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When we compiled our collection of gift ideas for the 2021 Holiday Gift Guide, we discovered that we had—entirely unintentionally— gathered a significant number of works by Indigenous artists. Representing Native Americans, First Peoples, Inuits, Dinés, Kuikuros, Quechas, Tbolis, Sherpas, and more, artists with storied ancestral ties to the land really stole the aesthetic show this year and we are inarticulably excited to share with you their magnificent creations. You may have spotted some products from Indigenous artists and designers on previous days of the Holiday Countdown but, in case you missed them, here is a list of gifts we've already shared to catch you up before we continue with today's collection. Bandiidas Art Unified Spirits Crewneck Starting off our new introductions we have the Unified Spirits Crewneck from Bandiidas Art in Canada. The design is a manifestation of modern civilization, a branching of societies and cultures rooted in a central unifying humanity. There is an ancient native prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor which predicts a separation of humanity into two sects—the Eagle in the north, representing emotional intuition, and the Condor in the south, a symbol of industrialism and rationalism—that will ultimately come together. Finding inspiration in this prophecy, Bandiidas Art created this sweatshirt, reimagining the bird symbols as a wolf and a jaguar, uniting under the light of the sun as depicted using Northern and Southern icons. Ancient native prophecies say: “When the Eagle of the North and the Condor of the South fly together, Indigenous peoples will unite the human family”....“Indigenous knowledge keepers will come together with world leaders to define a path of healing for all the humans and the planet – Mother Earth.” (1) A design inspired by my South American Indigenous roots, while growing up in North American unceeded territories. Hearing the story of the condor & the eagle, the prophecy has come to light within many of us. This is my version, a jaguar facing a wolf, along with the north and southern sun symbols. (2) The NTVS T-Shirts Staying with tops, our next stop has to be The NTVS. While Bandiidas Art reimagines prophecies, The NTVS, in Minnesota, redesigns pop-culture symbols with playful twists of words and some epic indigenous references to create designs that are simply flawless. This a brand driven by people with electrifying creativity and crushingly sharp wit and we want nothing more than to channel their brilliance by wearing these show-stopping pieces. Two Native American guys trying to fill a hole in the market that is missing the voice of the people. Our mission is to teach the youth the importance of embracing culture and history while building a Native American clothing company. We do that by crafting Native apparel designs that you can be proud to wear. Modern Native American clothing and Native prints that have a deeper meaning. Maybe it's a light hearted or funny design. Maybe it's a serious issue that needs to be addressed. We use art and streetwear mixed with our culture to create one-of-a-kind designs that embrace our Native American culture and heritage. The NTVS is for everyone who supports indigenous culture. (3) Tochtli Cultural Wear Tu Eres La Medicina T-Shirt If you know any ARCANISA team members personally, you've definitely seen us sporting our Tochtli Cultural Wear Tu Eres La Medicina t-shirts—likely with our Somos Semillas hats from Licuado Wear. With a message of healing that inspires a meditation on our connection to the Earth, the shirt and the words of Maria Sabina carry us through even the most trying times. Inspired by the great Healer Maria Sabina. An empowering message in uncertain times, You are the Medicine, Tu Eres La Medicina. (4) Filip + Inna Switching from streetwear to more formal fashions, our next destination is the Philippines. Founded by Lenora Cabili, Filip + Inna offers collections of truly magnificent clothing pieces ranging from bone-china like blouses that boast the architectural lines of churches transcribed with pure pineapple palm leaves to staggeringly beautiful cocoa linen dresses hand-embroidered with traditional cross-stitching that form trails of colourful petals. Each piece is a work of art that anyone would feel privileged to wear. Filip + Inna brings into each garment ancient techniques of weaving, embroidery and beadwork from different indigenous groups of the Philippines. The human hand is seen and felt in each creation. The artisan breathes life into it. Filip + Inna’s mission is to create while also reviving - even preserving - traditions of the Philippines that are in danger of becoming lost and being forgotten. We work with many groups of talented artisans across the archipelago, giving them an opportunity to continue practicing their traditional craft while improving their livelihood. From our hands to yours, may the beauty, depth and integrity of each garment bring a deep appreciation for what is distinctly Filipino - distinctly Filip + Inna. (5) Fifth x Rock Deep M1 Sneakers We jump back now to the United States for some kicks as fly as fry bread from Fifth and Rock Deep. We swooned when we first saw these sneakers—honestly, we went weak at the knees! And how could we not? Each Pair of M1s is a contemporary complement to the timeless Diné moccasin design with a slender sleek tie wrapping a high neck template and following the same orange suede materialism. The design is a nod to the treasured ancestral tradition as well as a move forward into a modernized aesthetic and elevated functionality that is brilliantly successful. If you're Indigenous, these sneakers are an expression of pride and the power of heritage. If you're a supporter of Indigenous culture and designers each pair is an opportunity to spotlight Diné artistry without feeling like you are culturally appropriating. And if you're simply on the hunt for some phenomenal footwear, you'll love the unique silhouette, the bold but unquestionably versatile colour and the soft supple comfort of a sueded form. Thunder Voice Hat Co. Hats With our feet covered, we next head to Thunder Voice Hat Co. in Arizona. Each hat is an entirely unique piece, a signature of style and voice that follows the vision of timeless design imbued with talismanic elements like vintage coins, baby's breath, and cedar. The hats are magnificent crowns that bestow on us endless power and elegance. And don't forget to check out their collection of contemporary serapes which are Indigenously made from start to finish. ThunderVoice Hat Co. carries on the lineage of Native Fashion that emerged from a collaboration of cultures. The Iconic Navajo Brim hat has spanned through the ages, as reminder of generations past. Each hat is vintage hand-sourced, steamed and shaped, creatively visioned, and lovingly made. Each hat holds stories, purpose, and the hope that you wear it with pride and meaning. (6) Inuit Quality While we're warming up with hats, let's journey to Greenland to visit Inuit Quality. In discussing this gift list one ARCANISA member stepped in and questioned "Did you mean Iceland?" to which the answer is emphatically "no"! Please don't misunderstand our excitement—we love Iceland!— but Greenland has Inuit Quality and that alone earns the world's largest island a warm place in our hearts. As the winter weather spills in, we turn to the Inuit Quality for outwear that will prepare us to stylishly, cozily, and safely venture into nature regardless of the climate. Our aim is to create designs inspired by the beautiful and rough Greenlandic nature and founded on the idea that everybody can move around in the nature both comfortable and natural...We design and create our clothes with high quality and functionality, but always with highest respect and consideration to the Greenlandic Nature. We adapt our clothes to the Greenlandic climate with its cold winters, without compromising its function. For us it is truly important that our customers can move around without any constraints throughout all 4 seasons of the year. With our newest collection “SAVE OUR ARCTIC” and “INUIT PINNGORTITAMUT PINNGORTITAQ INUNNUT” (The people to the nature and the nature to the people), we want to emphasize the importance of preserving the Greenlandic nature by creating clothes that brings people and nature together to produce nature experiences. With a genuine hope that these nature experiences will generate much more awareness about how the climate changes affects the Greenlandic nature. By facilitating nature experiences, we want to increase the focus on our climate and climate changes and encourage our customers to think in climate preserving initiatives. (7) Aurora Heat Reusable Fur Hand Warmers With our gloves out, we share with you our winter must-have: the Aurora Heat Reusable Hand Warmers. We fully admit that our Miami-acclimated bodies are downright fragile in snowy climes so if these palm warming patches of dense, velvety soft sheered beaver underfur can keep us cozy you can be sure they're magic! Plus, the warmers "are made with ethically sourced wild beaver fur from the Genuine Mackenzie Valley Fur Program™...a program [that] ensures sustainability and preserves cultural heritage for Indigenous peoples."(8) Confident in a rich trapping heritage and the practicality of fur for warmth, I created Aurora Heat in 2015. It has become my passion to offer ways for you to make a difference. I dream of a world where humans are thoughtful about meeting basic needs, using natural and reusable products. A world where natural fur is the first choice for warmth, replacing single-use products, fast-fashion, and synthetic/petroleum based materials. Like many of you, I am committed to Nature and the interdependency between all living things. I love designing and creating sustainable, new-to-market products. In our workshop at the end of each day, there is no garbage in our bin. We use all parts of our pelts in deep respect and gratitude to the Land and to the beaver (tsa). It is this world view that has formed our company's slogan, "Live in harmony with Nature."Together, it is an honour to bring you our traditional way of keeping comfortable and warm. I promise you will love it! tThá Huná – May you live a long time- Brenda Dragon (9) Medicine Of The People Medicinal Skin Salves On the off chance you set off into the banks of snow without your Inuit Quality gloves and Aurora Heat Hand Warmers, use the Piñon Sap Salve from Medicine of the People to save your wind-chapped hands. With a formula rich with piñon sap and pesticide-free bees wax, emulsified in a blend of skin-nurturing oils, this concentrated balm can calm even our most irritated winter skin. Or try the soothing powers of the Universal Skin Healing salve with goldenseal, osha, greasewood, calendula, shea butter, jojoba oil and a secret blend of traditionally crafted wild herbs. If I was going on a trip and could only choose one of our travel tins it would be the Pinon sap salve. I have found it to be almost indispensable. In the air, land, sea in the mountains or the jungle this salve will be there like your best friend or faithful dog. It will never fail you. Rub it on a burn, a skinned knee, sooth the sting of a wind burned face or apply to a boot rubbed foot after hiking all day. Carry and help family and friends they will inevitably turn to you with that knowing look “sorry to bug you, I know I should have got one too, can I borrow that salve again”.(10) We adore all of these ingenious indigenous artists and we're confident that their creations will win the hearts of everyone on your holiday list this season! Browse the full Holiday Gift Guide for even more gift giving inspiration. Holiday Gift Guide Day 23 Day 21

To us, there is nothing like a gifted story over the holidays. From beloved children's tales to dense inescapable novels, books are portals to unexplored time and space; portals that offer us the adventure and fulfilled curiosity of voyages and simultaneous peaceful respite from the hustle and havoc of holiday preparations! This year's book list is all about artistry. The pages of these bound works are filled with masterful imagery—both illustrated and literary—that brings stories to life and cinematically guides us through spellbindingly woven narratives. EXILE Books LISTEN TO THIS BUILDING We start here in our home city of Miami with LISTEN TO THIS BUILDING by EXILE BOOKS that brings to life the anatomy of the city for everyone in a multi-sensory, experiential exhibition. Representative reliefs inscribe the forms of the urban structures and, combined with raised braille descriptions, tactile map, and supplemental full length audio, create a sensory bouquet to introduce you to the architecture of Miami. LISTEN TO THIS BUILDING was published by EXILE to commemorate the 2015 Miami Center for Architecture & Design installation of the same name. Together MCAD and EXILE produced a multi-sensory, experiential exhibition that sought to bridge downtown Miami architecture, independent publishing, and accessibility. In doing so, it brought together tactility, sound, and thematic programming to explore alternative modes of experiencing one's city and better understanding how those without sight navigate their surroundings and advocate for universal design. This spiral bound 11" x 11.5" book boasts tactile illustrations of ten historical, architecturally significant downtown Miami buildings, corresponding braille descriptions with english transcriptions, as well as a CD with LISTEN TO THIS BUILDING's full-length audio component and a raised map highlighting each featured site. (1) Max Lamb My Grandfather's Tree Abandoning the urban materialism for organic deconstruction, our next book selection is My Grandfather's Tree by Max Lamb. A documentation of the dismantling, felling, and revitalizing of a monumental ash tree, the book is a chronology of a stunningly romantic rebirth witnessed by the author and his grandfather from their converted cattle shed cottage. Monckton Walk Farm in the Yorkshire Wolds is run by my 89-year-old Grandfather, Dr Robert Andrew Dunning. He lives in a cottage that together we converted from an old cattle shed. Next to the cottage grew a female ash tree so large it overlooked the 150 acres of farmland and from where, on a clear day, York Minster could be seen 25 miles away. Alas, the age of the tree began to show and its largest limb had died and started to rot. For the safety of my Grandfather and the cottage it became necessary to fell the great ash. I wanted my Grandfather’s tree to survive beyond its rooted life, to offer the ash an afterlife and celebrate the nature of the material within. I wanted the tree to remain integral to the wood and to maintain the story told by its 187 annual growth rings — its age, the climatic conditions in which it grew, the years of heavy rainfall or drought, even its geographical orientation. Together with my friend Jon Turnbull, we cut the tree at regular intervals from the top down, respecting natural divisions within the structure such as knots, branches and crotches. I cut the ash into 131 logs of average ‘furniture’ height suitable for what my Grandfather would call ‘general purpose’ use. Whether as stool, table, chair or log, today My Grandfather’s Tree survives as an ash tree, but with a new function and the start of a new history. And where she once stood, a second generation of young ash trees are fast emerging from her roots. (2) 100 Real People New York Snow Following nature back into the urban jungle, New York Snow by 100 Real People captures the hypnotically slowed movement of a restless city when it's blanketed by a cold weeping snow. In black and white, the motion of racing cars and rushing pedestrians is frozen behind a static cloak of roaring flurries. 