Gift Show Highlights

Just made my yearly visit to the NY International Gift Show, which is the main showcase for designers of accessories, small furniture, textiles, and a whole lotta other stuff! This is where you go if you have a store and are placing orders for the next season, which means they take one look at my 'designer' badge and leave me alone (more or less).

One of my favorite booths was from Aesthetic Movement, who rep some of the best designers around, from Mud Australia to Set Editions.

Mud produces handmade limoge porcelain dinnerware and what caught my eye is the fantastic color palette. It's also microwave, dishwasher and oven safe, which makes it really practical too!

They also had these great letterpress cards from Set Editions, with simple messages like  "Better Late than Never" and "Truce" (as well as "stop talking"!)

The booth itself was a lot of fun with great chalkboard lettering to identify the various designers.

I love the look of stitched illustrations and really appreciated the urban iconography of kstudiohome.com

They'll even customize a wall piece to match your family!

Another item that caught my eye was the MoshiMoshi bluetooth handset. Pretty sleek.

At Design House StockholmI saw some old favorites, like the Tablo Tray :

and a new favorite, the Manana lamp, which was based on body language sketches the designer made at the end of a long day.

The OLY furniture booth was a treat and I look forward to visiting the flagship store to see more in person

And it was great to see the Dwellfurniture booth as well, where I learned that they will soon have their own store -- can't wait!

And this bench from Jonathan Adler reminded me why he's so good -- apartment size, great colors,

 spotted: Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan from Apartment Therapy. I swear I wasn't stalking him!