€140
For serving spoons with a difference, turn to L’Oeil de KO. This platform for artisanal objects is brought to us by Studio KO, the Paris and Marrakech-based architecture practice behind the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech. Anything will taste good served from this curvaceous brass beauty by Lisbon metalsmith Sebastião Lobo.
£50
Louise Bourgeois is best known for her giant spider installations, but textiles also played a lead role in her work, perhaps as a result of working in her parents’ tapestry restoration workshop in Paris when she was young. This quartet of corkboard placemats from the House of Voltaire features eye-popping textile designs from her archive to give some geometric drama to your tabletop.
£495
Add a pinch of surrealism to your dining table this festive season with a pair of salt and pepper grinders by American artists, the Haas Brothers. With wooden bases, topped with gold heads, the condiment holders bear the typically playful spirit of twin brothers Nikolai and Simon, who like to blur the line between art and design.
Freya Bramble-Carter’s ceramic vases have a visceral quality – you can’t help but reach out and touch their glaze-laden surfaces. The London-based artist trained under her father Chris Bramble but she likes to ‘unlearn’ the rules, taking a highly experimental approach to her craft and allowing the making process to determine the final result. Named after the Greek goddess of flowers, her Antheia Vase for the House of Hackney is a bulb-shaped beauty with a luscious concoction of glazes that appears to run down its surface. It gives a humble bunch of flowers a spiritual dimension.
Tanya Gomez’s lustrous porcelain vessels are exercises in simplicity. For her chromatic Undulating series, she took cues from the dramatic sea paintings of masters, such as Turner and Whistler, as well as her own experiences of being on the ocean, which gave her ‘an insight into the immense mass of colour and light that is ever changing on the horizon,’ as she puts it. Get lost in the watery-blue depths of this striking trio.
We all know the feeling – that hangry sensation, when your empty stomach makes controlling your words an impossibility. Martha Freud does the apologising for you, with her plate emblazoned with the words “I’m Sorry For What I Said When I Was Hungry”. It is one of ten designs from her limited-edition tableware collection, Eat My Words, each piece etched with her signature lettering and bearing comments that reference our relationship to food – mostly good, sometimes not so good and occasionally hilarious – with the ceramicist’s trademark irreverence. We can’t get enough.
£55
Lights, camera, action…! Get a glimpse into the makings of film director Sofia Coppola’s greatest hits in Archive, her new book published by Mack. Confined to her home in Napa, California, during the pandemic, Coppola started wading through boxes of ephemera: early scripts, clippings, doodles and Polaroids. Now she has put these mementos together with musings and personal recollections from films that span from her 1999 directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides, to her upcoming biopic of Priscilla Presley. See how movie magic was made.
£479
Wear your favourite movie snack on your shoulder with JW Anderson’s Popcorn tote bag. The chunky weave of the raffia-style cotton looks good enough to eat. It comes with a bucket-inspired handle and a calfskin leather version of JW Anderson’s classic anchor logo. A delicious addition to your wardrobe.
£4,577
Snuggle up in front of a film this autumn on a sky blue rug by the artist Castro Smith. Look closely and you can see birds hidden within the clouds of the artwork, inspired by the Nepalese skyscape where The Rug Company’s designs are made. Crafted using handknotted Tibetan wool and silk, it is part of the company’s collaboration with the Sarabande Foundation, established by Lee Alexander McQueen to support creatives with scholarships and subsidised studio space. Castro Smith is known for his highly coveted rings inspired by myths and history, often engraved with sea creatures, ships, hearts and dragons. This rug has the same whimsical spirit.
