THE INTERIORS GIFT GUIDE
Spoil yourself, or someone else, just promise to go wild – or at least as wild as the year we've just enduredWe’ve gravitated towards homewares like moths to a flame. And it’s no wonder. Never have we been more aware of our four walls and what’s inside them. Furniture that was once loved is now berated for how uncomfortable and impractical it is. Conversely, nick-nacks have supplied small but sustained bouts of joy – whether it's a bowl to sit your fruit in, or a vase on your bedside table, because you deserve to wake up to something that isn’t downright gloomy. Well your loved ones do, too. And not only is it thoughtful to buy them homewares, but wise, because whenever they look at it, or use it, they will think of you. Imagine, forever tethering yourself to cheering thoughts.
But what to get? Cast your mind back to a Zoom quiz, when you were bored and gazing idly into the abyss of their living room. What was working and what was, well, not? What's there out of convenience and what's there out of choice? Remember, people like practical presents, so if there's an opportunity to get something that's useful and good-looking, then embrace it. A basket to hold folded blankets or needles from an overheated and near balding Christmas Tree? A jug to replace the water filler for the iron that they're drinking from?
Don't dismiss explicitly utilitarian things like knives and forks and towels, because they can quite easily be objects of desire. The interior designer Beata Heuman keeps her washing up liquid in a Kilner Swing Top Preserve Bottle, as to turn dull things decorative. No surprise then that her new monster-mouthed salt pig does just that. Elsewhere, the checkered towel from Arddun Stores looks like the cross section of a Battenberg cake, which can only be a good thing as you wash your face in the morning – or dry your hands for the hundredth time.