100 Real People is one of our all time favorite artists-we have several of their zines framed in individual shadow boxes, arranged as a line of open pages on a wall in our office!—and we implore you to look at their full collection of available works because you will almost certainly be smitten by more than one. There are only 100 real people in the world. The rest are cardboard cutouts. ...The 100 Real People project is an ongoing outpouring of [a] need to create, [a] search for answers/questions and [a] desire to observe. It serves as a way to record...discoveries and to enable a reflection upon them. If you like, or dislike, any part of what I do then perhaps you are one of those one hundred. (3) Icinori DELUGE From freezing snow to sun-kissed rain, we turn to Mayumi Otero & Raphael Urwiller for their book DELUGE. Coloured thread-like lines weave the contours of a landscape and the outlines of a city onto the pages. Each page is an accumulation, preserving the line work of previous pages and adding layers of newness and colour. Ultimately, rain falls as steep columns and unruly dashes, speckled with droplets that obstruct the landscape. It's a mesmerizing piece of art that is unquestionably gift-worthy. Between two mountains, a city is built, color after color. Suddenly, it’s raining. (4) N13BL4 Charco Following the rain, N13BL4 Collective published the Charco fanzine, a collection of works from 25 artists from Colombia, Argentina and Mexico who use photography, illustration and text to channel their inspiration around the central theme of water . Amelia Kieras Thirteen Monsters From another artist we simply cannot get enough of, next on our list is Thirteen Monsters - Number Counting Flutter Book by Amelia Kieras. As fully grown adults who are adequate at basic counting, we have no reservations about admitting how much we love this book; one of our team members even keeps a copy open on the fireplace mantle in their bedroom, arguably the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a flutter book. In all seriousness, it really is tremendously great! Count up to thirteen with a variety of friendly looking monsters! I created this book using an original woodcut print scanned and digitally painted to add color. The book is printed using digital pigment inks on a heavyweight fine art matte paper. All printing, cutting and construction is done by me in my studio. This type of book structure is called a flutter book, it is made from one sheet of paper that is cut and folded to form the book pages. Flipping through the book is a fun puzzle, with a secret monster party happening on the hidden spread.(5) Nikki Slade Robinson The Little Kiwi's Matariki With little ones in mind, the Little Kiwi's Matariki by Nikki Slade Robinson is a New Year's Delight and a perfect holiday gift. An enthusiastic kiwi eagerly scurries to wake slumbering friends in anticipation of rising of the Matariki star cluster (the Pleiades) which heralds in the Māori New Year. And for those not fortunate enough to have Māori family and friends assist with pronunciation, there are phenomenal YouTube readings to guide you through the Te Reo Māori text. The little Kiwi is fast asleep in her burrow. A beam of moonlight shines right down into her burrow. She wakes, and realises it is time. Hurrying out into the night, she wakes each of her friends from their midwinter slumber.'Kia tere! Hurry!' she urges them. The little Kiwi leads her friends through the pingao and onto the beach. It is pre-dawn. They wait, and watch. As the moon slips away behind the hills, the constellation of Matariki rises for the first time, in the northeastern sky. This gentle tale about celebrating Matariki, the Maori New Year, finishes with an explanation of Matariki - it's origins, traditions and how it is celebrated today. The constellation is also shown, with the Maori names for each star. The text contains some simple words in Te Reo Maori alongside the English equivalent. (6) Cindi M. Alvitre Waa'aka': The Bird Who Fell in Love with the Sun After your little ones are finished following kiwis, why not hop onto the wings of Waa’aka’ in Cindi M. Alvitre's book Waa’aka’: The Bird Who Fell in Love with the Sun. Not only is this volume a beautiful and lyrical picture book, it also shares the "origin stories of the original caretakers" (7). “Waa’aka’ was born when the earth was soft and the waters were new. It was the beginning of time.” So begins Cindi Alvitre’s vivid and multifaceted telling of a traditional Tongva creation story from Southern California. Waa’aka’ follows the title character, a beautiful bird who falls in love with Tamet, the sun, and tries to follow him up to the sky....A rendition of one of California’s oldest tales, Waa’aka’ is a beautiful children’s book in the classic style. (8) Water With Water The Gulf Between Us Vol. 1 While Waa’aka’ introduces an origin story that ties people to the land, Water With Water's Zine The Gulf Between Us is a visual documentation of the contemporary interaction between humanity and inletting oceans and the storied existences of cultures that reside along the Persian Gulf. It's nothing short of breathtaking. Water With Water is an experimental publishing project and visual research lab based in Doha Qatar. Our work is a funky international mix of historical and vernacular references with dynamic visuals in the form of unique printed books, ephemera, merchandise, and apparel. Our first photography zine, this 2 color offset zine includes contributions from local and international artists and photographers. Thanks to all who contributed their visions of the Gulf. Designed and printed in Qatar with support from VCUarts Qatar and Qatar Foundation. (9) Mythical Type Questions to ask yourself Part 2 For an internal exploration, try the Questions to Ask Yourself: Part 2 Mini Zine from Mythical Type. With questions like "How many trust falls am I?" you can find whimsical meditations on elucidating topics you never thought to ask. "Questions to ask yourself: Part 2" is a hand-drawn mini zine with thoughtful questions and illustrations...Small zines like this make great gifts and are fun to collect! (10) Sung Min Baik Hello My Name Is... And for a more abstractly illustrative representation of identity, HELLO MY NAME IS... by Sung Min Baik is the perfect choice. Harrowing bleeding halos overwhelm industrial grids printed on sheer pages for a conversation on self that is haunting and beautiful. Material interactions in the space between written language and mark-making and the boundaries that create identity. (11) Harry Dodge The River of the Mother of God: Nots on Indeterminacy, V. 2 When we'd rather read of someone else's exploration of self rather than explore our own, we turn to Harry Dodge and The River of the Mother of God: Notes on Indeterminacy, v. 2. If you're anything like us, you won't be able to put this book down. The language is gloriously untamed and crushingly descriptive and it sucks us into the deliciously disconnected narrative in ways we cannot begin to put into words. We're deeply, deeply obsessed. Dear Reader, the following are decontextualized paragraphs, nodes. Many, but not all, are just transferred here from notebooks, thoughts in mid-stream—you know, provisional. And since these very concepts are the animating themes of the work, I here present them to you as an experiment in sociality, thinking together and love. (12) Aimee Lee Hanji Unfurled: One Journey into Korean Papermaking Our next selection is a bit more classical in its literary structure, but the romanticism of a journey in Hanji Unfurled: One Journey into Korean Papermaking by Aimee Lee, following the origins of traditional Korean paper and the hands that form the delicate pages, the keeper of heritage, is one too cinematic and exceptional to leave off this list. With a history of well over 1,500 years, Korean handmade paper, known as hanji, is familiar to Koreans but a mystery outside its home country...Made by farmers and artisans during bitter cold winters, hanji was a noble marker of the literati who demanded high-quality paper for books, documents, calligraphy, and painting. Hanji also played a sacred role as the support for illuminated sutras, the body of temple decorations, and spirit of rituals where it was burned in hopes that its ashes would rise to the sky. Fashioned into objects that ranged from kites to armor to shrouds to chamber pots, there was seemingly no end to the possibilities of the combination of human ingenuity and paper through the transformation of natural fibers, until forces of history and industrialization collided and left this once-celebrated substrate and its related craft practices near extinction. In this first English-language book about hanji, Aimee Lee shares her experience as a Korean–American artist and Fulbright fellow on her search for a traditional Korean papermaking teacher. ...This book follows her journey as she met papermakers, scholars, and artists from bustling cities to traditional Korean villages to Buddhist temples to island outposts. Not only did she encounter the few remaining papermakers who still practice webal tteugi, the indigenous Korean sheet-formation method, but she found teachers of a whole array of allied crafts that include jiseung—cording and weaving hanji, joomchi—texturing and felting hanji, natural dyeing, and calligraphy. She traveled from the studios of living treasures to the homes of ordinary Koreans, illuminating an often-misunderstood culture through stories from its keepers of traditional heritage. (13) CARNAGE Bombing New York Issue VII Last, but unquestionably not least, is the Bombing NY Issue VII from Carnage NYC. As many of us here at ARCANISA are New Yorkers by birth—and certainly in spirit—we are filled with a sense of home and place and a rush of saudade when we see the markings of the life of our street: the warpaint, the territorialism, the expression, and the unrestrained ownership of the city only captured only by street art. Bombings, for those unfamiliar, are instances when street artists throw up a large number of pieces—typically tags or other easily rendered graphics— in a small area over a short period of time. And this pandemic-period has, understandably, fueled an interesting shift in street art and graffiti which is brilliantly documented in this Issue. For those who feel the pulse of the city in their veins, those who find beauty in the vandalism, and those want to bear witness to the artistic scars of a city in isolation, this epic collection of NYC graffiti is a must have. We'll never forget 2020. It started out strong, until what felt like distant murmurs of the pandemic hit our city dead on, and once we went into lockdown the shock to our collective system was total and undeniable. Empty streets. Endless hand-washing and disinfecting. Parking lots full of freezer trucks. Then, in Minneapolis, the execution of George Floyd at the hands of a white cop. Brief riots followed by sustained, peaceful protests. Many arrests, more police violence. All the other names that we will never forget. A racist future ex-President. A curfew, police helicopters circling the city, every day and night, even long after the curfew was lifted. And fireworks, every single night through Juneteenth and continuing into the summer. And that was only the first half of the year. In the face of all that happened, the continuing resurgence of graffiti in NYC hardly seems important. But if you are reading this then you know that of course it mattered. Like the virus it was undeniable and it was everywhere, but unlike it, graffiti offered a dash of hope and life in our struggling city. Documenting it provided literally a way out, a way to reconnect with the city every day on a human level, away from the news cycle, the suffering and the injustice. Issue VII consists of hundreds of shots of street bombing from the first six months of 2020. (14) Gift one of these perfect paper presents to those on your holiday list or browse the full Holiday Gift Guide for even more gift-giving inspiration. Holiday Gift Guide Day 22 Day 20

