In Vincenzo Latronico’s novella “Perfection” (originally published by Fitzcarraldo, and, in the U.S., by New York Review of Books), Tom and Anna, two young digital creatives, aspire to an idealized life plucked from discerning social feeds: modernist seating in an industrial urban loft, a black metal side table with the latest issue of Monocle, an Anglepoise lamp with house plants positioned just so to look like the pages of Apartamento. The writing is deliberately superficial and deeply relatable—a painfully accurate depiction of a curated life that feels only ever quasi-real. What are the things that become meaningful over time, and that last? Which objects do I like enough to give to the people I love? The objects listed here come from the studios of friends, designers, illustrators, and makers I admire. They follow some of Dieter Rams’s principles of good design: they are utilitarian, durable, minimalist, and aesthetic.
Warning: some of the items are made in limited quantities and will sell out quickly, but I encourage you to browse the sites they are listed on. Labour and Wait, Best Made, Wms & Co., and Florentine are among my favorite sources for gift-giving.
What Day Is It?
The most prominent object on our kitchen table is an analog calendar. Filling out my family’s daily pursuits (Ultimate Frisbee practice, choir lessons, dinners out) is a family ritual. Manufactum sells a minimalist weekly calendar ($19) that is our organizational bible. Crispin Finn makes a wall calendar ($39) for the entire year that’s aesthetic enough to function as a poster. Seeing the whole year at once is a wonderful way to visualize time. John Lennon was a devout user of the New Yorker Desk Diary ($60), which includes cartoons and covers of the magazine, in addition to a monthly planner. Best Made, which began as a shop centered on high-end painted axes, sells a traditional Japanese daily calendar ($68) that includes the lunar phases and zodiac signs; it’s screen-printed by hand, with bold typography on a semitransparent vellum. You can see the next day underneath, as if peering into the future. Or, instead of starting each day with a number, begin with an image—a watercolor landscape, or a witty drawing—with the illustrator Christoph Niemann’s new calendar Every Day ($52). The celebrated Dutch designer Karel Martens uses metal shapes and found objects to create abstract and colorful numerals in Every Day Is a New Day ($45).
What Time Is It?
Designers tend to be obsessed with watches because they are both aesthetic and utilitarian, equal parts form and function. The legendary graphic designer Tibor Kalman (who created Colors magazine) designed a collection of watches in the nineties that are now being reissued as they were originally produced, by M & Co Labs ($350). One of the watch designs, Askew, playfully scrambles the positions of the numbers; Onomatopoeia replaces numerals for tiny spot drawings; and the most minimal design, 10-1-4, in a classic exercise of the design mantra “Less is more,” uses only three numbers. (It’s in the MOMA design collection.) No watch is coveted by designers as much as the Max Bill watch ($1,030). Bill, a Bauhaus-trained Swiss designer with work in the permanent collection of MOMA, created this piece for the German company Junghans, in 1960. It is exceptionally elegant and restrained, with every line and mark carefully considered. I’ve always loved military watches for their no-nonsense design and easy-to-read numerals knocking out of a black background, like the instruments in the cockpit of an old airplane, and my favorite on the market is made by the Canadian company Marathon ($575). One thing that makes military watches so fun is that you can demilitarize them by customizing the bands with bright colors through the Strap Tailor ($37). On a larger scale, Mondaine makes an iconic wall clock ($345) using a design developed for the Swiss Railways. Mine hangs on the kitchen wall and keeps my family on track. In an expression of Swiss precision, the red second hand is the most prominent element. If you are not really in it to tell time, the German artist Sarah Illenberger makes Slowlex ($845). It’s a piece of jewelry disguised as a watch, and completely nonfunctional. It’s subversive, sexy, and literally timeless.
Art Supplies
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My favorite kinds of gifts, to receive and to offer, are from art-supply stores. The Toronto Ink Company offers handmade inks ($25-$32) using elements from the urban environment: rich hues of blue from oxidized metals, and old railway spikes foraged from the streets of Toronto. Sample color swatches, called “test prints,” are works of art in themselves. Inks are useless without paper, and I always have a few sketchbooks stacked on my desk ready for use. My favorite is a German Pasteboard sketchbook ($20-$40), made with a blank chipboard cover, a bright cloth spine in a selection of Bauhaus colors (red, yellow, and blue), and natural white paper suitable for ink drawing. Because of the cloth binding, it opens flat. The typesetter in me loves the Japanese rubber-stamp set ($147), possibly drawn by hand in a serif font similar to Cheltenham Condensed, sold by Wms & Co. Beyond the creative potential (think of the rubber-stamp drawings of Saul Steinberg), it would make an eye-catching object on your shelf or desk. Another printmaking gift is a mini linocut set ($41), sold at the British home-goods store Labour and Wait. It has everything you need to print multiple editions of whatever you design. Create your own holiday card! The holy grail of mini ballpoint pens is the Lamy Pico ($39), available in neon colors, and half the size of a normal pen, with a sleek design and an ingenious telescopic mechanism for releasing the tip. Pantone, a universal system for accurately specifying colors, and worshipped by designers and printers around the world, sells a straightforward ruler ($29). It comes in a variety of colors (of course), and would look great on any desk; my favorites are Red 2035 and Yellow 012.
