A Mexican Boutique With Penguin Saltshakers and Nopal Coin Purses

Oslo has been ambitiously reinventing itself in the last few years; dramatic new architectural monuments like the National Museum and the Deichman Bjørvika library are invigorating the harbor city. And this week marks the arrival of a sensational place to stay: the 11-room Villa Inkognito in Oslo’s elegant Frogner neighborhood. A black-and-white entrance hall gives way to colorful public spaces, making plain that its interior designers — Adam Greco and Alice Lund, the duo behind the studio GrecoDeco — had fun as they updated the former residence from the 1870s. Every room is a joyful mash up of historically inspired wallpapers, jewel-toned painted walls, wood paneling and a mix of antique and custom-designed furniture. “We wanted to keep some of its original Victorian-style interiors but also add some inspiration from other design movements at that time: Art Nouveau, English Arts and Crafts movement and the trend of collecting objects from Asia,” says Greco. Although the Villa is technically part of the six-month-old Sommerro hotel (the main building, also designed by GrecoDeco, houses 231 rooms with an Art Deco public bath and swimming pool) and is connected to it by a discreet walkway, it was designed to be its own intimate space with access to a private kitchen and chef. The ground floor is made up of common rooms including Spectre, an honesty bar with silver gilded walls and tiles of salvaged golden onyx. Greco hopes that guests feel like they’re “staying in an eccentric private mansion.” From $615 a night, villainkognito.com.

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The Mexico City Boutique Curating Folk Art With a Sense of Humor

For the past three years, the interior designer Renata Prieto and the graphic designer Santiago Fernández have been visiting artisans’ workshops throughout Mexico in search of the most intriguing and amusing pieces. Normally it’s not the first item they find, nor the most popular, but rather the one where the artisan has decided to experiment with new shapes or colors. It might be a handmade Minion miniature, a coin purse that could be mistaken for an avocado or a saltshaker in the shape of a penguin wearing a hat. The latter inspired the name of the boutiques where Prieto and Fernández curate and sell such objects. At Pingüino’s three colorful spaces (two in Mexico City and one in Merida), the lines between traditional Mexican aesthetics and pop imagery are blurred, offering a reminder not to take…