If you've joined us for the previous days of the 2021 Holiday Gift Guide, you've likely discovered that we absolutely love sensory experiences. Last year we ditched the Christmas bells in favor of more obscure chiming instruments, and a few days ago we shared a series of scents that held the power to transport you so with olfactory and auditory experiences checked, we now share some delectable experiential delights! São Jorge Cheese Coming off of our Breklim Surfboards —featured as yesterday's gift—and out from the Azorean waves onto the shores of São Jorge, our first taste trip takes us to a plate of eponymic São Jorge cheese. On the islands of the Portuguese Azorean archipelago, the skylines opposite the ocean are verdant vertical planes speckled by cows somehow managing to graze gracefully on the immeasurably steep mountainsides. The landscape on São Jorge island holds uniquely fertile pastures, where legumes and lush grasses emerge from the rich volcanic soil. Island cheese makers developed their cheese within the isolation of an island set 900 miles off the coast of the mainland, however, as voyagers made stops at this Atlantic mid-point respite, the cheesemakers were introduced to European cheese traditions which were incorporated into, without invalidating, the unique practices of the island. The result is a firm, dense cheese boasting a generous bouquet of flavors and a truly invigorating tingling-eliciting compound. The bacterias responsible for the fermentation of the fresh milk into these stunning wheels can trigger a very mild histamine response so while your palette is hypnotized by the glorious flavor profile, your tongue will tingle with an effervescent sting. It's absolutely fabulous and deceivingly addictive. Jambu Cachaça You have the opportunity to continue practicing your Portuguese as we make the journey to Brasil. Here, the juice from sugar cane is distilled in copper stills to create the nation's most popular spirit, cachaça—to give you an idea of the popularity, roughly 1,500,000,000 litres are consumed by Brazilians alone each year. Traditional cachaça in drinks like caipirinha is a tropical treat, but it's true magic is actualized only when it's combined with Amazonian jambu, also known as buzz button, toothache flowers, and acmella oleracea. These flowers are elongated yellow domes capped with a circles of a vibrant red only present on tropical flora. When consumed, these lively herbal flowers fill your mouth with a cacophony of tingles that ultimately lull your lips and tongue to a point of numbness and, as you can imagine, this electrifying numbness is a sensory symphony when paired with the searing flames of high percentage alcohol (1). Jambu cachaça is an experiential surprise and a phenomenal gift. Sansho Powder There are dozens of foods that we'd characterize as experiential: slimy taro and natto, puckering bitter gourds, even the instantaneously melting German ischoklad. But the last sensory spice we're sharing here is Japanese sansho powder. Made from Japanese prickly-ash, which is a spiny, thorn-covered citrus shrub dressed in unassuming leaves and small red berries that hold delicate black seeds. The leaves, seeds, and berries can and are consumed, each offering an aromatic, citrusy pepper flavor but the seeds, when dried and ground, also produce a mildly spicy heat and a mouth-watering, mouth-numbing sensation similar to that of the Szechuan pepper, "which comes from plants of the same genus" (2). Found by archeologists in excavated earthenware pots from the Joman Period (10,000-200 B.C.E), sansho is one of the oldest spices in human history and its enduring popularity after facing the test of time is a testament to how remarkable, delicious, and gift-worthy sansho is. So tingle your tongues and tickle your palettes with some tasty treats this holiday and be sure to explore the rest of the 2021 Holiday Gift Guide for even more gift giving inspiration! Holiday Gift Guide Day 21 Day 19

After exploring Gnome Surf during Day 15 of the Holiday Gift Guide, we were struck with the lightening of irrepressible inspiration. With that thirst for the sea still pulsing, yesterday, after embarking on our literary and olfactory voyage along the coasts of mainland Portugal, we decided we should make a stop in the center of the Atlantic Ocean and catch some waves in the uninterrupted ocean surrounding the Azorean archipelago. This string of islands is the familial homeland of one of our ARCANISA team members and, as such, we've been lucky enough to spend summers sunning on the black sand beaches of São Miguel, against a backdrop of waves blanketing the Portuguese horizon with glittering lapis corduroy as they draw in from the beyond. At home in Ribera Grande, we are mere steps away from the Monte Verde beach where surfers of all abilities dive into the wind licked waters. Land and life here are defined by an unwavering, symbiotic, and deeply intimate relationship with the ocean. With this uniquely mystical—and frankly, inexplicable—tie between land and sea in mind, it should come as no surprise that these Islands, with their phenomenal oceanic and igneous beauty and some seriously sick waves, also cultivate the trees that hold the ideal wood for surfboards. Avid surfer and boardmaker, Gonçalo Belmonte, recognized that these local cryptomeria trees which grew from the volcanic soil into the paths of coastal winds, were pillars of lightweight, durable, and sustainable wood waiting patiently on the Azorean hillsides to join the waves below. Prioritizing the preservation of the Island landscapes, Belmonte coordinated with local forestry agencies to ensure the wood was harvested responsibly and was deserving of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification before introducing it to his team of "nautical and environmental engineers, surfboard shapers, foresters, and...carpenters" (1). Each surfboard produced by Belmonte's company Lisbon-based Breklim is a work of art. If you have not done so already, we implore you to watch the video included at the beginning of this feature which documents with devastating cinematography the majesty of the boards and their intrinsic connection to the land. Rails and rockers—the curves of the boards—are formed from the guiding designs of visionary shapers. Cryptomeria panels, speckled with the interrupting shadows of time-formed knots and rings that mark the wood with a chronology of arboreal life, are laminated together to form bands of natural grain and warming irregular colour reminiscent of the towering cryptomeria trunks that congregate below the dense canopies of Azorean forests. The boards are then individual carved to unveil the gothic lancet arches that define the noses and and the bifurcated swallow tails of the Fish model—our personal favorite. Quintessential fish boards, introduced in the late 1960s by San Diegonian Steve Lis, are treasured by surfers of all abilities and retrophiles alike. With a short template and two prong tail, typically paired with mirroring twin fins below, the model offers the "stability of a squash tail and the rail control of a pintail", which translated for non-surfing laymen simply means it's a board that is easy to maneuver and comfortable to ride. The shape is incredibly versatile, graceful on many oceanic surfaces, but it shines and sings on small waves. Plus, it's strikingly good looking and does make us feel more connected to the water and our marine companions—even those in gray-suits! But the fish model from Breklim stands apart from the school with it's contemporary interpretation of the form with a rounder bottom rail, exposed cryptomeria wood deck, and truly gorgeous ivory coloured band that wraps the perimeter and laps onto the shore of the wood in the valley between the tail peaks, accenting the scalloped wood curves with an angular vector of solid color. The geometry and textural juxtaposition of the raw honeyed wood against the beaming ivory is a subtle and assuredly successful nod to the midcentury aesthetic that painted the backdrop while Lis was formulating his masterpiece. Before it ever carries us into sea, the Breklim boards take us on a journey. Gently designed curves guide us through workshops in Lisbon where ribbons of wood are pulled from boards by the steady hands of meticulous craftsmen. Geometry, texture, and hue transport us to the stylish swinging sixties coloured by culturally iconic miniskirts and a euphonious British Invasion. Swirling rings and knots within the wood invite us all the way back to the moment when a dropped seed took root and observed the evolution of a landscape formed by volcanos and ensconced in the vastness of the ocean. Whether your loved ones are advanced surfers with sizable quivers, surfing novices eager to cross the shore wake in search of swells, or design-enthusiasts with eyes for elegant forms, you can't go wrong gifting them one of these truly remarkable Breklim boards. And be sure to explore the rest of the Holiday Gift Guide for even more gift giving inspiration! Holiday Gift Guide Day 20 Day 18

On the first day of the Holiday Countdown we introduced the Gift Guide as a compilation of gifts that could take you on a journey full of exploration and experience without requiring you to leave the comforts and the public viral protection of your home. Over the course of the last few weeks we traveled the world from Tasmania to Greenland discovering gifts that are stunningly aesthetic and unquestionably alluring. But, we admit, most of the gifts we've share up until now are pieces that only subtly reference their originating lands. Today, we're offering a collection of truly transportive gifts that are each portals to phenomenal places, ready to carry you across land, sea, and space into new worlds of exploration and experience. During our travels, we're bombarded by waves of sensory stimulation. Symphonies of sounds— from ancient church bells to waterfalls that are impervious to time—roar in our memories alongside the tastes of traditional treats and the touches of unfamiliar lands. But it's our olfactory sense that captures the most powerful echoes of experiences; olfactory echos that can, more than those of any other sense, bring us back in time to the moments we've held onto complete with the spectral showers of emotions and the sensation of presentness we felt at the time. So naturally, we're harnessing this olfactory magic and sending you on voyages across the world on sensory boats navigated by fragrance. 8950 Cosmética With sails up, we set off across the Atlantic Ocean. Our bodies painted and our noses incited by the salty chill of aerified sea spray exhaled by bounding waves, which kneads the air above the horizonless wakes, we ultimately arrive on the Portuguese shores welcomed by beaconing sands that reach to us from within the nestled alcoves between towers of stone carved by the hands of time and seas. Here in Castro Marim in the Algarve you can smell the sun licking the salt crusted cliffs, the verdant shoreside flora brushed by sands and migrating ocean mist. Rock roses blossom and kiss the air with fragrance, meeting the olfactory ribbons of rosemary, camomile, and sea fennel drawn and spun by the wind as it snuck past. 8950 bottles the experience of being in this Portuguese landscape. When the sting of winter chaps our skin, the 8950 body lotion calms our bodies and mind with its aloe, emollients, antioxidants, and stories of warmth and waves. From the fragrant mountains of the Serra do Caldeirão [in the North-East Algarve] 8950 has [captured the aroma of the Algarve] with tangy freshness that exudes scents of lemon balm and rosemary, warm and sweet tones of carob and myrtle, the unforgettable scent of rockweed, all emulsified in aloe vera, vegetable glycerin, grape seed oil and other naturally sourced substances to produce a liquid soap, shampoo and body lotion, packaged in ceramic bottles from Alcobaça. (1) Arxotica Tundra Scent Sachet Heading north, we venture back out into the ocean, following the contours of continental shores, though Baffin Bay and Queen Elizabeth Islands embroidered into the Arctic Ocean, past fields of lucid floating glaciers washed with the smell of ice and silence until we finally arrive on the western shores of Alaska. In Bethel, we're surrounded by culture and tundra. We smell the fur of sled dogs, cold and wet from the blanketing winter, the smell of fresh wild-caught salmon still glistening with lines of sea water resting between their scales, and the whispered smell of woven baskets warmed by the hands of Yup'ik artisans. As the eighth largest city in Alaska, much of Bethel is fragranced with life. But three women, triplet sisters and members of the Qissunamiut Tribe, take us by the hand past the veins of the city into the untouched and untamed tundra. Following in the footsteps of generations of ancestors through bog-like ground, the Sparck sisters of Arxotica harvest medicinal arctic sage, ciaggluk, succulent crowberries, and fevered Fireweed blossoms, denizens that punctuate the expansive landscape. Once dried, the fragile and fragrant botanicals are combined with tundra moss, decorative berries, and shards of faux ice and poured into verdant organza bags to create Tundra Scent Sachets that carry the memories of the Arctic land into our homes. Mitti Attar Next we travel the Russian coast over the Bering, Okhotsk, and Philippine Seas, tucking into the Singapore Strait before being carried by the waters of the Malacca Straight to the Bay of Bengal. As we step onto the monsoon soaked lands of India we walk along the shores of the Ganges until we are in Kannauj, deep in the heart of the country between Kanpur and Nepal. In this perfumed city, we float through clouds of sandalwood and jasmine, past ribbons of incense and olfactory sheets of aromatic spices that billow in the heated Indian breeze. Through alleys lined with cobblestones and the signatures of street artists, we enter an unassuming brick structure into a roofless courtyard warmed by banks of smoking fireplaces and phantoms of delicate smoke that possess and consume our senses as they guide us to monumental clay vessels. Devoid electricity, the workshop is devastatingly romantic, lit only by the canopy of the illuminated sky and the glowing embers charred by now absent flames. Fragments of pottery, infused with the fragrance of spices and teas from prior lives, are added into the vessels before being sealed into their cavernous earthen nest by a slathered ring of clay and a domed lid marbled by the touch of generations of artisans. Hollow bamboo pipes known as changas herd the frenzied vapors of clay scented steam, awakened by the embers, into the smaller vessels filled with sandalwood oil to ground each droplet of earthen essence with a sylvan serenity. The result is mitti attar, a petricore fragrance that captures the scent of the dry Indian earth enriched by the mercy of monsoon rains, complete with the lullabies of distant spices and mellow woods that slip out of open domestic windows into the city streets. (The scent will transport you but the image journey offered by Udit Kulshreshtra is an equally phenomenal attar exploration!) Eau de Space Our last stop takes us beyond the comforts of familiarly that we find in floral and earthy scents. We don our space suits, surround ourselves with the metallic industrialism of rockets, and leave our planetary homeland as we set off into the skies with Eu de Space. Developed with NASA and astronauts with first hand olfactory experiences, alchemists captured the smell of space, described as"…a rather pleasant metallic sensation... [like] ... sweet-smelling welding fumes, burning metal, a distinct odour of ozone, an acrid smell, walnuts and brake pads, gunpowder, fruit, rum, and even burnt almond cookie" (2). For a journey that is, quite literally, out of this world, Eu de Space guides us into the unknown in the most enticing and hypnotic way: with fragrance. The Smell of the Moon has been described as "a unique smell, that's hard to describe...like spent gunpowder". Based on early accounts from Apollo Astronauts, Eau de Luna "The Smell of The Moon" is an authentic account of a lunar experience.(2) Take your loved ones on adventure across and beyond the Earth with one of these spectacular scents of place. And explore the full Holiday Gift Guide for even more gift giving inspiration. Holiday Gift Guide Day 19 Day17

