David Bowie baubles
Ground control to Santa Claus! Bring a bit of (Ziggy) stardust to your tree this Christmas with these special David Bowie baubles. Each one features an individually hand-painted picture inspired by the photograph of the singer taken by Brian Duffy in 1973 that appeared on the cover of that year’s classic album Aladdin Sane. As the great man once sang, they’re fun and funky.
shop.balticmill.com, £11.95
A candle that smells like a library
In Anchorman, Ron Burgundy boasted: “I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.” Give the VSP in your life Chase and Wonder’s library-scented candle, which “evokes mahogany shelves full of leather-bound books and reading under the flicker of warming candlelight”, and smells of “rich wood, amber, pink pepper and pomegranate”. A lot nicer than decaying paper, which is what actually gives libraries their smell.
bl.uk/shop, £36
Frank Gehry architecture masterclass
Does one of your nearest and dearest fancy becoming the next Frank Gehry but can’t be bothered with seven years of architecture school? Well, San Francisco tech company MasterClass is here to give a helping hand, offering one-on-one access to the king of crumpled titanium in the form of a 17-part video course, in which Gehry imparts his wisdom on everything from prototyping to running a business.
masterclass.com, from £85
R2D2 desk vacuum
There’s a specific target demographic for this little item: keyboard warriors chained to their desk who struggle to keep their mouths closed while chomping crackers. So that’s quite a few, then. Considering the subset of these who are also into Star Wars, hey presto: the R2D2 desktop vacuumer is possibly the most brilliantly designed present of all time.
prezzybox.com, £16.99
Post-punk stamps
Post-punk and indie fans ahoy! This unique print reinterprets 42 of the genre’s classic album covers in the form of postage stamps, bringing them all together on an eye-catching and arty 60x80cm litho poster. Bands getting the stamp treatment include Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Jesus and Mary Chain, whose Psychocandy-inspired stamp is particularly fetching.
shop.balticmill.com, £35
French horn cufflinks
Display your passions discreetly on your wrist with these elegant cufflinks. The rose-gold-plated pair feature a French horn and semi-quavers, the silver pair a violin and a single note – which should cut a dash at the opera.
glyndebourneshop.com, £55
Rude card games for book lovers
Papercuts is basically a literary version of Cards Against Humanity, where players (labelled “writers”) compete to submit the best answer to pair with a question (judged by the “editor”). Answers include “900-page novel overcompensating for a micropenis”, “Borges lost in a hedge maze” and “Dorian Gray’s rapidly ageing face”.
electriclit.wixsite.com, £16
Brexit egg cups
If someone you know can still wrench a hollow laugh from the nation’s descent into hell they might enjoy this pair of egg cups in a blue and white 18th-century porcelain style. One’s for those who like their Brexit soft, the other for fans of hard. Or to put it another way, drooling and runny versus dry and relentless. Some would prefer no eggs at all, thanks - how about a croissant instead?
brexitware.com, £35
Map guide to Bergman’s Sweden
Pondering the meaningless of existence and the absence of God this Christmas? We’ve got you covered. The Ingmar Bergman Foundation have produced an elegantly designed series of maps, so you can follow in the footsteps of the famously intense Swedish director around the most important locations of his life. Eat wild strawberries in Uppsala! Have an identity crisis on Fårö! Play chess with death … wherever you fancy, since The Seventh Seal was filmed in the studio! It all adds up to a cineaste’s road trip to remember.
shop.bfi.org.uk, £16.99
Melting Toht candle
No festive dinner table is complete without a centrepiece candle, and what better captures the yuletide spirit than the burning head of a Gestapo officer? In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the cackling Sturmbannführer Arnold Toht is consumed by fire with amazing gore, his rictus grin turning to goo in two seconds flat. This candle re-creation lasts eight hours and leaves much less mess. Yum!
firebox.com, £24.99
History of Walt Disney’s Disneyland
Worker poverty at Disneyland may quash your appetite for a celebration of its history. But Taschen’s lavishly researched new book reminds us of Uncle Walt’s utopian vision for the park, and includes detailed drawings from every stage of its conception and construction. It also doubles as an enveloping history of mid-century California and industrialised entertainment.
