MAGNIFICENT MUSEUM STORE GIFTS
We love to visit art museums during the holidays. It’s a beautiful time to immerse in art and design, as each museum decorates its main halls with its own glorious holiday style. Christmas trees are festooned with the most beautiful ornaments -- classics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, modern pieces at the Museum of Modern Art, edgy design pieces at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, to name a few. Museum memberships make great holiday gifts, by the way.
It’s also a wonderful time to browse museum gift shops for last minute gifts. We did just that and we’ve got a curated-for-beauty selection of favorites to share from The Met Store, The MoMA Design Store, and SHOP Cooper Hewitt. The all have art-inspired boxed holiday and blank cards, which we stock up on for the year. And, we found treasures, including hand-painted Christmas ornaments, beautifully designed jewelry and accessories, clever colorful barware, lovely artist kits, and fabulous toys. Check them out below!
Russian Imperial Large Ornaments and Mini Gold and Silver Ornaments add a touch of color and metallic splendor to your tree. A visionary and talented artisan and jeweler, Peter Carl Fabergé (Russian, 1846–1920) counted the last two czars of the Romanov family among his elite clientele, for whom he crafted the celebrated Easter eggs in rare gems, precious metals, and radiant guilloché enamel.
These hand-painted mini-egg ornaments are adapted from precious eggs in the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection on long-term loan to The Met.
Ornaments are shown here on ribbons but are shipped with matching gold cords.
Available at The Met Store.
MoMA Exclusive: Reiko Sudo’s exquisite Komorebi Wool Scarf is inspired by a poetic aspect of nature: sunlight filtered through leaves, or komorebi in Japanese.
Sudo’s textile designs are included in MoMA’s collection and were featured in the Museum’s 1998 exhibition Structure & Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles. Rendered in a jacquard double weave, the pattern is an abstraction of dancing, dappled sunlight.
Alternating warps spun to two different strengths add a gentle stretch and compelling texture. Long and narrow (78l x 11”w), it lends itself to being wrapped and tied in a variety of ways for stylish autumn outings. 100% wool.
Available at MoMA Design Store.
This Sculptural Fabric Jewelry - Warm Brooch is delicate to the touch and versatile enough to be one of your loved one’s go-to pieces. Each design is handmade from textured clusters of multi-colored fabric. Evoking exotic plant life or deep-sea flora, these playful, poetic pieces are made in the USA by Japanese designer Mariko Kusumoto.
Available at MoMA Design Store.
MoMA Exclusive: Freeze It! Drink Cubes are beautiful jewel-like colored reusable ice cubes that bring joy to any beverage. Put these colored-water-filled borosilicate glass cubes, handmade in Germany, in your freezer for three to four hours and, voila! Frozen party favors for everyone’s drinks. Includes six cubes in red, orange, light green, dark green and purple.
Available at MoMA Design Store.
The Willow Catkins Bib Necklace is nature-inspired, patterned after a Louis Comfort Tiffany vase in The Met collection vase that is decorated with a charming motif of catkins. Tiffany was spurred to produce ceramics after seeing examples of French art pottery at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Many of his pottery vases derived their forms from common wildflowers and water plants as they look in their natural habitat—ferns, lilies, cattails, jack-in-the- pulpits, and toadstools.
The necklace is made of 24K matte gold overlay, set with glass beads. Matching earrings and brooch are also available.
Available at The Met Store.
Both budding and seasoned artists will appreciate the Luxury Linen Watercolor Set, a portable, professional watercolor set in a folding linen pouch, with ribbon closure, from Italy. It includes 12 Schmincke watercolors, 3 sable brushes, an artist's cloth, a water bottle, and a pad of Fabriano acid-free Italian watercolor paper. The pad's cover offers a detail from Movement of Vaulted Chambers by Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940) in The Met collection.
Available at The Met Store.
Clemens Habicht's 1000 Changing Colors is a jigsaw puzzle of 1000 pieces in which each individual tile has two distinct color states from intersecting gradients of color. Printed using a lenticular lens, the colors change depending on the angle of view, resulting in a radiant iridescence that shimmers in beautiful color combinations.
The constantly shifting colors effectively confuse the identity of each tile, each piece reveals and hides itself constantly until spatially locked into place.
Available at SHOP Cooper Hewitt.
The Playable Art Helicone instantly transforms with one quick twist, changing this intriguing kinetic sculpture from a helix into a pinecone, and then back again. The Helicone features 38 precise, laser-cut pieces assembled on a brass tube and attached to a solid wood base. The aesthetic structure of the Helicone is based on the same mathematical concepts found in nature, such as the golden angle and the Fibonacci numbers. A piece of expressive, playful tabletop art for both adults and kids.
Available at SHOP Cooper Hewitt.
The Rock and Roll It Rainbow Piano lets your loved one practice piano playing anywhere! The entire keyboard unrolls atop any flat surface, presenting a set of 49 standard keys.
Choose the tone from piano, vibraphone, clarinet, violin, orchestra, harpsichord, and more. Turn the sustain on or off for playing long or short notes. The Record button turns on a metronome to assist play, while the Play button lets you hear it all played back. Press Stop to just play freely, or press the Demo button to hear fun songs to inspire the imagination. And once it's time to go, you can just roll the whole thing up and head out the door! The Rock and Roll It Piano is a fascinating tool for musicians of all ages.
Available at MoMA Design Store.
The Daily Masterpiece Five-Year Diary is a beautiful place to mark musings and memories with masterpieces from The Met. Each lined page includes a work from the Museum's vast collection, spanning millennia, cultures, and styles. As an added touch, the images are organized along seasonal and holiday themes, helping you to create a memoir that's both artful and meaningful. The ribbon marker and foil-stamped cover are beautiful touches.
Available at The Met Store.
The Porthole Infuser is a simple, beautiful infusion vessel designed by Martin Kastner of Crucial Detail design studio. Inspired by submarine portholes, this striking infuser can be used to create beautiful cocktails, infused oils, dressings, lemonade, and more. With a modern, stylish look, the Porthole is manufactured to rigorous standards and is durable and easy to use. Kit includes four delicious recipes.
Available at MoMA Design Store.
Read more about Beautiful Gifts all this week on BeautifulNow, including The Most Beautiful Travel Gifts, The Most Beautiful Wellness Gifts, These Gifts Make a Beautiful Difference, These Gifts Do a World of Good and The Most Beautiful Delicious Gifts. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
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