is that they started asking for a Tom Collins rather than a John Collins.
After John and Tom there is now a whole family of Collins’s. Captain Collins (with Canadian Whisky), Colonel Collins (with Bourbon), Jack Collins (with Calvados), Sandy Collins (with Scotch), Joe Collins (with Vodka), Mike Collins (with Irish Whiskey), Pedro Collins (with Light Rum), Pepito Collins (with Tequila) and Pierre Collins (with Cognac).
The glass was designed in 1964 by the two brothers Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglione and is called Splügen.
Tom Collins
2 parts Old Tom Gin
1 part Lemon juice
1/2 part Sugar syrup
1 1/2 part Club soda
Shake all but club soda and strain into ice filled glass. Garnish with a lemon wedge and a Maraschino cherry.
Enjoy!
Known for high fashion, perfume, croissants, the riviera, artists, Paris, the Eiffel Tower, fine cuisine, wine, cheese and of course champagne. France is the third largest country in Europe.
It was first settled by Greeks and Celts around 700 BCE and the oldest city of France is Marseille from 600 BCE.
In ancient times France was a part of a Celtic region called Gaul or Gallia (think Asterix) but it was conquered by Julius Caesar in 58-51 BCE and was governed by the Roman Empire until Rome couldn’t hold off the Germanic Franks in the 5th century. The name France is taken from the Latin name for the Franks.
In 987 Hugh Capet became King of West Francia. This kingdom expanded territorially and became closer to the France of today. The death of the last king in the line of succession led to the 100 Year War featuring a young peasant girl called Jeanne d’Arc leading the troops to victory.
France stayed a monarchy until the French Revolution in 1789 when Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette and many others were famously guillotined. The French Revolution was the start of the 1st Republic. Soon after this Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power and proclaimed himself Emperor and tried to take over Europe. After being defeated in Waterloo and sent to prison there was another king taking his place but after being toppled the 2nd Republic started in 1848. Only four years in comes Napoleon III, restoring the monarchy yet again and keeping it until 1871 when the 3rd Republic starts. After WWII but without the resurrection of the monarchy in between the 4th Republic started in 1947 and the final 5th Republic started with Charles de Gaulle in 1959.
Apart from mainland and Corsica, France has six so called overseas departments, for instance Guadeloupe, Martinique and Reunion. It also has smaller colonies called overseas territories like French Polynesia and New Caledonia.
The color often referred to as mint green doesn’t really have anything to do with the color of a mint leaf. It is however the color you get when shaking up a Grasshopper cocktail. Made with equal parts green Crème de menthe, white Crème de cacao and cream it is perfect as an after dinner cocktail and can easily double as a liquid dessert.
The Grasshopper is yet another cocktail from New Orleans, created at the city’s second oldest restaurant Tujague’s, opened in 1856. The Grasshopper was invented by Philibert Guichet Jr. in 1919 for a cocktail competition in New York where it won second prize. Unfortunately it took until the 1950s for the cocktail to become well known and it had its peak during the disco craze of the 1970s and the pastel age of the 1980s.
The glass called Ollo was designed by Alessandro Mendini in 1986 for Studio Alchimia, a precursor to the Memphis Group.
Grasshopper
1 part White Crème de menthe
1 part Green Crème de cacao
1 part cream
Freshly grated nutmeg och chocolate shavings
Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.
Enjoy!
Time for a new exhibition at the fantastic Sempre espresso-bar in the center of Stockholm. This time mobilità will show a combination of two great things, islands and cocktails, each cocktail with an island connected to it (in more or less obvious ways). Singapore Sling, created at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore with the island of Singapore. Sgroppino, made with vodka and lemon sorbet with Capri, the island famous for its lemon groves. Mai Tai, actually created by Trader Vic in California but with its Tahitian name meaning “Out of this world” it fits perfectly with the Tahitian island of Bora Bora. Dark and Stormy, that was invented by Gosling Rum (and has to be made with Gosling Rum) with Gosling’s home island of Bermuda. And finally Champagne Cocktail that ought to be the drink of choice whenever you visit the luxurious island of Saint Barthélemy.
