Joys of spring / Global
Inventory no. 92
This April we shower you with well-made ephemera, including a Canadian gin, Nordic planters and Swiss sundries, plus a handsome set of travel guides and some desirable deskware.
01
Shoes
Arrels
“Arrels is more than just a brand of footwear; it’s waking up on the right side of the bed and walking through life with a spring in one’s step,” says Javier Llaudet, who dreamt up the Barcelona-based canvas-shoe brand with his cousin in 2015. Every pair is made in Spain and Arrels will launch a new collection each summer.
arrelsbarcelona.com
02
Coffee pot
Breaktime Kit
Seoul-based designer Bumki Song’s coffee pots take three weeks to make but the conductive copper body is quick to heat up. Made from brass, copper, tin and teak, it is inspired by the designer’s desire to reconnect to the ritual of drinking coffee.
breaktimekit.com
03
Desk accessories
Dowel Jones
Design studio Dowel Jones marries simple objects with sharp aesthetics. Melbourne-based founders Dale Hardiman and Adam Lynch bring a masterful eye to these tactile pieces; we like the copper-and-leather ruler and the Blocchi pencil holder made from solid oak.
doweljones.com
04
Tape measure
Millisecond
Tsubame in Niigata, Japan, is well known for its metalwork, so it’s little wonder this handy tape measure hails from there. Compact and hardy, the palm-sized item has a subtly depressed surface for added grip.
caroinfo.info
05
Travel books
Footpath guides
Dave Roper met Jacques Sheard at a shindig in the Total House building in Melbourne; a shared passion for the city’s mid-century architecture led the pair to launch this charming series of illustrated guides. “Melburnians buy lots of books and love reading about their city,” says Roper. A Sydney book is slated for summer.
footpathguides.com
06
Planters
Woud
Furniture designer Silje Nesdal and ceramicist Ann Kristin Einarsen were inspired by Japanese and Scandinavian craft techniques when they collaborated on these shapely plant pots. Available from Danish maker Woud.
woud.dk
07
Kitchen accessories
Shibui
Royal College of Arts graduates Athanasio Babalis and Constatinos Hoursoglou started the Geneva-based Shibui in 2013. Its kitchen accessories, made from ash, oak, walnut and cherry wood, inlcude the Pinch for storing spices, the Crash nutcracker and Pino, a pointy pestle and mortar for which we’d happily make space.
shibui.ch
08
Wine
Preto
This full-bodied red is made from prieto picudo grapes and hails from Léon, a cold, dry region in northeast Spain. Fermented in stainless-steel tanks and left in oak barrels for six months, it’s best drunk alongside a salty jamón ibérico. Design firm Pablo Guerrero named it Preto – an old Spanish word for black – in a nod to its intense dark-red hue.
pabloguerrero.es
09
Candle
Atelier Oblique
Berlin-based Mario Lombardo launched his candle brand last year, inspired by a visit to his native Argentina. “This feeling [of being home] was evoked by the smells of the country; this is when I started to think about scents,” he says. For his hand-cast Alphabet range he collaborated with Grasse perfumier Robertet to create a unique composition for each letter of the alphabet.
atelier-oblique.com
10
Beer
Fort Point Beer Company
Founded by brothers Tyler and Justin Catalana in 2014, Fort Point has since bubbled to the surface of the Bay Area brew scene. Its range runs from red ales to wheat beers, porters and pilsners, all made in a picturesque cask-house in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
fortpointbeer.com
11
Leather bag
Mühle
Mühle has been designing shaving accessories from its base in Saxony, Germany, since 1945. Those decades of experience are on show in this handsome German-tanned leather shaving bag, featuring leather loops for razors and clippers.
muehle-shaving.com
12
Glasses
Mazama Wares
Six Portland-based designers from backgrounds as diverse as clothing and architecture formed this ceramics collective in 2013. Its wine, cocktail and beer glasses, handblown from soda-lime glass into moulds, come in yellow, grey and blue hues that will always make for colourful aperitifs.
shop.mazama.com
13
Ophelia lamp
En Salmón Mostaza
Andrea Gelpí and Iratxe de Viñaspre’s Barcelona-based studio created the Ophelia to resemble a blossoming flower. It combines a hand-carved beech-wood base with rotating panels in reflective aluminium or a more soothing matte methacrylate.
ensalmonmostaza.com
14
Gin
Distillerie du St Laurent
Infused with botanicals and algae from the Quebec coast, Distillerie du St Laurent gin has a signature greenish tint and ever-so-slightly salty palate. That prompted founders Joël Pelletier and Jean-François Cloutier to enlist Dallas designer Chad Michael Studio to create an equally distinctive label inspired by the nautical jaunts of Jules Verne.
distilleriedustlaurent.com
15
Beer
Abadía
The four friends who started Abadía in 2008 now put out a lager, pale ale and six-malt beer. The Pobla del Vallbona-based brewery taps into methods once used by Iberian monks, while design studio TSMGO’s bottles with their episcopal ethos make for an enlightened combination.
cervezasabadia.com
16
Wallets
Stevan Saville
Stevan Saville’s palm-sized wallets come in a range of hues – from sunny oranges to blues and browns – and are each made from a single hide fixed into its final form with metal clasps. The wallets have spaces for cards, notes and coins and their hardy leather exteriors protect the contents but soften over time. Made at a studio in Islington, north London, each piece uses leather sourced from a family firm in Italy.
stevansaville.com