As the title indicates, today is all about play. Share these terrific, tedium-trouncing toys with your loved ones this season and watch them sparkle with childlike wonderment, regardless of their ages! Matter Collection Paradox Top We start small with our favorite spinning pieces that are downright mesmerizing. An elegant and elevated reimagination of a traditional children's top, the Paradox Top from Matter Collection is a minimalist work of art and illusion. When the central modern rod is spun, the surrounding band seems to float, encircling the pillar as a ring of metallic mysticism that glistens in the light as it seems to spin and suspend entirely on its own. Physicsfun Vortex Dome The Votex Dome designed by Physicsfun, available from Physics Shack, is, upon first glance, a simple glass saucer-like dome that encapsulates shimmering aqua liquid that seems to billow under the surface of the glass. But the liquid is Rheoscopic, meaning it contains an incalculable number of minuscule reflective particles suspended in the fluid which are susceptible to and influenced by motion. Deep canyon like ripples of inky blue marbling pirouette through the brilliant surface of the fluid as currents trail through the handheld sea. When the dome is spun, the particles react by spiraling into a kaleidoscopic vortex that resembles the clouds drawn into the eye of a storm. It's an absolutely dazzling sensory journey that will entrance anyone lucky enough to receive one of these vortex domes this holiday. Mechforce & Gyroscope.com EDC & Super Precision Gyroscopes Turning from the fragility of glass and fluidity of rheoscopic oceans, our next item is a collection of centrifugal metallic bangles. The orbits of the Mechforce EDC Gyroscope dance in their suggested galaxies, collapsing and unfolding as concentric steel rings that seem to wind through space and time. The two toned contemporary rings on the Super Precision Gyroscope spin around a central axis with gyroscopic precession, nutation, and stunningly aesthetic motion. These out of this world gifts will take you on a hypnotic optical voyage through seas of kinetic energy. Orlander Earthworks Sand Spheres When the marks of motion are on our minds, we willingly jump into the sandy sensory traps from Orlander Earthworks and SANDSARA. Orlander Earthworks offers a collection of sensory swirl spheres that allow you to roll away restlessness while effortlessly inscribing meditative zen gardens into the sand. Each sphere is unique, carved by hand for up to 50 hours until each imprinting ridge is perfect for both deserts and delicate palms and ready to paint the desktop beaches with patterns of undulating waves and offer you endless play. SANDSARA Birch Halo If you're loved ones would prefer to watch rather than touch the sand, the entrancing Birch Halo kinetic sculpture from SANDSARA is the ideal holiday gift. SANDSARA's commitment to thoughtful craftsmanship is visible in the profoundly elegant wooden frame, even before the field of sand enters view. As we crest the horizon, we radiate our beaming elation onto the surface of the sand as an unassuming silver sphere finds motion—with elusive origins–and winds through the desert leaving mandalic trails across the smooth plane. While the piece doesn't require our touch, it offers us endless wonder and blissful delight so we consider it a toy as well as a work of art. Nervous System, Mrgogo Workshop, Puzzle Up Co. Wooden Puzzles Although the wooden frame on the Halo serves purely as a vessel, the organic stability of wood serves as the ideal material with which to build puzzles. We love the hidden astronaut and spaceship pieces floating through the endless galactic backdrop of the Infinite Galaxy Puzzle and the tiny tentacles of octopi that are fully camouflaged against the neighboring pieces they hold in the Nautilus Puzzle, both from the wood-puzzle-designing-masters at Nervous System. We never get tired of following the brushstrokes of Van Gaugh as we assemble the Starry Night Puzzle by Puzzle Up Co. or aligning trails of psychedelic petals with the pieces of the Magic Flower Puzzle from Mrgogo Workshop. The designs of these puzzles could stand alone, but when combined with the tactile three-dimensionality of cut wood jigsaw pieces the puzzles are entertaining for our minds, eyes, and hands! Escape Room Puzzles Constantin Voidlock Puzzle When navigating the mysteries of wooden puzzle boxes, we become entirely disconnected from our bodies as we're transported into channels that approach inaccessible cavities and secret passages while we look to unlock the secrets within. These pieces are hand-held escape rooms that call upon our skills of observation, exploration and determination to decipher the unrevealed codes. It's an all-consuming, brain-teasing adventure and we can't get enough! With 300 steps required to find the solution, the Constantin Voidlock Puzzle From Escape Room Puzzles is a small but mighty puzzle that will keep your loved ones' full attention for hours—we highly recommend it for those who travel often and those with long commutes on public transportation! David Janelle Safecracker 50 Not unlike Sudoku, the objective of the Safecracker 50 wood puzzle from David Janelle is to align the pieces in such a way that each of the 16 tiered, wedge-shaped columns of numbers add to 50. With a stationary base ring below with 5 stacked rotating rings, the puzzle—complicated by the fact that the top four are notched to obscure numbers on underlying tiers— can create 65,000 permutations but holds only 1 correct solution. Offering seemingly endless fun and admittedly addictive frustration, the Safecracker and the VoidLock Puzzles are exceptional gifts that everyone on your list will adore. Bernard Vuarnesson & Uncrate Stellarscope If your loved ones are curious but either too occupied or impatient for 300 step puzzles, try catering to their inner explorer with these scientific selections. Starting amongst the stars, the Stellarscope designed by Bernard Vuarnesson and sold by Uncrate will guide your eye though constellations hung like ornaments from the dark branches of the heavenly night. Simply set the piece to your location and time and look up through the lens and discover a map that labels the treasures above. While astronomical apps are readily available, there is a romantic simplicity to these pieces that allow us to navigate the stars from the tallest desert peaks and the most secluded beaches devoid of Wifi. And for those in areas where the stars are overwhelmed by urban auras, the brilliantly portable Homestar Flux Planetarium from Sega Toys will bring the majesty of the night sky indoors and fill your ceilings with a canopy of stars. Bella Luna Toys Sunprint Paper Spotlighting some astronomical forces on earth, solar sensitive Sunprint Paper is an excellent artistic gift that lets you harness the power of the sun to transform the shadows of ordinary objects into stunning works of art. To use, one must simply lay out leaves, cut paper, or other opaque items with aesthetic silhouettes onto the Sunprint sheets and wait for the sun to stain the paper a deep indigo that frames the white space preserved below the objects. Each sheet offers an easy to do art project that is a perfect gift for blossoming creatives of all ages. Waldami Cucumber Waldami Card Set For paper pieces unaffected by the sun we highly recommend card games. There is no shortage of entertaining game decks but today we want to feature a few packs of geometric focused cards, the first of which being the Waldami. Envisioned at the Rhode Island School of Design during a week long design charratte during which teams of students were tasked with "creating a game that imparted knowledge"(1), Waldami is as beautiful as it is captivating. Utilizing an aesthetic and universal visual geometric language, the game prompts players to construct a connected maze of sophisticated and crushingly minimalist geometric forms printed on square cards. A hybrid of dominos and Set, players place cards against those already on the table to create an approved combination of shapes paired by the two cards. There are four accepted combinations (seen in the 4 images above): 1. the card placed differs from the existing card in only one way, 2. the inner and outer shapes or fills are swapped, 3. the inner and outer shapes and fills are swapped, 4. a repeated shape or fill is matched to a card with another repeated feature. Ultimately, the game is incredibly fun and your loved ones will appreciate that it offers a bouquet of gorgeous minimalism when the cards occupy all corners of their tables! PlayMonster Set Card Game As children, we often played the Set Card Game in school as our clever teachers disguised strategy and observation skill building as this exceptionally fun combinatorics game. It's difficult to describe how blissfully excited our classes of unruly youths would be upon instruction to push our desks against one another in preparation for Set card tournaments. The deck is composed of 81 unique cards that feature one, two, or three counts of shapes—diamonds, s-shaped squiggles, or ovals—that are filled, striped, or left empty and coloured red, green, or purple with each possible combination of number, shape, color, and fill appearing only once. The objective of the game is straightforward: collect "sets" of three cards that cannot be sorted into "two of ___ and one of ___" (e.g. one striped red squiggle, two solid green ovals, three empty purple diamonds or one solid red diamond, two solid red diamonds, three solid red diamonds). It's an elevating matching game full of colourful geometry that is outstandingly fun both inside and outside the classroom. Math24 For a bit more education, challenge your loved one's arithmetic skills with Math24. On the spot, and fueled by incentivizing competition, players stare into the hypnotizing card on which a primary tapestry is woven as a bold red square sits atop a vibrant solar yellow circle within a vivid square blue frame. Extending out from the central square are four pillars of red and white rays that separate four distinct black numbers. Using any combination of the four primary mathematical functions –addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division–one must identify a formula that uses each number once and produces the number 24. For those who celebrate their quantitative nerdiness or those who revel in the pressures of competition, Math24 is an unparalleled gift choice. Unspoken Moments Co. Unspoken Playing Cards Dropping competition from our deck, our next gift prioritizes openness and self-discovery as it invites players to answer question prompts thereby encouraging conversations and understanding. Aptly described as a "playing card experience", the Unspoken Play Card deck from Unspoken Moments Co. holds a significant collection of cards with prompts "spanning from the past, present and future, some things light hearted and other things dig a little deeper, but there is an option to pass or revisit, so players are comfortable too" (2)—questions like, are you normally led by your heart or your head?, what do you overthink?, and is there a memory you would like to relive? describe it. To us, the holidays are a time of connection, and what better way to connect with your loved ones than to offer them the opportunity to give a glimpse into the inner workings of their minds within the safe and comforting framework of play. Paperwolf Easer Island Maoi Paper Sculpture Rather than turn to paper for card games, Paperwolf in Germany designs sheets that can be folded into towering Easter Island Maoi Sculptures. The angles of origami-like folds form as chiseled noses and stand as proud square jaws. The mystifying and weighty stone monuments are reimagined as delicate desktop pieces that offer a modern stylized portal through history. The paper "pieces [ to create 3 Rapa Nui Figures] are cut from high quality, dyed-through paper, all folded edges perforated for convenient folding" so your gift recipients can build their own monuments with ease! Foldscope Should your loved ones be eager to build something functional rather than decorative, gift them an epic paper Foldscope. This flat paper microscope. designed with science accessibility in mind, combines "low cost materials with precision optics"(3) to offer 140x magnification in a lightweight form that is portable, waterproof, and endlessly versatile. Coupled with the Premium Accessory Pack which "contains the essential accessories for specimen collection, slide mounting, viewing and imaging, all in an easy durable carrying pouch", the Foldscope is an unrivaled gift for all explores and lovers of the microcosmos! Kubiya Games 3D Tic Tac Toe And for those who are committed to the classics, this 3D, wood-carved tic tac toe game is our gift of choice. Offered by Kubiya Games, each wooden game board holds 9 vertical posts onto which players arrange smooth spheres and block-like X's with the goal of aligning three of their pieces in a row while preventing their opponent from doing so. In the game's 2-dimensional equivalent, trios can be formed in rows, columns, or diagonals but here, in three dimensions, sets of three like pieces can be achieved in 33 possible ways—assuming our math is correct!—which adds a level of difficulty that elevates the game to new entertainment-offering heights! Kubiya Games Fanorona Wood Board Game We stay at Kubiya Games to find our final gift, the Fanorona Wood Board Game that originated on the Island of Madagascar. A strategy game, Fanorona prompts players with a simple objective: capture all the opponent's 11 pieces, not unlike checkers. However, the method to capture these small spheres of wood is less conventional. Players use a series of moves to approach and withdraw pieces from "lines of enemy pieces" to capture players but are obliged to follow "the "vela partie" (debt game) after winning a decisive game (the winner must let the loser "eat" one man each turn for 17 consecutive moves)" which demands that players employ complex strategies to win the game. Gifting those with a mind for chess-like strategy games a Fanorona set offers them a world of stimulating, competitive challenge that they'll absolutely adore. Encourage your loved ones to embrace their inner children with one of these playful pieces! And discover even more brilliant gifts by exploring the full Holiday Gift Guide. Holiday Gift Guide Day 18 Day 16

