Holiday Gift Guide: Gifts to Thank Your Host

For pet lovers who hate taking care of pets: A self-sustaining ecosystem containing two or three needy miniature shrimp that can live for years without much help from you. Besides the crustaceans, the four-inch glass sphere contains pebbles, a neat branch of artificial coral, and algae that provide oxygen and food — the perfect guests ($99).

Pot, protests, and Cher are back, so why not lava lamps? It was invented by Edward Craven Walker, a British accountant who shot underwater nudists on the side. Walker came up with the idea for the lamp in a pub, where he saw an experimental egg timer device that involved boiling a mixture of oil and water (when blobs of oil reached the surface, the egg was cooked). Mathos, the lighting company Walker founded in 1963 to manufacture his innovation, still makes lava lamps. Among them: a slender column about ten feet high (£8,500), a tower that looks like a dolphin about to take off into outer space (£415), and a shiny brass-plated candle-powered device that looks like a large pill capsule (£50). Mathos doesn’t ship to the US, and why does it have a smuggling problem? Here in America we have gorgeous new watches that evoke hourglasses and tall rockets (starting at $30).

Some letter openers are so attractive that it’s fun to open jury duty notice and junk mail. If you no longer receive mail, you can use paper knives to spread the peanut butter. Here are some things any office would be happy to show off. a gold-plated envelope crusher that can be used as a ruler; Its graduated inch markings are engraved along the edge because you don’t want to measure your Visa bill ($36)? From the late Enzo Mari, the famed Italian product and furniture designer, an elegant touch of shimmering steel that looks as if it could give you the power to cut stone ($70). If the Ingalls family in “Little House on Prairie” owned a letter opener, it would have been hand-forged by one of the blacksmiths at Wicks Forge, a family metalworking business since the 1800s, when Wick worked on the Statue of Liberty. The slender blade, about eight inches long, curls back on itself in a rounded spiral like a soft ice cream swirl and ends in a leaf-like decoration. It can be customized with a combination of initials, name or message, up to ten characters ($30).

“The LSD Marathon” fleece blanket.

Have you been a house guest for a long time and your mail is being redirected there? In this case, a practical gift for your host and for you is a blanket or towel. You can’t go wrong at ZigZag Zurich, where browsing textiles is the second best showcase for modern art. There are plenty of Mondriansky patterns, but also some quirky scenes like the wool blanket titled “The LSD Marathon,” which depicts in black and white a group of “runners” doing their own thing ($270; generally, blankets, $203-$270; towels and small blankets, $107-$134).

If you’re planning to spill red wine on your host’s white sofa, bringing paper cocktail napkins is a useless but thoughtful gesture. Thematically, these old-fashioned napkins would be fine with one of the two women, dressed in 1950s cocktail dresses and sporting a 1950s hairstyle, whispering to the other: “Who is this ‘moderate’ we’re supposed to drink with?” ($11 for twenty). Another thing to consider is the nostalgic selection of the New York Review of Books Where there is an illustration of bookshelves full of novels ($10 vs. twenty-five).

How about a variety of pencils from Kenya? Hand-carved and painted by Kamba artisans to represent the heads of different safari animals, they can study in the “Little Lion King” ($49 for set of five, $74 for ten). If you’re giving these to Gen Z or young millennials, I’d recommend bundling the package with a copy of the hilarious How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Study of the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Edge Turners, Angle Makers, and Civil Servants ($22). This satirical craft guide to pencil sharpening, whose chapters include one on how to break into someone’s house and smash an electric pencil sharpener, was published in 2013, but used copies abound on Amazon as well as used book suppliers like Alibris.

Maybe the best gift for a home is a house? However, interest rates are still high, so could it be a house candle? Design Inside Reach has it on sale for $33, down from $55. The hand-painted candles ($25) and votive candles ($29 for a set of three) from South Africa look like they’re upholstered in bright, cheerful, heavy orange-and-green textiles. Each candle is unique. If you’ll learn anything by looking at Greek Gods and Goddesses candles on Etsy, it’s that there must be a great gym on Mount Olympus. The eight-inch Zeus is priced at $76. The Venus is longer (nine inches) and evenly proportioned but lower (typical! $40).