A Holiday Gift Guide: Presents to Thank Your Host
For the pet-lover who hates taking care of pets: a self-sufficient ecosystem containing two or three miniature unneedy shrimp that can live for years without much help from you. Along with the crustaceans, the four-inch-diameter glass sphere contains gravel, an elegant branch of artificial coral, and algae that supply oxygen and food—the perfect houseguests ($99).
Pot, protests, and Cher are back, so why not lava lamps? They were invented by Edward Craven Walker, a British accountant who made underwater nudist films on the side. Walker came up with the idea for the lamp in a pub, where he saw an experimental egg-timer contraption that entailed boiling a mixture of oil and water (when the oil blobs reach the surface, the egg is cooked). Mathos, the lighting company Walker founded in 1963 to manufacture his creation, still makes lava lamps. Among them: a slim column nearly ten feet high (£8,500), a tower that looks like a dolphin about to take off into outer space (£415), and a shiny copper-plated, candle-powered device that resembles a big pill capsule (£50). Mathos doesn’t ship to the U.S., and why go through the trouble of smuggling? Here in America we have groovy new ones that evoke elongated hourglasses and rockets (starting at $30).
Some letter openers are so appealing that it’s a treat to open your jury-duty notice and junk mail. If you no longer receive mail, you can use the paper knives as peanut-butter spreaders. Here are a few that any desk would be happy to show off. A gold-plated envelope ripper that doubles as a ruler; its graduated markings in inches are engraved along the edge because don’t you want to measure your Visa bill ($36)? From the late Enzo Mari, the famed Italian product and furniture designer, a sleek twist of shimmering steel that looks as though it might give you the power to cut through stone ($70). If the Ingalls family of “Little House on Prairie” owned a letter opener, it would be hand-forged by one of the blacksmiths at Wicks Forge, a family business that’s been in the metal industry since the nineteen-hundreds, when a Wick worked on the Statue of Liberty. The slender blade, about eight inches long, curls back on itself into a rounded spiral like the swirl of soft-serve ice cream and ends in a leaflike embellishment. It can be personalized with a set of initials, a name, or message, up to ten characters ($30).
Have you been a houseguest for so long your mail’s being forwarded there? In that case, a practical present for your host and you is a blanket or towel. You can’t go wrong at ZigZagZurich, where browsing textiles is second best to viewing an exhibit of modern art. There are lots of Mondrianesque patterns, but also some whimsical scenes such as the wool blanket titled “The LSD Marathon,” which depicts in black and white a bunch of “runners” doing their own thing ($270; in general, blankets are $203-$270; towels and mini-blankets, from $107-$134).
If you’re planning to spill red wine on your host’s white sofa, bringing paper cocktail napkins is a useless but thoughtful gesture. Thematically appropriate would be these retro-styled napkins on which one of the two women, dressed in nineteen-fifties cocktail dresses and sporting nineteen-fifties hairdos, whispers to the other: “Who is this ‘Moderation’ we are supposed to be drinking with?” ($11 for twenty). Another to consider is the nostalgic selection from The New York Review of Books on which there’s an illustration of bookshelves packed with novels ($10 for twenty-five).
How about an assortment of pencils from Kenya? Hand-carved and hand-painted by craftsmen from the Kamba tribe to represent the heads of different safari animals, they could understudy at “Little Lion King” ($49 for a set of five; $74 for ten). If you are giving these to a Gen Z-er or young millennial, I advise bundling the package with a copy of the funny “How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants” ($22). This tongue-in-cheek artisanal guide to sharpening pencils, whose chapters include one on how to break into someone’s house and smash their electric pencil sharpener, was published in 2013, but used copies abound on Amazon as well as used-books purveyors such as Alibris.
Maybe the best house present is a house? Interest rates are still high, though, so maybe a candle shaped like a house? Design Within Reach has them on sale for $33, reduced from $55. Hand-painted tapers ($25) and votive candles ($29 for a set of three) from South Africa look as if they’re upholstered in bright, cheerful textiles, heavy on the orange and greens. Each candle is one of a kind. If you learn anything by looking at the candles of Greek gods and goddesses on Etsy, it’s that there must have been a great gym on Mt. Olympus. A buff eight-inch-tall Zeus is $76. Venus is taller (nine inches) and equally fit but goes for less (typical! $40).