Yesterday, we set the tone for the week by sharing a collection of gifts that make our hearts sing. Today, we're laying the foundation for even more phenomenal gifts to come in the second half of the Holiday Countdown by offering a section of buildings and blocks that will inspire the blooming architect within everyone on your holiday list! Material Immaterial Spaces Set We being with few of our favorite architectonic sculptures. From Nitin Barchha and Material Immaterial (MIM) Studios, the Spaces Set is a series of nine brutalist, square concrete structures that, when arranged into a grid, form an industrial urbanscape complete with mazes of staircases and a stippling of carved windows. "Each piece in the set is an individually complete space defined by volumes and voids that give the human imagination a glimpse into what could be lying inside. The nine concrete homes come together to form a multitude of in-between spaces, these in-between spaces form new transit routes and spaces which can be moved around as per one's imagination." (1) Mini Materials 1:24 Scale Mini Cinderblocks If you are looking to gift objects with brutalism, industrial materiality, and an opportunity for creative construction, then a handful of mini cinderblocks will certainly fit the bill. Made of real cement, each block is molded as a perfect 1:24 scale replica of their life-sized counterparts. These cinderblocks make exceptional desk toys and conference calls are made all the better when you have an opportunity to construct concrete towers while you build business empires! Karin Corbin Micro Tiny Old Town For a lightweight miniature city, head to Karin Corbin in the United States to find her unquestionably charming tiny towns. Varying in size from .90 to 1.04 inches, the buildings arrive as pre-cut and pre-scored sheets of luminous white cardstock that are easily formed into three dimensional towers inspired by Old World European architecture. Corbin includes written instructions as well as a photo tutorial of the assembly process—so there is no need to struggle building your miniature village—as well as links to tiny LED lights so your can make your towns glow! Wood Castle Shop Wooden Pop-up Castle Some of our loved ones don't have the dexterity for tiny paper building modelings so we gift them these mesmerizing telescoping, pop-up castles from Wood Castle Shop in Portugal. Growing up, one of your team members associated the holidays with these truly magical sculptures as their father would bring them out as seasonal decorations. Imagine being a child and watching an unassuming branch transform into a castle as towers rise from beneath the valleys of the bark. Even as adults we are always mystified by these entirely unique carved cityscapes and, as such, we eagerly gift them and their intrinsic magic to those we love at the holidays. Video by Wood Castle Shop Fifth Avenue Kids Russian Church Building Block Set If you're looking to build a taller tower, the Russian Church Building Block Set from Fifth Avenue Kids in Singapore will leave you spellbound. Containing a whopping 110 pieces, the set offers peaked entryways, smooth columns, and—of course—the ornamental points of onion domes which are synonymous with Russian architecture. We love that the simplicity of the geometric forms combined with the sheer number of blocks open up a world of creative possibilities that one rarely finds elsewhere. Flat circular slices can perch on narrow columns as regal umbrella-like canopies or roll along their edges as colossal doors that obscure secret entryways. And, at the end of construction, the elegance and flawless proportionality of the shapes ensures your structure will be an aesthetic masterpiece. Rabbit Quick & Super Magnete Rods & Spheres Magnetic Sculpture Set Exchanging wooden blocks for steel rods, our next gift is the a set of magnetic steel rods and spheres that can be arranged as dizzyingly prismatic metal towers. The addition of the magnetism offers an added dimension to your builds; now you can suspend archways, hang rods like fringe, and enjoy the satisfying—and remarkably addicting—snap when the poles connect. Plus, the reflective steel surface and the Morse-Code-like arrangement of dots and dashes contribute to an air of sophisticated chicness. You can buy a preselected, boxed set from Rabbit Quick or customize your ideal combination of rods and spheres of different lengths and sizes at Super Magnete. Philadelphia Museum of Art Bauspiel Lucent Cubes For a luminous and brilliantly coloured set, head to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for their Bauspiel Lucent Cubes. Crystalline lucite, in ten equally delicious colours, is carved into 100 nearly 1" cubes that form a tray of glistening sugar candies or the mosaic of light painted on the walls opposite stained glass windows. Should you choose to arrange them into columns of color or just drool over their beauty while they lay flat in their frame, you'll be instantly smitten by these gorgeous blocks and you'll want to share their radiance with everyone on your list. Museum of Modern Art Keith Haring Stacking Figures If stacking is the name of your gift giving game this year, we've got you covered! Jumping from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, we find artistry and endless joy in the Keith Haring Stacking Figures. Pale wood boards are carved to reveal eleven silhouettes, "based on illustrations by beloved Pop artist Keith Haring, whose work is represented in MoMA’s collection"(2), that are further defined and animated by the graphic, emphasizing black outlines celebrated in Haring's works. The characters are captured mid motion, with exclamations of arms outstretched like vectors and and chevrons of knees and elbows arranged around the bodies like petals of dance. Perfect for art-lovers and playful spirits alike, these Figures are joy-filled gifts that are sure to bring a smile to any lucky recipient. Hooray Toys Balancing Cactus Or maybe your loved ones would prefer the glossy bouquet of cactus arms and fruit from Hooray Toys in Canada over the petals of dance from MoMA. A gently rounded wooden vase reveals burrows that are sized to accept the neck like stems of verdant green bulbs of wood. Resembling the outstretched, sky-praising arms and the fanning stem segments of flourishing cacti, the green bulbs themselves hold holes to host blossom-like wooden knobs in onyxed aubergines and impassioned reds and oranges. When assembled, the pieces form whimsical arboresque compositions of colour, an oasis of joyousness, making the cactus an ideal gift with the power to warm and enliven even the most snow-covered homes. Green Walnut Inc. Wooden Sacking Rocks Designed with young ones in mind, the assembly of the Balancing Cactus may prove unsatisfyingly easy for those with fully developed motor skills. For a slightly more advanced balancing challenging and an equally aesthetic sculpture, consider the Wooden Stacking Rocks from Green Walnut Inc. in Canada. Blocks of wood are carved into faceted, asymmetric crystals of natural, non-toxic, and eco-friendly pine. The flat faces, when matched, form stable connections as your towers grow while the asymmetry of the shapes and the irregularity of the sizes demand thoughtful consideration as they whisper spells of instability that can corrupt the balance of the structure. The blocks themselves are undeniably decorous and act as sophisticated accents when not used for play so they are perfect gifts for design-lovers and game-seekers alike. So-So Store After The Storm Comes The Calm Game Blocks offer playfully competitive possibilities that extend far beyond simple stacking. The cylindrical blocks of the After The Storm Comes The Calm game by So-So Store in Portugal, for example, act as tumbling ocean waves that must be methodically removed without capsizing the sailing ship that rocks at the surface of the sea. The brilliantly simple game necessitates strategy, delicacy, and unwavering focus regardless of whether one plays alone or in competition with others; either way, it's gloriously fun and profoundly consuming. "'After the storm, comes the calm' is a saying used in the Portuguese language, which expresses the idea that after a turbulent and agitated period comes calm (bonança), establishing a parallel with the world of navigation: At sea, after big storms, followed by periods of tranquility, where you can navigate with greater ease." (3) Bauhaus Movement Bauhaus Chess Set The geometric blocks of the Bauhaus Chess Set, designed in 1923 by Josef Hartwig, are another unconventionally playful use of blocks. The description of the set from Bauhaus Movement effortlessly articulates all that we love about the piece. "What is imperceptibly special about this chess game is its simplicity. No ornaments lend the individual pieces a haptic that radically turns away from what has so far characterized the design of Bauhaus Chess figures. The striving for clarity and simplification in favour of the recipient is therefore evident in the Bauhaus chess as in hardly any other object of utility art....The figures harmonize with the playing surface, the chessboard, since they do not form a playful contrast, but rather find their way stringently into the symmetry." (4) Ultimately, all of these buildings and blocks will inspire your loved ones with the intrinsic beauty of their designs and the opportunity for creativity and play they offer. We can't think of items better suited for holiday gift giving! For even more gift inspiration, browse this year's full collection of gifts in the Holiday Gift Guide. Holiday Gift Guide Day 17 Day 15

The first week of the holiday countdown we offered you gifts you could wear, and yesterday we wrapped up the second week which was full of items and objects to decorate your homes. Today we're jumping with a fearless resolve and unrelenting giddiness into week three. Seven days with arguably the most enlivening collections of gifts, this week is a love letter to experience, play, and joy. A letter that leaves you with all the notes you need to conduct a life well lived this holiday and well into the new year! Today, specifically, we swim into the pool of celebration, support, and profound appreciation of our societal diversity and our reassuring human commonality. It can be all too easy, when bombarded by the distractions of the day to day and the unacknowledged blinders erected by our routines, to become disconnected from one another. Especially during the pandemic, our worlds narrow and we slowly tune out the purring vibration of the lives lived around us—much to our societal and personal detriments. But this narrowness opens up the door to a realization of just how phenomenal the world is; those eye-widening, soul-enlivening moments that render you breathless with the profound joy and peace that comes with seeing people and populations for who they are and recognizing that you are a part of a global community full of spectacularity. These gifts connect us to those moments of universality and unity that make us feel whole so we share them with you in hopes that you and your loved ones can share in the immense heart-filling love during this season dedicated to comfort and joy. Beautiful Day Granola Let's start in Providence, Rhode Island at Beautiful Day. During a quintessential late-night philosophical conversation in 2008, Keith and Geoff posed the question, "how could our community do something practical to help refugees rebuild their lives in Providence. The answer? Well, why not granola?" (1). With a motivation to make a tangible impact in the Providence refugee experience and fueled by a bottle of beer, the men hammered out an actionable plan that ultimately actualized as Beautiful Day Granola which offers distinct programs tailored to adult refugees, youth refugees, and community education in addition to their addictive granolas! Within the walls of their kitchen, adult refugees facing "the most challenging employment barriers: [limited] English, lack of transferable skills and emotional issues related to the trauma they have experienced in their home countries" (2), are welcomed into safe spaces, surrounded by those with similar experiences. From measuring ingredients to obtaining the perfect level of toastedness, granola making requires an attention to detail and a commitment to quality without necessitating extensive communication in English. Refugees in the program are offered paid, on-the-job kitchen and production training and exposed to invaluable work and social skills that serve to acclimate them to American culture : "confidence, team work, English, punctuality etc." "Beautiful Day helps refugees adjust to life in America by offering paid, on-the-job training. Every job in our company is designed to be part of a hands-on classroom where trainees gain critical skills and the confidence to enter the job market. At the same time, our award-winning products educate consumers about the refugee crisis. Every purchase, every bite or sip, provides a practical way to get involved with human displacement and start building more informed, welcoming communities." (2) We are firm believers that immigrants and refugees make our communities better. Someone once very eloquently articulated the appeal of diversity to us by noting "everyone dreams of travel, of exploring unfamiliar worlds. Immigrants bring those worlds to us and share cultures and traditions that would otherwise remain inaccessible to the majority of people, those without the means to travel". We love that Kieth and Geoff and those at Beautiful Day give us an opportunity to indirectly welcome and support our refugee neighbors while we swoon over bags of Pistachio Cardamom Granola and bars of Bourbon Pecan! And, as Beautiful Day ships their assorted gift boxes, we're gifting granola to everyone on our holiday lists! Aleppo Sweets Baklava Speaking of refugee neighbors, we stay in Providence and stop by Youssef Akhtarini at Aleppo Sweets. Akhatarini learned to make baklava in his home country of Syria where he opened a string of bakeries in Aleppo and grew his beautiful family. But after the war turned his home and business to rubble and devastated his family's sense of safety, Akhtarini was forced to let go of the land where he built his life and he, together with his wife and children, made the arduous journey to Rhode island with their love for each other and a collection of treasured recipes. Initially, he introduced his tradition Syrian baklava—made with sugar syrup instead of honey in his American home—to his neighbors and farmer's market patrons but it wasn't until 2018 with the opening of Aleppo Sweets that the broader Rhode Island community was invited to Akhtarini's table. The restaurant is one of our favorites in Providence and we could spend all day sipping sweet mint tea and eating Aleppo pepper fatayers and warm musabaha but it's the baklava that sings with the melody of Akhtarini's passion and masterful touch. Aleppo Sweets is both a story of resilience and rebirth and a story of tradition, artistry, and a love of home regardless of place. And we can't imagine a better holiday gift than the reading of this story through the flaky pages of a slice of baklava bound by sweet Syrian syrup. And the best part: Aleppo Sweets, like Beautiful Day, ships their products so you can gift a box of baklava to anyone in your life! Ayed Arafah & Disarming Design Poetic Nights Diary Pillow We jump closer to Syria to find Ayed Arafah in Ramallah in the West Bank. Born in Jerusalem and raised in Dheisheh refugee camp, Arafah has a powerful relationship with home and place that can only be chiseled from the displacing and disassociating experiences that harden people in occupied territories. In these spaces, one finds nurture from the roots of home established by generations before but falters at the hands of the winds of uncertainty and the pressure of foreign staked soil. It's an existence that those with brilliance like Afrah transcribe into unparalleled works of art. Here, Afrah shares the intimacy of his connection with home by offering a comforting work of art to bring with you when you are your most vulnerable. "Ayed Arafah reflects on how the occupation also takes part of the body and mind; to protect his dreams from this violence, he often reads poetry before sleeping. That’s why he made these pillow cases: to provide a warm and creative touch to the bedroom, with the lyrical content and meaning allowing poetic dreams to appear. [The] pillowcase shows a quote from Mahmoud Darwish's poem...