blackwells.co.uk, £40
Beyoncé baby BOSS onesie
This austere babygrow from Beyoncé’s merch store is a reminder of the tiny, irrational tyrant that rules your home and sucks up all your money. Perhaps the fact that its wearer requires dressing and carrying slightly undermines its declaration of power, but hey, if it’s good enough for the royals…
shop.beyonce.com £20
Frank Lloyd Wright fibre and rubber doormat
Show your appreciation for modernist design right from the get-go by asking your guests to wipe their§ feet on it. This doormat is inspired by Lloyd Wright’s windows for the playhouse on the vast Chicago estate he designed for industrial magnate Avery Coonley in 1908.
shop.artic.edu, £43
Dalí and Picasso salt and pepper shakers
Help someone sprinkle a bit of art on their Christmas dinner with these Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso ceramic salt and pepper shakers by Ingela Arrhenius. Salvador is for salt, and Pablo for pepper, of course, but the pots are marked with letters lest any not-so-arty types be unaware which is the one with the magnificent moustache.
shop.hepworthwakefield.org, £18
Good Place/Bad Place T-shirts
Mike Schur’s acclaimed sitcom imagines an afterlife where people are directed to either “the Good Place” or “the Bad Place” based on the plus or minus points they’ve accrued on Earth. So remembering your sister’s birthday gets you +15.02 points, while using “Facebook” as a verb lands you -5.55. Thankfully you don’t have to suffer this rigorous vetting process to buy a Good Place or Bad Place T-shirt, but frankly, if you do use “Facebook” as a verb, you should be wearing sackcloth and ashes instead.
www.nbcstore.com, £18
Honey from the National Theatre’s bees
To bee or not to bee? That was the question for the National Theatre in London, which it answered by installing a handful of noble hives on the building’s roof. The theatre now sells its own homegrown honey: a limited number of 110g jars of the sticky stuff are produced each year. Buzzier than the National’s five-star revival of Follies, this is the perfect present for your sweet prince or princess.
shop.nationaltheatre.org.uk, £6
Sigmund Freud bath-time duck
For those who can’t commit to psychoanalysis, this is the perfect alternative. He floats around your genitals – silently judging you for your penis envy if you’re a woman or your risible manhood if you’re a man – as you recline in a watery couch. Freud’s Santa-like white beard is a lovely seasonal touch, though the beak-mouth is, as Jungians say, quackers. What keeps Freuduck’s spectacles up given that he doesn’t have ears? Don’t worry, as Freud said, be happy.
theviennastore.at, £11
The Good Opera Guide by Denis Forman
Forman’s witty and wise guide – still in print after almost 25 years – remains one of the best ways to navigate the rarefied world of opera. Its defiantly low-brow approach horrified critics, but Forman’s real passion for the genre shines through. How can you not love a book that pronounces Wagner’s Meistersinger “not such a monster as The Ring, clearly better than the slightly ludicrous Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, less holy than Parsifal, not so taxing as Tristan”?
Amazon, £24.99
Doctor Who Tardis tote bag
A Tardis tote – how has no one thought of that before? Stick a couple of windows on your classic all-purpose environmentally friendly carrier and you’re away. This comes with an added extra: open up the inside and there are the rainbow stripes that nod to the new Doctor’s colourful sartorial choices.
innergeek.co.uk, £42.99
Revive your vinyl
Described by its manufacturers as “a face mask that restores records”, Record Revirginizer is a bottle of non-toxic anti-static polymer – or to use the technical term, blue viscous gloop – which you pour over your dirty vinyl, gently massage, leave to dry, then peel off. It’s a process that is both effective and satisfying – any crud in the grooves sticks to it, and one high-end hi-fi magazine claimed an 80% reduction in noise.