If you’d like to continue drinking cocktails with an island theme you can always have a Piña Colada from Puerto Rico, a Mojito a Daiquiri and more from Cuba, a Pimm’s Cup and Black Velvet from the UK and, of course the classic Manhattan.
Enjoy the Island Happy Hour at Sempre on Jakobsbergsgatan 5, Stockholm, Sweden.
Alvin Lustig was a legendary graphic designer, industrial designer, interior designer and architect. Personally Mr Lustig disliked being labeled, something he thought being limiting, and he simply called himself a designer. But the fact remains that he was a multi diciplinary super designer that didn’t fear any projects and produced amazing end results.
Lustig was born in Denver in 1915 and brought up in Los Angeles where his father worked in the film industry. As a teenager Lustig showed a talent for making puppets and staged shows as a magician. He soon spent more time making posters for his shows than focusing on the show itself and left his career in magic for one in graphic design.
He studied graphic design for a year in Los Angeles before studying for Frank Lloyd Wright at his Talesin Estate in Wisconsin. After a mere 3 months however Lustig had enough of sitting by the master’s feet and he returned to LA. Without the education he was looking for he struck up a friendship with architect Richard Neutra who gave Lustig access to his private library of modern architecture and design.
From the late 1930s to the early 1950s Lustig designed chairs, cabinets, tables, lamps textiles and interiors. His own design studios rendered him many feature articles in architectural magazines, a great feat considering he was essentially self-taught.
In 1937 Lustig opened his first studio in Los Angeles and it didn’t take long until he was known for his book-design. This led to a commission to make book jackets for New Direction, where he created his most well known work.
Through a close friend from college, the engineer William H. Thomas, Lustig who now had made a name for himself as an industrial designer, was commissioned to design a mini helicopter for the Roteron Company. The idea was to make a small, one-seater, affordable helicopter selling for only $2,800. To save on both cost and space it was decided to put the engine between two coaxial rotors.
Being able to pull this off, taking on a design task that was totally alien to him, is, if anything, a testament to Mr Lustig’s talent and genius.
Alvin Lustig sadly suffered from diabetes making him blind at the age of 39 and tragically led to his death at the age of 40.
The last day of the X-mas Countdown is the best day. All the prints are 20% off, not only the cocktails, islands and fabulous architecture featured these last 24 days but also all other prints featured at mobilita.se/shop.
Please let me know what cocktails, long drinks, fizzes, cups, rickeys or other drinks I should make next or if you have any favorite glasses I have overlooked thus far.
Have an Absolutely Fabulous and Happy Holiday!
The first Alexander was made with gin, not brandy and is said to have been created by Troy Alexander while working as a bartender at famed New York City restaurant Rector’s operating from 1899 to 1919. It was made celebrating the fictional character Pheobe Snow, a beautiful woman all dressed in white promoting the use of clean-burning coal on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. Mr Alexander wanted to make a white cocktail to fit the character. Interestingly one of the ads featuring Phoebe Snow promoted that the railway line could take you to Scranton, Joe Biden’s home town.
The recipe was first printed in “Recipes for Mixed Drinks” by Hugo Ensslin in 1915.
When Henry George Charles Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood, and Princess Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary, daughter of King George V and Queen Mary got married in London in 1922 the gin in the Alexander was replaced with brandy in honor of the event.
The glass, Theme Formal, was designed in 1965 by Russel Wright.
1111 Lincoln Road is an office, retail space, residential building and a parking garage all under one roof. The building is situated at the corner of Lincoln Road and Alton Road in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida. It is a perfect location with Lincoln Road being one of the busiest shopping destinations in Miami Beach. 1111 Lincoln Road was designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Jacques Herzog has described the building as a reinterpretation of the essence of Tropical Modernism. The building was completed in 2010.
