Christmas shopping for the person in your life who has an eye for design can sometimes be tedious. This holiday season, delight a lover of design with these unique gifts ideas.
Little Sun Diamond Lamp by Little Sun
This solar-powered LED lamp was developed by Dutch artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen as part of their Little Sun project.
This global initiative, launched in 2012 at Tate Modern, aims to bring sustainable light to the 1.2 billion people worldwide without electricity.
Little Sun Diamond is inspired by nature with its multifaceted lens, which provides up to five hours of bright light after a five-hour charge in the sun.
As part of the Little Sun initiative, every lamp purchased delivers another to an off-grid African community at a more affordable price.
The Little Sun Diamond lamp is listed at $32.
Bauhaus Dessau Mini by Chisel & Mouse
While the centenary of the Bauhaus design school is coming to an end, pay homage to the movement’s founder and renowned architect, Walter Gropius, with this mini replica of the Bauhaus Dessau.
This building was designed by Gropius in the aftermath of World War I in 1925, following the politically motivated closure of the original Bauhaus site in Weimar, Germany.
The campus, which was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1996, bears many architectural similarities to Gropius’s critically acclaimed Fagus Factory — whose miniature is also offered by Chisel & Mouse.
The architectural sculpture of Bauhaus Dessau is listed at $270.
De Stijl Storage Tower by MoMa Design Store
This colorful storage tower pays homage to the Netherland-based De Stijl movement, which sprung up in the late 1910s in reaction to the decorative excesses of Art Deco.
This art movement embraced an abstract, minimalist aesthetic grounded in the basic visual elements of lines and primary colors, as this wooden storage tower testifies.
Perfect to store small office and kitchen supplies, this graphic piece of furniture will take pride of place on the desk of any design enthusiast.
De Stijl Storage Tower is listed at $38.
“Atlas of Furniture Design” by Vitra Design Museum
“Atlas of Furniture Design” is the most comprehensive overview of the history of modern furniture ever published, documenting over 1700 objects by more than 500 designers.
This 1000-page book presents selected pieces by the most significant designers and manufacturers of the past 200 years, including Le Corbusier, Phillippe Starck, Charlotte Perriand and Konstantin Grcic.
Most of them are currently held in the extensive furniture collection of the Vitra Design Museum in Rhein, Germany, which is known as one of the largest of its kind in the world.
“The Atlas paints a portrait of our entire collection while simultaneously providing an unprecedented overview of the history of modern furniture… Whether as a selection of iconic designs or as a history of styles, a chronicle of evolution or of revolution, a history of objects or of images, or a narrative of domestic habits or of individual designers, this book can be read in a vast range of ways,” Mateo Kries, who is the director of the Vitra Design Museum and co-editor of the publication, noted in a statement.
Available in both German and English, “Atlas of Furniture Design” is listed at $195
