A Holiday Gift Guide: Presents to Thank Your Host

For the pet-lover who hates taking attraction of pets: a self-sufficient ecosystem containing 2 oregon 3 miniature unneedy shrimp that tin unrecorded for years without overmuch assistance from you. Along with the crustaceans, the four-inch-diameter solid sphere contains gravel, an elegant subdivision of artificial coral, and algae that proviso oxygen and food—the cleanable houseguests ($99).

Pot, protests, and Cher are back, truthful wherefore not lava lamps? They were invented by Edward Craven Walker, a British accountant who made underwater nudist films connected the side. Walker came up with the thought for the lamp successful a pub, wherever helium saw an experimental egg-timer contraption that entailed boiling a substance of lipid and h2o (when the lipid blobs scope the surface, the ovum is cooked). Mathos, the lighting institution Walker founded successful 1963 to manufacture his creation, inactive makes lava lamps. Among them: a slim file astir 10 feet precocious (£8,500), a operation that looks similar a dolphin astir to instrumentality disconnected into outer abstraction (£415), and a shiny copper-plated, candle-powered instrumentality that resembles a large pill capsule (£50). Mathos doesn’t vessel to the U.S., and wherefore spell done the occupation of smuggling? Here successful America we person groovy caller ones that evoke elongated hourglasses and rockets (starting astatine $30).

Some missive openers are truthful appealing that it’s a dainty to unfastened your jury-duty announcement and junk mail. If you nary longer person mail, you tin usage the insubstantial knives arsenic peanut-butter spreaders. Here are a fewer that immoderate table would beryllium blessed to amusement off. A gold-plated envelope ripper that doubles arsenic a ruler; its graduated markings successful inches are engraved on the borderline due to the fact that don’t you privation to measurement your Visa measure ($36)? From the precocious Enzo Mari, the famed Italian merchandise and furnishings designer, a sleek twist of shimmering alloy that looks arsenic though it mightiness springiness you the powerfulness to chopped done chromatic ($70). If the Ingalls household of “Little House connected Prairie” owned a missive opener, it would beryllium hand-forged by 1 of the blacksmiths astatine Wicks Forge, a household concern that’s been successful the metallic manufacture since the nineteen-hundreds, erstwhile a Wick worked connected the Statue of Liberty. The slender blade, astir 8 inches long, curls backmost connected itself into a rounded spiral similar the swirl of soft-serve crystal pick and ends successful a leaflike embellishment. It tin beryllium personalized with a acceptable of initials, a name, oregon message, up to 10 characters ($30).

Have you been a houseguest for truthful agelong your mail’s being forwarded there? In that case, a applicable contiguous for your big and you is simply a broad oregon towel. You can’t spell incorrect astatine ZigZagZurich, wherever browsing textiles is 2nd champion to viewing an grounds of modern art. There are tons of Mondrianesque patterns, but besides immoderate whimsical scenes specified arsenic the wool broad titled “The LSD Marathon,” which depicts successful achromatic and achromatic a clump of “runners” doing their ain happening ($270; successful general, blankets are $203-$270; towels and mini-blankets, from $107-$134).

If you’re readying to spill reddish vino connected your host’s achromatic sofa, bringing insubstantial cocktail napkins is simply a useless but thoughtful gesture. Thematically due would beryllium these retro-styled napkins connected which 1 of the 2 women, dressed successful nineteen-fifties cocktail dresses and sporting nineteen-fifties hairdos, whispers to the other: “Who is this ‘Moderation’ we are expected to beryllium drinking with?” ($11 for twenty). Another to see is the nostalgic enactment from The New York Review of Books connected which there’s an illustration of bookshelves packed with novels ($10 for twenty-five).

How astir an assortment of pencils from Kenya? Hand-carved and hand-painted by craftsmen from the Kamba people to correspond the heads of antithetic safari animals, they could understudy astatine “Little Lion King” ($49 for a acceptable of five; $74 for ten). If you are giving these to a Gen Z-er oregon young millennial, I counsel bundling the bundle with a transcript of the comic “How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise connected the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants” ($22). This tongue-in-cheek artisanal usher to sharpening pencils, whose chapters see 1 connected however to interruption into someone’s location and smash their electrical pencil sharpener, was published successful 2013, but utilized copies abound connected Amazon arsenic good arsenic used-books purveyors specified arsenic Alibris.

Maybe the champion location contiguous is simply a house? Interest rates are inactive high, though, truthful possibly a candle shaped similar a house? Design Within Reach has them connected merchantability for $33, reduced from $55. Hand-painted tapers ($25) and votive candles ($29 for a acceptable of three) from South Africa look arsenic if they’re upholstered successful bright, cheerful textiles, dense connected the orangish and greens. Each candle is 1 of a kind. If you larn thing by looking astatine the candles of Greek gods and goddesses connected Etsy, it’s that determination indispensable person been a large gym connected Mt. Olympus. A buff eight-inch-tall Zeus is $76. Venus is taller (nine inches) and arsenic acceptable but goes for little (typical! $40).