Checkered Aprons and Natural Wines: The 2020 Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part I

On the one hand, to publish a gift guide in 2020 seems like an immense act of magical thinking. After all, what do we really want? We want the vaccine, we want to visit our parents, we want to see live music, we want to run outside without a mask, we want to flip the Senate, we want to travel with abandon, we want to sit inside a restaurant, drinking by candlelight, shoulder to shoulder with our best friends. On the other hand, one of the small, analog joys we have found in this period of sequestering and uncertainty is the act of sending a gift by mail.

So, as we work to achieve those things, may we interest you in some house slippers? How about a slime green iPhone case? An electric bike seems like a good idea right about now, as we continue to avoid public transportation and fret about the environmental impact of cars (though, tbh, another of the joys of this time has been riding around in friends’ cars, like we’re in high school again). Along with your usual assortment of sculptural vases, colored glassware, natural wines, and extraneous cookware. (We’re a type). Over the next three days we hope to motivate you to give a gift, or two, to someone you love. It might just make you feel better.

*A note about our opening images this year: Since we couldn’t easily do a photo shoot, we opted for renderings at the top of each gift guide. Inspired by a recent collaboration between designer Oscar Piccolo and 3-D artist Riccardo Fornoni of Cream Atelier, which resembled a classical painting, we asked Fornoni to turn our gift guide picks into painterly still lifes, too. Each image evokes a different work of art, today’s being the Metaphysical Still Life by Giorgio Morandi.

Opening image: Bon Bon Mega by Helle Mardahl, $649; Valentine Vessel by Simone Bodmer Turner, $925; Half Diamond Vase by BZIPPY, $125; Light Song Exchange Lamps by Bennet Schlesinger, $3,000 for a set of two