‘Diary of a Palestinian wound’ and reads: 'Tell her I’m fine… My homeland is not a suitcase and I am not a traveller'”(3) When our heads and eyes are heavy and we feel dispossessed of our security and of our sense of home, this Poetic Nights Diary Pillow is a lullaby that warms us with a breath of assuredness and a song of connection. To Write Love On Her Arms Presence Not Perfection T-Shirt While at times we comfort ourselves with hymns of connection while wrapped in the embrace of our bedsheets, other times we feel empowered to remind others of our interconnectedness, our unwavering support, and our recognition and celebration of their individual validity. With that in mind, we dress ourselves in t-shirts that send a message of love to the world like the Presence Not Perfection shirt from To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA). Before TWLOHA became the phenomenal international movement that it is, it was a single shirt offered to raise money to support a single person through treatment. "When Jamie met Renee Yohe, she was struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury, and suicidal thoughts. He wrote about the five days he spent with her before she entered a treatment center, and he sold T-shirts to help cover the cost. When she entered treatment, he posted the story on MySpace to give it a home. The name of the story was “To Write Love on Her Arms.” (4) Now, TWLOHA is a movement "dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide" through opening community conversations, collecting and publicizing available resources and directly donating to organizations that provide treatment and recovery programs. TWLOHA offers a marketplace of truly wonderful merchandise to spread messages of hope and raise funds for relevant causes. The Presence not Perfection shirt, with its straightforward message, is one of our absolute favorite shirts. Over the heart on the front of the shirt, the word perfection is crossed out and replaced with the bolded word presence while on the back, the message is expanded to include THE WORLD NEEDS YOUR PRESENCE, NOT YOUR PERFECTION, YOU HAVE MADE THIS WORLD MORE BEAUTIFUL. To wear this shirt is to be a beacon to help guide people who are struggling out of the darkness but everyone, regardless of the state of their mental health, can benefit from the reminder that they are, just as they are, enough and that the world is better because they're in it. It's the perfect message of love and hope and we want nothing more than to spread it to as many people as possible this season. Good Vibez Designs Different Not Less Sticker Another epic reminder piece comes to us from Austrialian brand Good Vibez Designs—and with a name like that you know they're right at home on this list! We couldn't be more proud to work with the several members on the ARCANISA team who are neurodivergent as they sincerely are the lifeblood of our company; but we are all too familiar with the discrimination and judgements directed at those who are neuro-atypical. While we don't believe in shaming people for their ignorance of the beauty and power of atypical minds and atypical communities, we have no qualms about spreading a message of celebration of all minds, all cultures, all orientations, communities, and people. And that's where Good Vibez Designs—which is run by a person on the autism spectrum— comes in. They offer a Different Not Less Sticker that we can't get enough of. A distorted wave of white text, reading DIFFERENT NOT LESS, billows in a pool of glossy black that's surrounded by crisp white ring. The tapering of the letters and the graphic black and white circle recalls the ying and yang symbol which feels all too appropriate as there is a remarkable balance and harmony found when neurotypical and neurodivergent people come together. Frankly, there is a natural harmony when we celebrate, encourage, and harness our individuality and love and this sticker is an aesthetic reminder of how magnificent life is when we appreciate each other for who we are. Let your loved ones celebrate what makes them unique by gifting them this badge! Lucky Fin Project For Every Hand CURVD Mug When it comes to wholehearted celebrations of individuals, few organizations are as sincere and successful as Lucky Fin Project. After giving birth to a beautiful and healthy baby girl with an unexpected hand difference, Molly Stapelman, the Lucky Fin Project founder, started creating bracelets that celebrated people with limb differences like her daughter. 20,000 bracelets and nearly 73,000 instagram followers later, Lucky Fin Project stands proud as a supportive community, a movement of self acceptance, and, most importantly, a voice of veneration of individuality. What we love most about the Project is that it's a platform for unwavering happiness that isn't tainted by even a whisper of saccharine insincerity. Their Instagram is an excellent example; the page is an invitation to join an incomparably welcoming community and each image is an introduction to and celebration of community members, their daily lives, and their joys. It's a celebration of people in their natural elements, living without pretense or performance. The people featured have limb difference but when we view the page—unlike other pages in the atypicality-acceptance space— we beam seeing the unfiltered fun had by kids, gush over tender photos of sleeping babies, and are awed over how gorgeous the subjects' eyebrows are. Lucky Fin Project celebrates people, including but not limited to their disabilities, a distinction that, as people with disabilities, we find empowering and hugely refreshing. Recognizing that differences may come with a need for accommodation, we absolutely adore when products are intentionally designed to be accessible to a wide community of typical and atypical people alike. Like this For Every Hand mug from CURVD and Lucky Fin Project. The white mug is accented by a pair of vibrant palm prints, one typical and one suggestive of limb difference, bellow which LUCKY FIN PROJECT and HUMAN FRIENDLY are boldly written. Each mug is thoughtfully designed "with everyone in mind...from average bodies to those with upper limb difference, Parkinson's, lower dexterity, and invisible disability"(5) and, as one of our team members has a loved one with ALS, we can attest that not only does the tapered handle offer a fantastic aesthetic accent, it also makes a tremendous difference to those who rely on their morning cups of coffee but for whom most standard mug handles prove inaccessible. "I believe everybody is different. Some people’s differences are on the outside and easier to see than the differences others have on the inside. But EVERYBODY has got something and God doesn’t give challenges to those who can’t handle them. And in what ever your challenge, is a blessing worth celebrating".-Molly Stapelman (6) We fully plan to add a skosh of hot chocolate and an inappropriate but unapologetic amount of marshmallows to these Little Fin Project Mugs when we cozy up by our holiday fires. Whether you could benefit from the unique CURVED mug design, you know someone who could, or you just love to participate in movements that spread love, these mugs are a great item to gift this year! Nicaraguan Sign Language Project Where Lucky Fin Project accommodates difference with a tangible object, Nicaraguan Sign Language does so with knowledge. As we've discussed before, a few of our ARCANISA members are proficient in American Sign Language and spend a great deal of time with the Deaf community in the United States. We feel, with inarticulable conviction, that language should not be a privilege and that everyone should have the resources to communicate comfortably. Unfortunately, there is a societal desire for adherence to an accepted 'typical' standard and, when it comes to communication, this standard is spoken language. Consequently, an educational practice known as 'oralism' began which prohibited the use of sign language and instead prioritized lip-reading and spoken communication to encourage 'normalization'. Not surprisingly, this resulted in generations of Deaf people who were deprived of proper educations as they were unable to absorb taught information because they were denied the use of appropriate language. In the United States, the increased visibility and acceptance of the Deaf community has prompted a transition back to formalized sign language teaching but, in much of the world, deaf children go uneducated and, even if they are given access to education, oralism remains as the predominant education strategy. But, in the face of absent language, the brilliance of human adaptability prevails and small clusters of deaf people and their families create their own sign language systems known as 'village signs' and 'home signs' that allow them to communicate with one another even without formalized instructed language. In Nicaragua, deaf children created their own language that would ultimately become Nicaraguan Sign Language. "After the 1979 revolution, the new government embarked upon a "Literacy Crusade" aimed at bringing at least a fourth grade education to all members of Nicaraguan Society, including children with disabilities and at bringing at least a fourth grade education to all members of Nicaraguan Society, including children with disabilities. The special education school in Managua was re-opened, but this time with hundreds of deaf students attending academic classes...[but] Sign Language was not taught.... ...Hundreds of these deaf children, ages 4 to 16, suddenly found themselves in an environment where their communication needs were no longer met by family members. These children were now forced to come up with a better way to communicate with each other. They copied each other's gestures, expanding their repertoires as a common vocabulary began to develop among them. There were not using a language -- not yet. But, they were becoming better at communicating their needs and experiences among each other. ...In 1986, the teachers and administrators...were mystified that the children appeared to be using their hands to communicate with each other. That year, the Ministry of Education invited [a] linguist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Judy Kegl, to come to Managua and explain this unexpected phenomenon....Kegl quickly realized that the Nicaraguan government had supplied the triggers that would enable deaf children to create a rich, complex and rule governed new sign language.Armed with video cameras, Kegl endeavored to document the birthing of Nicaraguan Sign Language." (7) Nicaraguan Sign Language is one that emerged organically and spontaneously in the absence of any external influence and, unlike all other Sign Languages, has been documented since its inception which is just crushingly cool. There is an organization known as Nicaraguan Sign Language Project that works to empower the now vibrant Nicaraguan Deaf community by "fostering nationalization of the indigenous signed language and by training natively fluent Deaf Nicaraguans to be school teachers and sign language role models" (7). The Program holds a firm commitment to respecting and preserving the Deaf culture and identity and therefore advocates for the immersion of Deaf Nicaraguans in their uncontaminated indigenous sign language. While they don't yet offer merchandise—and we sincerely hope they will in the future—consider making a donation to the Nicaraguan Sign Language on behalf of your loved ones in lieu of a material gift this year. The magic of participating in the history and preservation of language is one of the best gifts we could imagine! Gnome Surf While Nicaraguan Sign Language Project focuses on education, Gnome Surf is all about fun. Gnome Surf, with "a world class research team, comprised of neurologists, doctors, and world renowned researchers and activists", works tirelessly "to create a cultural shift toward kindness, love, and acceptance for all kids, of all abilities...by providing families with surf therapy, art therapy, eco therapy, and yoga experiences locally and globally regardless of their socio-economic status" (8) Any organization that hopes to make acceptance and kindness the norm and creates spaces for everyone to be exactly who they are is one we definitely want to be a part of! If you've ever watched someone surf you likely can appreciate how invigoratingly joyous a sport it is. There is something inherently, perhaps primally, soothing about being near an