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11.21.24

Gift Guides

Lace Pants and Stone-Encrusted Pillboxes: Jill’s 2024 Sight Unseen Gift Guide

Part II of our annual gift guide! A reminder: whether you’d actually buy these things is, to a certain extent, beside the point; it’s how enjoyable it can be to dig into a well-curated list and imagine a future when your home might be full of incredible things, and the world might just be a better place. Today’s gift guide comes from Jill, who tends to make personalized hats on Etsy for her loved ones but here is coveting a hefty glass catchall by an up-and-coming studio, the mixed-metal ring JB Blunk made for his wife, a semi-precious stone-adorned pillbox, a menorah that reminds us of a lazy Susan, and more. See — and shop — her full list below!
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11.20.24

Gift Guides

Chocolate Sardines and Albers Hats: Monica’s 2024 Sight Unseen Gift Guide

This month marks Sight Unseen's 15th birthday (!!!) and there was only one gift we really wanted, which — unfortunately — we woke up on November 6 to find we definitively had not received. But before we gear up for a tough few years, we'll be reveling in this season's temporary reprieve, and the moments of togetherness and/or much-needed rest it will bring. In that sense, it's the perfect time to share with you our annual Sight Unseen gift guides, which while always at least a little bit practical (who wouldn't love an $18 chocolate sardine?), offer a hefty dose of fantasy and fun. Today’s guide comes from Monica, who's coveting Josef and Anni Albers hats, Greek ceramics with 1960s motifs, a sweater adorned with Franco Albini's iconic Milan metro handlebar, a wooden box meant to discourage you from doom-scrolling, and more. See — and shop — her full list after the jump!
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11.20.23

Gift Guides

Italian Fruit Bowls and Books About Bookends: Monica’s 2023 Gift Guide

Welcome to what just so happens to be our 10th annual Sight Unseen gift guide series! Today's guide comes from Monica, who's excited about Gianfranco Frattini fruit bowls, abstract sculptural book stands, and the bright-green floral duvet cover that's given her bedroom serious vibes. See — and shop — her full list after the jump!
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12.06.22

Gift Guides

Latke Candles and LP Stands: The 2022 Gift Guide, Part I

If you asked us what our absolute top gift recommendation would be for 2022, you probably already know by now what we'd answer: our new book, How to Live With Objects. But in case you need a few other ideas, don't worry, we've also compiled 100 best-gift-of-2022 runners-up, starting with Monica's 50 picks, including a colorful under-$200 drinks cart, a rhinestone-encrusted hand sanitizer pouch, and a pair of hand-shaped wooden salad servers.
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12.01.21

Gift Guides

Pom Pom Pillows and Hand Rugs: The Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part III

For those of you who would rather give your partner a hand-thrown ceramic vase than a mass-manufactured one, or are more into gifting your sibling a carved-wood ice bucket than the latest iPad, this guide is for you: Click through to see and shop our top 14 handmade gifts from Wescover's stable of independent makers — including Maja Dlugolecki, Christopher Norman, Esque Studio, and more.
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11.29.21

Gift Guides

Foot Vases and Artichoke Plates: The 2021 Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part I

We always look forward to putting together our annual gift guides, where we get to turn our brains off, scour our favorite stores for wishlist-worthy objects, and focus on sheer indulgence for a minute. What's our favorite candle this year, our favorite wine glass? Which books are we dying to have on our coffee table now, and in the case of Monica (whose guide is featured today), which foot-shaped vase? We hope you can get some inspiration from these lists — particularly when it comes to supporting small businesses and talented independent makers.
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Sight Unseen gift guide 2020
11.19.20

Gift Guides

Color-Blocked Wetsuits and Ceramic Stash Boxes: The 2020 Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part III

May we interest you in a gloopy borosilicate coffee pourer? How about a checkerboard body pillow? A donabe, to cook all that rice you've been hoarding, and a surfboard, if you're lucky enough to live in a temperate climate, seem like perfect quarantine gifts. Those items and more were chosen for today's gift guide by a selection of Sight Unseen's far-flung contributing editors and writers: Los Angeles–based Dana Covit and Jennifer S. Li, Milan-based Laura May Todd, Cape Town– based Alix-Rose Cowie, and New York–based Shoko Wanger, Natalie Shukur, and Drew Zeiba.
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sight unseen gift guide 2020
11.18.20

Gift Guides

Slime Lamps and Head-Shaped Incense Burners: The 2020 Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part II

On the one hand, to publish a gift guide in 2020 seems like an immense act of magical thinking. 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. In our second 2020 gift guide, this one by Monica, may we interest you in some incense burners? How about a gloppy, foamy desk lamp, or some CBD hot sauce? We're also pretty excited about Christin Ripley's marble-printed husband — who couldn't use a hug from a pillow right now? Give a gift, or two, to someone you love. It might just make you feel better.
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design gift guide 2016
12.01.16

Gift Guides

The Best Gifts for Design Lovers Under $50

For as long as we've been publishing holiday gift guides — and this is our fourth annual one! — we've been dividing them up by editor, which eventually became predictable even to us. Want something monochrome? Go to Monica's gift guide. In the mood for something colorful? Jill's got you covered. Need something ever-so-slightly less girly? Our junior editors are invariably men. This year, we decided to do our readers a service, and lay things out according to the cold hard cash you'll have to put down.
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12.03.15

Gift Guides

Our 2015 Holiday Gift Guide — Monica’s Picks

Welcome to Sight Unseen’s annual holiday gift guide! This week, we're sharing our best, most covetable, seriously-buy-me-now finds from around the web. We've narrowed it down to 25 items from each editor — a seriously herculean task when it's basically your job to source cool things all year round. Next up is Monica, whose wish list this year runs the gamut from hairy pillows to hiking boots.
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