juno.co.uk £21.99
A song map of America
On first glance it’s a handsome old map of the US, but on closer inspection it becomes a thigh-rubbing muso’s dream, with song titles transposed appropriately in place of states, cities, mountains and more. There’s the obvious (Virginia Plain, Rainy Night in Georgia) but also some cute deep cuts – Minneapolis is renamed after Tom Waits’ Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis. There’s even some savage humour: a depopulated bit of Canada is dubbed Basic Space, after the xx’s moody number.
wearedorothy.com, £30
The Police wine
The latest rock legends to lend their name to a wine, following in the footsteps of the Rolling Stones, Queen and the living embodiments of oenophilia that are Slayer… The Police’s “red wine blend” is apparently inspired by their 1983 album Synchronicity, replete with a label based on the cover artwork. Next year spirits “in the material world”?
iconbeverages.co.uk, £15.99
Rosa Parks as a children’s story
This little children’s book is a lovely way to learn about the “mother of the civil rights movement”. With facts and quirky illustrations, it tells how Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1956 Alabama eventually led to the end of segregation on American public transport.
shop.hepworthwakefield.org, £9.99
Pop playing cards
Christmas starts to pall on 27 December and that’s when these playing cards, illustrated with pictures of rock stars, will earn their stripes. Break them out during that dead time on Thursday afternoon and you’ll never have a better excuse to say: “I’ll see your Björk and raise you Lady Gaga”.
uncommongoods.com, £8
Freddie Mercury print
This year’s Freddie Mercury film, Bohemian Rhapsody, is already the second-highest grossing music biopic of all time, so it’s a good year to bring rock’s late, great showman to someone’s living room wall. Tell them “You’re My Best Friend” as you hand over this striking Omni Cohen limited edition signed print.
hamelaha.shop, £67
Cindy Sherman lilo
Her retrospective in London at the National Portrait Gallery next year will be one of 2019’s big art events. Yet Cindy Sherman isn’t too grand for pool frolics. Available on the website of New York’s New Museum, this airbed is emblazoned with one of her typically unsettling selfies, created by merging two pictures on her phone. It’s not cheap, but could double as a sculpture – and a portion of the proceeds go to a charity setting up a swimming pool in New York.
newmuseumstore.org, £196
Brutalist calendar
Celebrate the revival of brutalism with this calendar, which will see you through 2019 with 12 prime slabs of concrete hewn by the likes of Le Corbusier, Breuer and Rudolph. Their bracing aesthetics will help you face up to your new year’s resolutions in style.
bluecrowmedia.com, £20
Death metal Christmas jumpers
Few things say Christmas quite like Swedish death metal, in particular the oeuvre of Stockholm’s Amon Amarth. For 20 years, they’ve unleashed one festive-themed hit after another: Wrath of the Norseman, Bastards of a Lying Breed and, of course, The Beheading of a King. So why not celebrate this year with an Amon Amarth Christmas jumper, featuring both snowflakes and the skulls of your recently slain enemies?
emp-online.com, £40
Bruegel’s Tower of Babel phone cover
Conflicted about constantly abasing yourself before the secular altar that is your smartphone? Then express your misgivings with a phone cover that reproduces Bruegel’s Tower of Babel. Guaranteed to win admiring glances from that irony-loving hottie across the aisle on the 8.32 to Euston as you babble fatuously into your handset.
redbubble.com, £14.90
Inspirational Barbie dolls
You know what’s cooler than James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause? His insouciant, red-jacketed Barbie doll re-creation. Mattel has made celebrity lookalikes for years, now hotly pursued by collectors on resale sites (sexy Cher, a snip at $140). This Christmas, though, inspire your daughter to fulfil her potential with a Shero role model, such as boxer Nicola Adams, Katherine Johnson (the Nasa mathematician from the film Hidden Figures) or Frida Kahlo.
barbie.mattel.com, £44.90
Guerrilla Girls air freshener
This banana-scented air freshener promises to “eliminate the stench of patriarchy”. The Guerrilla Girls New York art collective have been doing that for more than 30 years. Formed in 1985, they campaign against male power with posters, ape masks and shocking data. For a work of art that you can display, and spray, in your home this comes cheap – but then, as they have pointed out, women artists only earn a third of what men do.
shop.tate.org.uk, £4