ocean and, when kissed by the salty air under an endless shower of sun rays, it's hard not to feel the pulse of nature. Add to that scene the sensation of motion, accompanied by a rush of excitement and an indescribable sense of freedom, as one slides along the surface of the water. Surfing offers everyone a brief but profound adventure, and Gnome Surf extends that opportunity to everyone. "Time stands still in joy. Pure communication, compassion, and love is being exchanged out on the waves, at times without even a spoken word. (8) As Gnome Surf is based in Little Compton, Rhode island, it might be difficult for some of you to engage with them in person. But fear not! They offer some killer merch so you can support them and represent their movement of kindness and acceptance regardless of where you're based. Project Airtime If water doesn't appeal to you, then maybe you'd prefer to take to the sky. If so, Project Airtime has you covered—literally! Covered by a canopy of colours, illuminated by the Utah sun above, the team of paragliding pilots at Project Airtime sets off into the endless sky as they take their co-pilots on an adventure through the open air. "We take EVERYONE flying. When we say EVERYONE, we mean it. No exclusions. From special needs individuals to those with brain and spinal cord injuries. Individuals with illness, as well as the elderly and veterans. Our co-pilots have one thing in common, they want to fly!" (9) Paragliding offers an incomparable freedom, a sense of sheer weightlessness that is only introduced by flight. Beyond this, paragliding presents a new perspective, transforming the urbanized outcroppings within an arid southwest landscape into a tapestry of texture, a topographic map denoting the chronology of the touch of man. Towers of mountains greet you at eye level and clouds welcome you with a cool breeze before you slip below their veil and follow the comforting call of the grass as you glide back down to Earth. It's not difficult to imagine how spiritual an experience this is, and we find it visionary and stunningly intimate that Project Airtime invites everyone to join them as they fly. Project Airtime doesn't offer merchandise but we are unwaveringly confident that supporting their mission to share flight with a donation in the name of someone you love is a gift your loved ones will cherish. If you're looking for more physical gifts, we've featured a huge variety of phenomenal and meaningful products already during this Holiday Countdown. How about Radial Grandmas who took down a mining company that poisoned their community and now weave scarves to raise funds to restore their damaged homeland? Or woven bowls made by the hands of Zimbabwean caretakers for HIV positive orphans—the profits from which go directly to paying for schooling for these children? Maybe a blanket, designed by a seventh generation Diné weaver and skateboarder? Did we mention that 100% of the profits go towards providing firewood to at-risk elders on the Navajo nation and that for each blanket sold one is provided to a homeless shelter in the town of the person who purchased it? How about a hammock from El Salvador handwoven by a group of women who came together to start a business to supplement their income when climate change devastated their crops? Or a hammock hand-knotted in South Africa by a former industrial fisherman who learned to knot as a way of patching fishing nets while at sea? Or a hand-sculpted bowl that bears the fingerprints of the artists—trans and non-binary individuals and formerly incarcerated women— who created it and found healing in the touch of the clay and the expressivity and empowerment of craft? Or maybe a scarf hand-embroidered with birds by women in Gaza designed "as a symbol of spirituality and freedom....to awaken your curiosity and open your hearts and minds to new possibilities"(10)? Did we mention we dedicated a day solely to contemporary talismans should you need luck, protection, or just a whisper of magic? Explore the full 2021 Holiday Gift Guide and you're sure to find the right gift for everyone on your list this holiday! Holiday Gift Guide Day 16 Day14

For many—including us here at ARCANISA—the holidays are synonymous with family meals around a table dressed with comfort foods and seasonal centerpieces. Last year, we shared a collection of unconventional table coverings to serve as stylish backdrops for your feasts, but this year we wanted to get a touch closer to the treats so we've compiled a list of platters, plates, vessels, and containers to carry and frame your delectable holiday dishes. Anatolia Hands Testi Kebabı Pot We begin with several pieces that function as both cookware and stylish serve-ware. In the Cappadocia region of Turkey, along the Red River, potters sculpt mounds of teracotta-coloured clay into the vase shaped pots from Anatolian Hands that are used to create a brilliant and experiential dish known as testi kebabı. Succulent meats are stewed with fresh vegetables and seasoned with an array of aromatic spices before being pored into the cavity of the pot. The pot is then sealed-either by pressing a potato into the mouth of the vessel or by covering the rim with a blanketing lid of dough—then placed in an oven where it slowly heats the ingredients within and imparts the subtle earthy fragrance, characteristic of clay cooked-foods. When the dish is ready, the pot, in its entirety, is taken to the table where it is cracked open to reveal the steaming and dizzyingly aromatic meal within. Not only does the pot provide outstanding flavor, it also offers an impressive, dare we say spectacular, experiential culinary performance. Plus, at the end of the meal the shattered pot is discarded so you don't have to struggle with post-holiday-meal dishes! Nagatani-en Yaki Yaki San Smokeless Grill We travel east to Japan next to find the Yaki Yaki San Smokeless Grill from Nagatani-en, which has been hand making this 7th century-origination, Iga-yaki-style pottery since 1839 using porous clay that settled on the bed of Lake Biwa 4 million years ago (x). The glorious grill features a hollow tapered frame that elevates a grill top inscribed with rays that deepen as they radiate out from the center to collect and guide liquids away from the grill's surface to ensure perfect maillard reactions. To use, one simply places the piece over a gas stove where it absorbs and evenly distributes the heat offering a uniform cooktop onto which raw meats, fish, and vegetables can be laid. With great caution, the Yaki Yaki San can be carried to the table, gently set onto a protective trivet, where it will warm your guests and wow them with its beauty as they're lulled by the sizzling of their dinner on its dark black ridges. Verve Tagines for Two While the uncovered surface of the Yaki Yaki San Grill allows for steam to escape to encourage effortless browning, the conical cloche of traditional tagines retain the vapors, allowing them to condense onto the clay walls and return to the pool of ingredients that simmers in the base of the tagine. The result is a piece of clay cookware that produces incredibly tender and succulent meats and vegetables with ease. Like the Turkish pots, an unglazed tagine imparts a clay like flavour that will add an elevating element to a dish but glazed tagines are also available for those who want to retain the pure flavours of the ingredients and those who prefer the easy clean up ensured by the glossy lining. We love the the vibrant glazes of the hand-cast and hand-glazed Verve Culture Tagines for Two from City Home. The traditional tagine form is offered a contemporary chicness with the addition of teal, blue, red or white glazes that radiate a wash of glistening colour and an undeniable style. Orient499 Round Crescent Tajin Should you be looking for a decorative tagine serve-ware piece that doesn't need to function as cookware, the Round Crescent Tajen from Oriend499 is a moment of regality that you won't want to miss. Handmade in Lebanon, the Tajen is speckled with the swarming indentations of hammering that recall the contours of textured crocodile hide. The cloche covering is a broad inverted bowl with four tiers that lead to a striking gold crescent moon finial. While these Tajens are entirely food safe, they are almost too artfully sculptural to be used as functional dinnerware! Ayres Estudio Tortilleros In our opinion, no tagine-cooked stew should be served without warm bread. And to ensure our fresh baked accoutrements make it to the tables sans-tepidity, we travel from Lebanon to Mexico to find the tortilleros available at Ayres Estudio. Carved from volcanic stone and Tzalam wood, the vessels are cylinders—some straight-sided with linear furrows that weave across one another, some tapered with a string of pearl like reliefs that encircle the rim—that will retain the warmth within much like the lava from which they were formed. Vicara Decanter Bottle & Heartwood Cups Turning from the organic rigidity of volcanic stone to the clear fragility of glass, the next piece of serve-ware is designed for your beverages. The Decanter Bottle and Heartwood Cups from Samuel Reis of Vicara, available from SAL Concept Store in Lisbon, are hand blown and formed within molds created from natural tree trunks. The bark-like ridges that cascade down the sides of the glass form channels of shadows and crests of vibrant white that will leave you mesmerized. A carob wood topped cork seals the mouth of the decanter and offers a reminder of the forest that offered its textured forms to create the glass molds. For spirits and seltzers alike, your guests will be entranced by this handsome set. Koudai Makino Harvest Moon Plate While the Decanter finds luminosity through the ridges of glass, the natural dyed metal of the Harvest Moon Plate from Koudai Makino—available at Style Meets People and Lisen— channels lights with its dynamic texture and metallic finish. Handmade of light aluminum, each plate is blessed with the stain of plant-based pigments. The surface of each plate is entirely unique, a planetary landscape that emerges from the mind of Makino and introduces itself as canyons that dance atop the aluminum. These lunar trays make exceptional gifts that are sure to light up your holiday tables. Lee Yunjeong Light Stand Our next lunar object is the Light Tray (full moon/half moon) pedestal designed by Lee Yunjeong. Unlike the Harvest Moon plate which takes the form of the moon itself, the pedestals suggest the luminosity of a pearescent full moon by framing a circle of negative space with intersecting rectangles of ebony coloured wood that support the circular wooden plate lacquered with a sheer wash of colour that suggests ribbons of the aurora borialis soaring through the blackness of night. From some angles, the rectangles appear to bisect the hollow moon with a line of darkness, while from other angles they shadow one half of the light, transforming the full moon into a waning crescent. There is an unquestionable allure in the simplicity of these vacant portals that offer us open doors to the majesty of the sky like the circular doorways of traditional Chinese architecture. Take your loved ones on a journey through the abyssal night sky, following the light of a guiding moon, by gifting them one of these stunning sculptural stands. Orient 499 Sun Serving Platter Emerging out of the night into the warmth of the day, we head back to Orient499 for their Sun Serving Platter. While the trays can be separated and used as individual elevated plates, we love the gold tinned stands when they're stacked to create a prismatic solar tower that is so lustrous it seems to ignite with luxurious auric light. Jun Sang Guen Black Tower Staying in Korea, our next tower from Jun Sang Guen is a masterful composition of anthracite blackness and faceted geometry. In the Black Juan-Sang Series, "a heavy feeling of black soil, the non-standardized texture draws attention by decorating the surface of the object with"(2) texture emphasized by a unique glazing technique. Tiered trays once used in royal banquets to venerate valuable guests, drawing attention to their status with their subtle elevation, now offer rhythm to table settings and create an organic landscape in which the tiers seem to hold conversation. CB2 Hubbard Marble Cake Stand Finally, we find a natural landscape in the raw and unpolished jagged surface of the mountainous stand of the Hubbard Marble Cake Stand from CB2. A shard of Banswara marble, whose untamed naturally suggests it was plucked from the earth and introduced to our tables untouched, holds an ultramodern and deeply sophisticated disk of black nickel-plated stainless steel. The cake stand is a work of contemporary art worthy of museum exhibitions and holiday tables alike. Deck your own holiday tables with some of these exceptional serve-ware pieces or present them as unquestionably excellent gifts—maybe paired with one the seasonal recipes in our holiday collection! And be sure to explore the rest of our 2021 Holiday Gift Guide for even more gift giving inspiration. Holiday Gift Guide Day 15 Day 13

