Color stained stoneware bowls by Ladies & Gentlemen Studio
This week saw the New York Gift Fair descend on New York City for the second time this year. One of our favourite booths belonged to JOIN - a group of ten independent West Coast-based studios who join together to collectively show their new home goods and personal accessories. This year marked JOIN’s fifth year at the show and their largest booth to date. Read the rest of this entry »
Last month at NYIGF, iconic sketchbook brand Moleskine introduced the Messages Collection, an innovative concept of postal cards and a delightful evolution of its leather bound sketchbook. Postal Notebooks unite the envelope, card and notebook into one with an envelope-shaped notebook, ready-to-mail, with 8 blank pages to fill with a personal handmade message. Postal Notebooks have foldable flaps that turn it into an envelope and a Singer sewn-stitched spine. When the flaps are taken off, this card turns back into a notebook.
Chaffinch
Another gem from NYIGF. Hipster-ish distributor Sweet Bella had these sweet bird calls on hand in their booth (along with a bevy of other Brooklyn-esque products). The bird calls are extremely accurate and were painstakingly developed over years by Monsieur Morel who has been making calls since he was a child in the mountains of southern France. The calls are slowly and conscientiously created from lasting materials such as boxwood, maple, beech, leather and brass, and according to Morel, learning “to recognize birds by their song, to communicate with them, to discover, observe and love them – this is ‘without doubt a first step in understanding the secret of happiness.’”
I stumbled across this gem in the Global Handmade section of NYIGF this week. Makaua baskets and mats are hand woven from palm leaves, abundantly grown in the south of Mexico. The dried palm leaves are stained to create a rich array of violet hues to contrast the natural golden colour of the leaves. The baskets are sturdy, beautiful and in demand: After debuting at Maison & Objet, and now showing at NYIGF, founder Beatriz Carregha Kunhardt shared with me that interest is so high that Makaua is sifting through hundreds of inquiries to ensure that retailers are in line with the company’s mission, creating a consistent message from production to consumer.