Textiles
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For most of the nineties, my wardrobe was black (with the occasional navy so dark that it might as well have been black). Since then, I’ve been on a mission to bring more color into my life. One of the most stunning pieces of product design I’ve come across is the Tex-Lock ($169), a cloth-covered bicycle lock designed by art students in Leipzig. It’s theft-proof: saw blades get ensnared in the fabric covering, and clippers can’t cut through the fibres. The lock comes in bright orange and looks good looped around your neck during transit.
Anticipating the colder weather about to descend on New York, you might check out the Dutch furnishing brand Suite702’s reinvention of the hot-water bottle ($62). The unique rounded-rectangle shape, with bold colors and racing stripes, may just make you want to hibernate. But, if you decide to brave the elements, keep in mind the German proverb “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” Lloyd’s made-to-order Canadian-fleece toque with a massive brim ($62) will make you feel invincible. My favorite colors are red and “epoca” blue. To fill in awkward silences at holiday cocktail parties, the San Francisco artist Tucker Nichols created a set of hand-lettered napkins ($36), printed in pink and red, on linen, with suggested topics of conversation: “Where birds go in big storms,” “fear of escalators,” “smog v. fog.” As a companion piece, he designed subjects to avoid: “Root Canals,” “When was the last time you wore that sweater,” “Cloth diapers.” I was happy to discover that Karel Martens also collaborated, with Suite702, on a series of modernist towels with bold stripes and blocks of color ($28-$229), inspired by the colors on the beach in Le Havre, France. On the other side of the Channel, in Cornwall, the illustrator Tabby Booth designed the Odessa throw ($250), for Slowdown Studio, depicting a mermaid staring at a red fish. It’s remarkably primitive, and powerful.
For the Home
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To draw, I need a really good light. Anglepoise invented the now ubiquitous and widely imitated adjustable-spring desk lamp in the nineteen-thirties. Paul Smith refreshed the design by introducing primary colors to the steel arms of the Type 75 Mini Desk Lamp ($370). This simple design move transforms an understated lamp into a fun object. Another great use of color can be found in the Dutch coffee-brewing machines made by Moccamaster ($369). Designed in the nineteen-sixties to bring high-quality brewing to Scandinavian homes, the red, orange, yellow, and green machines are surely intended as an antidote to the monochromatic, dark Nordic winters. They remind me of the colorful houses often seen in traditional Scandinavian towns. For those who drink tea, the Japanese enamel kettle Noda Horo ($41), with its simple forms and bright colors, is another design classic. If you want to make this gift more special, pair it with Taiwanese tea ($8-$46) from Té Company, a shop in the West Village. Florentine sells an affordable designer butter knife ($35) engraved with an abstract illustration by Oded Webman, which transforms a mundane kitchen utensil into a small work of art. Its dull edge and playful motif make it suitable for children. The Kiridashi knife ($128), sold through Best Made, looks more dangerous. Unlike a jackknife, it has a penlike cap (also known as a scabbard cap). Made of steel, iron, and magnolia wood, the knife has an elemental quality, and adheres to Rams’s principle “Good design is as little design as possible.”
Where to Put It All
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After my cloth pencil cases deteriorated, owing to wear and tear and leaking black ink, I upgraded to a steel box ($39) from Toyo. I pack pens, brushes, erasers, inks, pencils, and earbuds in this box, but it can hold anything, and versatility is one of its virtues. It’s also lightweight and durable. (I’ve had mine for two years, and it does not have a scratch.) The box comes in a variety of colors and sizes, and is handcrafted in Japan in a retro style. As someone who tends to lose art supplies, I can tell you that this inexpensive item has improved my life. Another Japanese steel company, Nakamura Seiko, makes a beautifully proportioned toolbox ($48). Not as bulky as those from heavy-duty American brands such as Stanley, it comes in bright powder-coated red, green, and blue. Conceal a bottle of locally distilled Kings County Bourbon ($23-$84) inside for a bonus surprise.
The extra-large River Café tote bag ($54), from Ruthie Rogers’s legendary London restaurant, is the perfect urban bag for running errands. Whether Yves Klein blue or bright yellow, this bag radiates joy. Ruthie’s late husband, the architect Richard Rogers, incorporated color into all of his buildings, notably the Pompidou Center, and I can’t help but think that his ethos is woven into the fabric of this bag. The designer Deborah Ehrlich, known for her exquisitely sculpted handblown glassware, released a super-light travel bag ($750) made of reused sails. Because sails are made to withstand gale-force winds, the bag is structurally strong, yet looks light and luminous. Ehrlich is not the first to make bags from old sails, but she is the first to make them this refined. They’re handcrafted in Florence with sustainably made materials, including leather from Blue Hill at Stone Barns. ♦