There is a conceptual ideology ubiquitously taught in American primary schools that employs an imaginary bucket as a symbol of a person's emotional self . When we offer words of affirmations or expressions of compassion and fondness to one another or when we act with positive, thoughtful, and kind intentions we are "filling buckets" by elevating the emotional well-being of those around us. Subsequently, a full bucket belongs to a person who is entirely fulfilled, overflowing with love and support, and confident in and comforted by an unwavering sense of belonging. During the holidays, we hope all of you find your buckets overflowing as you surround yourselves with those you love and the abundant joyfulness and generosity of this celebratory season. To spread heartfelt, bucket-filling cheer to loved ones who's buckets need a bit of topping off or to offer a material extension to the internal buckets of those with full hearts this holiday, consider gifting one of the visionary vessels and vases on this list! Amy Leigh Design Daffodil Vessel Let's start with a vase that will sparkle like the first winter snow. Amy Leigh, an environmentally conscious, contemporary designer and the genius behind Amy Leigh Design, pours molten pewter into crystalline pools of water, like emberous lava crashing into abyssal seas, to create organic water casts with eruptive storms of metallic texture for her Daffodil Vessels. These organic pewter forms are then encased in cubes of glasslike bio-resin, which are then carved to reveal central cylindrical wells designed to hold flower stems and the water that nourishes them. Bio-silver beams sprouting from the resin hold elegant halos, suspended above the wells, that support fragile stems so the faces of the petals look out onto the world with chins held high. The dense, furiously-contorting pewter, surrounded by the intrinsic peace of serenely still clear resin, balances the fragility, translucence, and the fleeting, organic vitality of the botanicals the vase holds. It's magnificent and very much gift-worthy. Katz Studio Sphere Vase Isaac Katz of Katz Studio interprets the characteristics of metal differently with his Sphere Vase. The vase, "procedurally designed", is a symphonic hive of thousands of spherical resin bubbles, dipped in gold chrome. The spheres warp and crawl over one another as they find energy from the scalding light captured by their reflectivity and boil into a hypnotic column that reaches towards the surface of a hypothesized ocean. When filled with water, the vase is mind-bending; experience informs us that effervescent pockets of air are conventionally suspended in water, but, here, these bubbles form structure and encase the pool. The vase is brilliant in every way and will make the perfect addition to any holiday table. Estudio de Artes y Oficios Santo Domino Starfruit Bowl A similar reinterpretation of natural objects in metallic form, the Copper Starfruit Bowl from Escuela De Artes y Oficios Santo Domino in Colombia is a reflective sculptural vessel that renders us starry eyed. Prominent ridges that define the surface of the succulent starfruit are translated to copper coated silver as peaked, mountainous ribs that present a contemporary chiseled landscape. Hammered indentations scurry across the bowl and impart a stippled texture that implies the rippled flesh of the fruit without explicitness. The bowl is ambiguous, but decidedly natural, and whether you see the glistening contours of the golden starfruit or the lineation of bark like seeds, you will find an entrancing aesthetic accent in this vase. Husemusi Ceramics Neriage Vase For more ostensible texture travel to Japan to Tsuneharu Tanaka's Hasemusi Ceramics Studio. Veins of ivory whirl through rust coloured clay to create a vigorous, wood-grain-like laminated swirls that exemplify Neriage pottery. This pattern runs through the delicate, thin-walled vessels and is carved to create a rough-hewn surface that mirrors the dizzying pleats of crepe paper. The patterns and textures are a commotion of visual interest that is soothed by the quiet forms of the sculpted vases. What we love about these pieces is that they visibly and proudly evince the hand of the artist. One can watch the gestures that spin the coloured clay into form, follow the trails of the touches that carved the channels into the surface and, through this sight, can find connection to the process and the people that made each piece. Made by Manos Walnut Shell Stoneware Ring Dish While the veins in the Hasemusi works are articulated with colour, the veins on the Walnut Shell Stoneware Ring Dish from Made by Manos abandon all colour. Rather, the relief-formed, polar-white veins find definition from the ghostly shadows that fill their slightly opaque lines as they rise above the illuminated English bone china of the tapered cup base. Each Walnut Shell is a petalesque stone that looks like it was plucked from the verdant mossy tapestry below the canopy of snow inspirited white trees that whisper through the mist in a fantastical world we'd love to live in. And while we can't live in such a world, we can provide one for our rings and for our loved ones by gifting them one of these stunning shells. Cattails Woodwork Acorn Button Box We stay below the arboreal canopy to gather our next tiny vessel: the Woodland Acorn Button Box from Cattails Woodwork. Tiger maple, flame birch, or cherry is turned into smooth cups with broad rounded rims that cascade into cylindrical hollows, dimpled at the heart of base where the lathe met and held the wood. Walnut onion domes are grooved to reveal striated, furrowed dapples that gently wind toward the step mirroring the wooded cells of acorn caps. The rims of the cups nestle effortlessly into the cavities of the domes, aligning to manifest their final forest-worthy forms. Each Acorn box is a moment of magic, recalling memories of childhood where every acorn was a sophisticated, well-hatted man, every patch of blooming moss was a dense extraterrestrial jungle, and every sweet gum seed pod was a nest of hungry hatchlings gesturing to be fed. Share this reminder of the whimsicality and joyous imaginativeness we can find in nature by gifting these Button Boxes. Tokoindah Handmade Glass & Root Vase Bring a bit of the natural world indoors with the Handmade Glass & Root Vase from Tokoindah. Aquatic recycled glass cups perch on the rustic tentacles of stripped, papyrus coloured roots. The industrialism and manufactured nature of the cups evaporate as the glass melts into the wood, dripping over the supporting branches. The translucent blue, fabricated goblets become self contained glistening puddles suspended within the wooded landscape. Each Vase is a stunning sculpture that will enliven the homes of anyone lucky to receive it as well as a natural vessel that stands ready to carry your cut flowers and all the treasures you collect. KCDF Shop Ice Tray If aquatic glass pools appeal to you or the ones on your holiday list, stop by KCDF Shop for the Color Ice Tray from LEE, TAEHOON. Globes of topaz blue blown glass are opened and encouraged to bloom into gently curved, plate-shaped pools. Subtle ripples collect and encircle the bottom, evoking the rhythmic motion of water despite the rigidity and permanence of the fragile glass. Icy shards of glass, like glacial crystals, are marbled by inky streams of blue like those from the depths of the sea and float on the base of the bowls. The Trays are chillingly beautiful and unquestionably appropriate given the arctic briskness that arrives with the holiday season. Kaolin Tiger Studios Crystalline Vase For crystals void of the suggestion of the cold we highly recommend the Crystalline Vases from Kaolin Tiger Studios in Sugar Loaf, NY. First off, we are excited about any gift from a town called Sugar Loaf but these ceramic vases are uniquely sweet. An ovoid body tapers to a tall, narrow neck to create a vessel that reminds us of the silhouette of mounds of wool being spun into thin thread. A blackened, phthalo green background coats the form, entering the light as it's drawn up the neck where it transforms into a vital cerulean blue. The colour story is absolutely romantic and the form is undeniably elegant but it's the lichen-like crystals in the glaze that grow across the surface, creating fractals of life amidst the darkened background, that make this Vase so exceptional. Van Brandenburg Abelia Milk Jug & Saucer While Kaolin Tiger Studio's presents crystalline glaze lichens in New York, in New Zealand, Van Brandenburg is showcasing minimalist and ultramodern floral formed vessels. The Abelia Milk Jug and Saucer are a sculptural set that evoke the graceful fragility of flowers with a thoughtfully restrained design. Four pear-shaped arcs of milky ceramic form the base saucer, spreading like blossoming petals as they drape their points towards the earth. Held within the central bowl of the saucer, the jug is a tall hollow bulb, pinched at four points at the rim to form four function spouts that suggest the peaks of petals on a closed bud. Perfect as a milk jug, vase, or decorative interior accent piece, the Abelia set is a gift that will not disappoint. Simone Crestani Tentacle Decanter If you're look for a gift that is more whimsical, the made-to-order glass Tentacle Decanter from Simone Crestani's Polpo Collection is a fantastic choice. The tapered neck of a conical wine decanter, hand blown from clear glass, is pushed ever so slightly off center as a magnificent octopus crawls up the side of the belly of the bowl. Several of the eight tentacles, all ribbed by trails of glass suckers, grip the surface of the decanter, the tips hidden as they seem to slip below the surface of the glass. Other tentacles curl into the air and dance through space. But our favorite tentacle—a trio of words we never expected we'd say!—reaches up along the neck of the decanter before sharply pulling away to threaten the eye of the octopus. While we can't offer a backstory for this self-mauling creature, we are smitten by it and we're extremely confident it holds all the personality traits we require for a guardian of our decanting wines. We just love it! AFL Shop Curved Ikebana Vases For a tamed curved vessel we head to South Korea, Here, we find the Curved Ikebana Vases from AFL Shop. Matte anthracite coloured ceramic is handcrafted to form languid conduits that arc and bend into strikingly minimalist parabolic channels. Small openings offer entry into the hollows of the vases so one can meditatively introduce stems to the caverns when designing Ikebana arrangements. Whether your loved ones are masterful Ikebana artisans or casual lovers of supermarket bouquets, they'll adore the arrangement elevating lines of these Curved Vases. Tectle Planter Pots The Planter Pot from Tectle in Canada holds beautiful, aesthetic space for your loved ones' living plants. Eco-conscious, corn-based plastic is 3D printed to create a lightweight pot complete with drainage holes. The linear banded ridges that undulate and wind up the curved forms are refined and delicate expressions of the same folds present on the extruded ceramics from Anton Alvarez. For the plant-lover in your life, gift one of these gorgeous pots so they can frame their indoor botanicals with beauty. For those with black-thumbs, follow the lead of one of our ARCANISA team members and use these sculptural basins as decorative modern cradles for rolls of hand towels in your guest bathrooms. R&R Handmade Wabi Sabi Lidded Bowl Jumping from linear ridges to smoothed steel, we stay in Canada to find the Wabi Sabi Lidded Bowl from R&R Handmade. The Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic perspective finds beauty in imperfects and centuries of cultures, from the Persian mosque-tilers to enslaved African American quilters, have intentionally incorporated flaws in their works so as not to bring bad luck or challenge the singularity of a higher power's perfection. Even without the knowledge of this history, we find so much beauty and magic in the hand-forged, mild steel bowls. Glowing steel is hammered against the striking anvil to stretch the and shape the curved walls. A similarly vaulted dome sits within the bowed rustic rim of the bowl, topped by a tightly-coiled steel knob. Each piece is coated in raw beeswax that offers a layer of protection and a subtle sheen that reveals the topography of the mottled steel. We're confident that this remarkable lidded bowls will welcomed and treasured as a new heirloom by anyone you gift it to this season. Plus, Ruben Iron can carefully stamp a personalized message onto the bowl to create a piece that is unique those on your holiday list. Galaxy Clay Raku Vase Singapore-trained, Portland-residing artist Hui-Yong Kim of Galaxy Clay replaces the three dimensional mottling of the Wabi Sabi Bowl with an abstracted mosaic of colour on the ceramic Raku Vase. "Hui-Yong and her brand, “Galaxy Clay”, are the epitome of East meets West. Her combinations of time honored Asian design and modern American art create unique and memorable pieces that will delight and inspire for generations." (1) A beautifully proportioned bulb vase is formed on the wheel complete with an inverted, conical-shaped neck that meets the body of the vase at a stunningly minute point. Once sculpted and dried, the piece embarks on the Raku journey. The sculpture is heated until it glows with a blinding radiance rivaled only by the sun, at which point it is laid in a bed of combustable materials that ignite and paint the piece with their unique smokes. The result is an unpredictable galaxy of colours that dance atop the vase, forming auras and halos that wrap the piece like weather patterns wrapping the Earth. The vases are bold, bright, and simply out of this world. Ceramic Meltdown Hand-Painted Graphic Novel Vase We stay on Earth and within the United States but head east to New York for this next vessel. From Kyle Lee of Ceramic Meltdown, the Hand-Painted Graphic Novel Vase is as much a ballad as it is a graphic novel. Four lines occupy the foreground of the design like a trio of white horizons crossing, and illuminated by, the trail of a risen golden sun —although our New York City-born brains see the Hermes icon of Colombia Business School and we can't get enough of it! Blocks of colour, outlined with bold blackened outlines that would make Lichtenstein swoon, form a quilted landscape that holds the horizons. Accentuating Xs and a chorus of circles add geometry that feels formal and structured against the fields of colour despite their enigmatic borders. Ballad or graphic novel, this vase is a work of art we could spend forever reading. People's Pottery Project Signature Fingerprint Bowls Finally, we arrive in Los Angels at People's Pottery Project to celebrate their Signature Fingerprint Bowls. "People’s Pottery Project’s mission is to employ and empower formerly incarcerated women, trans and non-binary individuals through paid job training, access to a healing community, and meaningful employment in our collective non-profit ceramic business." (2) Cork-like ceramic is sculpted into an elegant, simple curve at which point it receives an indented boarder as the rim is thoughtfully and rhythmically pinched like the crust of a pie at the hands of our grandmothers. The bowl is lined with a soft blue glaze, distressed to reveal an underlying ivory coat. We love these bowls because they're the embodiment of people; they're diaries written by the hands of those who have lived storied lives. These hand's could have shaken from the quaking force of trauma or hidden to escape the chill of adversity, but instead they heal us with offerings of vessels that carry the food and drinks we turn to and rely on for comfort. We feel privileged when we hold these bowls and we offer them as gifts, and as blessings, to those we love this holiday. As you have likely noticed, we feel a profound passion for the magnificent pieces on this list and we hope you've found inspiration to gift vessels and vases and to fill emotional-buckets this holiday! Find even more gift giving inspiration by exploring the full 2021 Holiday Gift Guide! Holiday Gift Guide Day 14 Day 12