Dead Writers perfume
Price From $30 (around £24) plus postage from
the US
Website www.immortalperfumes.com
Good for Librarian fetishists
If you know a special someone who has a penchant for smelling like a musty library, Sweet Tea Apothecary has just the thing: a new perfume with the charming moniker Dead Writers.
The company says the scent “evokes the feeling of sitting in an old library chair paging through yellowed copies of Hemingway, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Poe, and more. Dead Writers makes you want to put on a kettle of black tea and curl up with your favourite book”.
Dead Writers is a unisex blend so rest assured you won’t be giving off anything too floral. According to the manufacturer it contains black tea, vetiver, clove, musk, vanilla, heliotrope and tobacco and is available in 9ml or 15ml bottles. 2ml sample bottles are also available.
It could be paired well with some of the firm’s other literary inspired scents, including the robustly Hemmingway-esque Death in the Afternoon (Bay Leaf, Tobacco, Fennel, Bergamot, Champagne, Sandalwood, Egyptian Musk, Clovebud) or perhaps the more refined Austen-ish Pemberley (Rosewood, Coriander, Cedarwood, Honeysuckle, Hyacinth, Peony, Vetiver).
Landmark Pet Houses
Price From £34.99 (White House) to £39.99 (Kremlin)
Website www.thefowndry.com/products/landmark-pet-houses
Good for Cat-owning world leaders
Enable anyone you may know with a ginger cat to replicate the upcoming Trump presidency in the comfort of their own living room by letting them put something orange in the White House.
Landmark Pet Houses are a series of iconic buildings from around the world recreated in 100%-recycled, double-walled cardboard for the enjoyment of our feline friends, which include the White House, the Kremlin and the Eiffel Tower.
Why? Who knows, but what cat wouldn’t appreciate an “ultimate novelty pet home”. As the company says, “they’re the perfect plaything for cats with lofty ambitions”.
Each model also features a special surprise hidden inside: the White House has a ‘springy flag’, the Kremlin a bell and the Eiffel Tower can dispense a treat via the central elevator.
PANTONE on Fashion: A Century of Color in Design
Price $35 (£28)
Website www.pantone.com
Good for Those who take fashion cues from hues
Fashionistas with no tolerance for poor colour consistency will be thrilled with this book, which tracks the history of fashion over the past hundred years through the medium of the humble Pantone swatch.
Global colour authority Pantone attempts to weave together the twin threads of fashion and colour, identifying patterns and trends through the years and tying them together with terrific photography and fascinating background stories.
It’s likely to be an inspiration for budding designers and colour fans everywhere.
World Geological Wall Map
Price From £30
Website futuremaps.com
Good for Who doesn’t like a map?
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Future Mapping Company created this frankly, slightly psychedelic-looking, geological map of the earth.
The map was generated using the Winkel Tripel projection, which is intended to produces a more spherical view of the planet, and is litho-printed in 10 “eye-popping” inks including copper, lemon, pink, jade and tangerine plus metallic.
The company says the B1-sized map can be used to trace 4.6 billion years of geological history, enabling the viewer to identify the different lithospheric plates, sub-plates and micro-plates that make up the surface of our planet.
“You could use it to get to know your Chronostratigraphic units from your Large Igneous Provinces, your Abyssal Plains from your Mid-Oceanic Ridges, or you could just revel in the extraordinary beauty of mapped data,” the company says.
All Sorts - Deluxe Edition
Price £25
Website theprintproject.bigcartel.com/product/all-sorts-deluxe-edition
Good for Designers with a sense of fun
All Sorts is the Print Project having a bit of fun with type, but the end-result is a beautiful book that is delightful in its craft and simplicity.
Only 100 copies of this limited-edition book were created and the softback version is now sold out, but if you’re quick you might be able to snag one of the 19 deluxe hardback versions.
The A6-sized hand-bound book features a series of characters created from individual pieces of letterpress type, or sorts, hence the title.
The book itself is 16pp, quarter bound with black endpapers, printed on Somerset Book 175gsm on a Korrex Proofing press. Although the book’s pages were printed in 2013, this deluxe edition was bound in October 2016.
The Print Project says the letters and characters used to create each person were chosen specifically for their features in order to convey a variety of facial expressions, body language or emotions, to successfully build up a personality for the figure.
The softback edition can be found in the collections of The Tate and The Centre for Fine Print Research at The University of West England.
Designed by Apple in California
Price £169 or £249
Website www.apple.com
Good for Apple obsessives
If a special somebody has been pestering you for the latest Apple iGadget then possibly you can palm them off with this 300pp book charting the iconic IT brand’s history through the design of its products. Although, while it won’t set you back as much as a new Series 2 Watch, the pricing is suitably Apple. It’s available in two sizes 260x324 mm and 330x413mm.
This “visual history spanning iMac to Apple Pencil” comprises 450 photographs, which will be near-pornographic for the fanatical iNerd, accompanied by descriptions of innovative materials and techniques.
The introduction is written by chief design officer Jony Ive; he says: “While this is a design book, it is not about the design team, the creative process or product development. It is an objective representation of our work that, ironically, describes who we are. It describes how we work, our values, our preoccupations and our goals. We have always hoped to be defined by what we do rather than by what we say.”
It also features “specially milled German paper”, whatever that is, gilded matt silver edges and low-ghost inks.
Personal Library Kit
Price £12.95
Website www.theliterarygiftcompany.com
Good for OCD bibliophiles
We all treasure beautiful books but there are some among us who perhaps worry too much about what is after all just ink and paper. If you know someone like this then they may appreciate the Personal Library Kit, which will enable them to loan out books to their friends in old-school library style – with a rubber date stamp and everything – and ensure they don’t go too far astray.
The kit contains 20 self-adhesive pockets for attaching to your treasured tomes, 20 checkout cards, one date stamp with stamp pad and a pencil.
It doesn’t go very far in explaining the Dewey Decimal system but there are some things that are perhaps just not worth knowing.
Harry Potter Moleskine notebooks
Price From around £15
Website www.amazon.co.uk
Good for Scribbling wizards
Moleskine has produced two Harry Potter-themed limited edition notebooks intended to kindle the imagination of Potter fans and featuring cover art inspired by Harry Potter’s adventures. On the burgundy cover the image of a young wizard printed in debossed gold casts the powerful Expecto Patronum spell surrounded by the dream-like image of a stag, Harry Potter’s magical ‘Patronus’ guardian.
The second cover design is inspired by the Marauderer’s Map, which reveals every classroom, hallway and corner of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry including the secret passageways. The notebook is clothbound to give the look and feel of a piece of parchment paper and features the inscription “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good”.
Both notebooks come with a sticker set featuring popular spells and iconic objects from the stories, such as the Golden Snitch.