The cocktail isn’t actually named after the borough itself but rather after the Zoological Park. The Bronx Zoo opened in 1899 and the story goes that either John “Curly” O’Connor, head barman at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria or Johnny Solon from the same bar, created the Bronx cocktail inspired by the novel zoo in 1899 or 1900. That said, many other bartenders have also taken credit for the cocktail.
The first time the Bronx cocktail was mentioned in print was in The Virginia Enterprise in February of 1901 where credit for the invention was given to John “Curly” O’Connor. Johnny Solon on the other hand claimed the cocktail as his own in the book The Old Waldorf-Astoria from 1935.
The cocktail glass is one in a series of glasses called Calci Milanesi, inspired by Milanese architecture, and was designed by Agustina Bottoni in 2018.
More popular in Mexico than the Margarita the Paloma, meaning dove in Spanish, might have gotten its name from a popular Mexican folk song from the 1860’s even though it was created almost 100 years after the song.
Squirt, the first grapefruit soda and commonly used in Palomas, was created in Phoenix, Arizona in 1938. It was advertised as a great mixer with tequila in 1950 but wasn’t actually exported to Mexico until 1955 so the cocktail probably saw the light of day sometime in the 1950s. It might have been the creation of Don Javier Delgado Corona the then owner and bartender at La Capilla in Tequila, Mexico.
The Stacking Glass was designed in 1951 by the Finnish designer Saara Hopea.
In 1957 a representative of the Bols distillery walked into the bar at the Kaiser Hawaiian Village (now the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Resort) in Honolulu. Aiming to boost his sales he asked the bartender Harry K. Yee to create a cocktail featuring Bols Blue Curaçao. Mr Yee tried several variations before settling on vodka, rum, blue curaçao, pineapple juice and sweet-and-sour mix.
Mr Yee named the drink after the classic Bing Crosby song Blue Hawaii from his 1937 film Waikiki Wedding, putting Hawaii on the cocktail map two years before gaining statehood.
Even though Mr Yee’s recipe calls for sweet-and-sour mix the drink is vastly improved by making your own by mixing equal parts lime juice, lemon juice and sugar syrup.
The glass called Billie was designed by the Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester in 2019. Ann Demeulemeester is one of the famous Antwerp Six in the fashion industry.
The Singapore Sling, by many regarded as the national drink of Singapore, was created at the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel by the bartender Mr Ngiam Tong Boon. It was first made sometime between 1899 when Mr Boon started working at the hotel and 1915 when he died traveling back to his native China. At the time etiquette stated that ladies should not consume alcohol in a public setting and instead had to make do with fruit juices. This gave Mr Boon the idea to create a drink that looked like juice but was infused with gin and spirits, finally making it possible for women to have a cocktail at Raffles.
The landmark Raffles Hotel was built in 1886 and was soon to become a favorite hangout for Singapore’s upper-class as well as famous travelers such as Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham, Charlie Chaplin and also Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II.
The original recipe was lost in 1930 but when the drink was published in the Savoy Cocktail Book the same year there are two different recipes for Slings from Singapore. One regular Singapore Sling and one called Straights Sling (after the British colony Straights Settlements). As it happens, the most commonly used recipe today is closer to the Straights version.
The glass was designed by Makoto Komatsu in 1980 and is called Crumple.
This is an old one. It was first published in The Bartender’s Guide by Jerry Thomas in 1862 but the concept of the sour was known and loved for over a century prior to that. During the 18th Century sea travel, especially from Europe to America, was an ordeal with malnutrition and scurvy taking its toll on the sailors. Thanks to Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon, The British Royal Navy started to mix lemon or lime with rum and water to stave off scurvy and so the sour was born, one of the oldest types of cocktails. From there it was only a matter of time before someone started to make a sour with American whiskey and made it what it is today.
The Whiskey Sour is traditionally made with whiskey, lemon juice, sugar and egg white, an ingredient that will smooth out the tartness of the lemon juice. Today the egg white is optional and you often find bars serving the Whiskey Sour without it.
On a side note, calling a spirit diluted with water a grog is also because of Vice-Admiral Vernon. He was known for wearing grogram coats giving him the nickname ”Old Grog”.
The glass called Dondolino was designed by Setsu & Shinobu Ito in 2016 and is painted using a technique with Japanese lacquer called Urushi, generally applied on wood.
The origins of the Saketini cocktail are not clear. It is said to have been invented by Matsuda San, a chef from Queens who introduced the drink at the New York World’s Fair in 1964.
After the World’s Fair the recipe for the Saketini was lost and the cocktail led an all but forgotten life until the -tini craze in the 1990s. Even though the Saketini was invented long before this the cocktail historian David Wondrich still puts the Saketini (maybe a but unfairly) in ”that sickly and dismal tribe” of chocolate martinis, mango martinis, and appletinis.
Another possible origin story is that the Saketini was invented at the first Benihana restaurant on West 56th Street in New York City. Benihana was founded by 25-year old Hiroaki Aoki the same year as the World’s Fair, 1964, and the cocktail is said to first having been made that same year.
The sake cup was designed in 1958 by Japanese glassware designer Masakichi Awashima.
In 1956 an international design competition was held for the Sydney Opera House. From the 233 submitted entries, representing architects from 32 countries, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon was announced the winner receiving 5,000 Australian pounds for his design. Legend has it that Utzon’s design was rescued by Finnish-American architect and designer Eero Saarinen from a pile of rejected entries.
The construction was expected to take four years and cost $7 million. Instead it took 14 years, involving 10,000 construction workers and ended up costing a then whopping $102 million. It finally opened it’s doors to the public on 20 October 1973.
The building comprises multiple performance venues, which together host well over 1,500 performances annually (on a regular year) and is visited by more than 1.2 million people. As one of the most popular visitor attractions in Australia, the site is visited by more than 10.9 million people annually.
The Cosmopolitan is said to have been invented in 1985 by Miami bartender Cheryl Cook at a South Beach bar called the Strand. Wanting to make a perfect cocktail for a Martini glass Cook used the Kamikaze as a base, changed the regular vodka to citrus-flavored vodka and added a splash of cranberry juice.
Others believe it was first invented by Toby Cecchini in 1988 when he was working at New York’s Odeon. Cecchini used Absolut Citron, the second of the range of flavored vodkas from Absolut and released in 1988, and made it a big hit in the New York bar scene. With the help of the characters in Sex and the City, where the Cosmo was almost an essential part of the plot, the Cosmopolitan turned into a modern classic.
The glass is called Margot and was designed by Felicia Ferrone in 2013.
The Champagne Cocktail was referenced as early as in 1855 in a book by Robert Tomes called “Panama in 1855”. It made it into the first ever cocktailbook in 1862 when it appeared in Jerry Thomas’s book “The Bar Tenders Guide” . Jerry Thomas is considered by many to be the father of American mixology.
Champagne cocktails were mentioned by Mark Twain in 1869 in his book Innocents Abroad but was surely drunk long before that. This version, also called Maharajah’s Burra-Peg (burra meaning big or important in hindi and peg being old British slang for drink) is taken from Charles H. Baker’s book The Gentleman’s Companion from 1939.
Even though this cocktail remains at true classic it definitely has its detractors. David Embury, famous for his book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks called the cocktail “a decidedly inferior drink” and “an incongruous mess” that no true lover of Champagne should ever try. Just the thought of polluting Champagne with sugar and bitters was sacrilegious to him.
The Tulip glass was designed by Nils Landberg for the Swedish company Orrefors in 1957.
The caffè latte has been known by different names throughout Europe since the 17th century. It was first mentioned in print in 1867 by William Dean Howell in his book “Italian Journeys” and was served in regions frequented by Americans. In the 1950s it appeared on menus in Berkeley, California and via Seattle in the 1980s the caffè latte made it back to Europe.
The cup is called Landscape and was designed in 2008 by Patricia Urquiola for Rosenthal.
