“I accidentally burned a friend’s house to the ground once.” That’s the first line of “British Columbia—1972,” a story by Cookie Mueller. It’s a story about what Cookie Mueller—who is high on cocaine, who has just tied her toddler to a plum tree outside a burning building—runs back in to save.
Cookie, along with her friend Howard, must make the value selections themselves. Their friends, the homeowners, are out of town. “Howard and I hysterically grabbed a huge plastic container with a lid on it. We carried it out carefully, whatever it was; we would risk our lives saving it. Later we found out it was the garbage.” Slipshod though their methods, they manage to carry out a Victorian blue-velvet couch, a Tiffany lamp, a radio, a mahogany rocker, selected crystal stemware … and three bottles of whiskey, for a well-deserved nightcap on the lawn.
Only then do they remember the paintings. “We went into instant art panic. It was getting dangerously late to be in the house, the roof was about to fall.” For some time, they stand in the burning building fighting about which artwork to save. “THIS ARTIST IS MORE FAMOUS! Howard yanked a painting off the wall. BUT THIS ONE’S WORTH MORE! I grabbed another. We hadn’t much time. NO, TAKE THIS ONE! IT’S OLDER! … BUT LOOK AT THESE BRUSHSTROKES.” A curatorial spat mid-apocalypse.
Howard loops the picture wires over his head. Easy to imagine the paintings slapping against his chest as he runs out of the house, neck pulsating. (Cookie never says if they lost any good paintings in the fire. I imagine her to be, even under duress, a fairly deft curator.)
You must admit that the bulk of the gifts that you give and receive are not worth saving in a house fire, and that this is your fault.
It’s a story I think about every holiday season. You must admit that the bulk of the gifts that you give and receive are not worth saving in a house fire, and that this is your fault. That you are not inspiring people to give you radical things. That you yourself can spend more, and if not more, better. Don’t just try to move someone with your generosity. Embarrass them with it. Gifts should be impossible to reciprocate.
I myself have received quite a few gifts that I would save in a fire. Not coincidentally, most of them are on my walls: The small portrait of a cow—not grazing, a passive cow—painted by Sam McKinniss, which he gave me for Christmas last year. A cowgirl A.I. painting by Walter Robinson, which he gave me as a reward for coming to visit his studio in Queens. (I lied and told him I’d never left Manhattan before.)
A signed—actually, inscribed to me for my birthday—photograph of Candace Bushnell by Jessica Burstein, who died this year. And, after my wedding this summer, my dear friend Susie Lopez dried out the bouquet, clipped some tulle from the underside of my dress, collaged them, and framed them exquisitely.
If you don’t want to buy someone a painting—fine, whatever!—you can buy them something from this list. I’ve asked some of my best friends, favorite celebrities, and everybody in between for their recommendations.
Ina Garten, former writer of nuclear-energy budgets, says she bought the photographs for her kitchen from Staley-Wise Gallery in SoHo. (“I love having art in the kitchen.”) For her 70th birthday, she “splurged and bought a half-bottle of 2017 Chateau d’Yquem Sauternes.” Her “red wine splurge for special dinners” is Antinori Tignanello. Her everyday wine is Torres Mas La Plana.
The “best gift Jeffrey ever gave me was a trip to Tuscany, Provence, and the Cotswolds to see private gardens.” (The best gift she ever gave herself was “installing my Lacanche range” stove.) I’d like to note that from Ina’s Web site, you can order a (cheap!) signed copy of any of her cookbooks. I recommend my first-ever cookbook, Family Style, a classic. (Oh, and her publicist reminded me you can ship one of Ina’s Coconut Cakes anywhere in the United States.)
The famously obsessive Daphne Merkin, who is “obsessed with facials,” urges you to ignore the “panoply of ballyhooed and overpriced facialists” in New York, and give someone a gift certificate to Diane Higgins (facials start at $170). “Her place is on the second floor of a grimy building on Second Avenue in the 70s, but don’t be put off.” Diane does all the facials herself—you won’t be pawned off to a trainee. And if you’re looking for a unique shoe, Merkin says she buys sneakers in “green suede and pebbled turquoise leather” at Lukure, “a sliver of a store on Madison Avenue.”
Rivka Galchen, who wrote my favorite short story of all time, said she only ever gives people chocolate. (She does not care which brand.) I outsourced the question. New York Times Book Review editor Sadie Stein recommends Sauternes Raisins from Boissier, in Paris. “The most refined Raisinets you’ve ever tasted.”
The painter Marcus Brutus says he has “a friend that sends people really ridiculous gifts. Like he once sent my friend live ducklings and he sent another one of my friends 50 pounds of bird seeds.” Great ideas.
Novelist and lyricist Polly Samson says all she wants for Christmas is an Akhal-Teke horse, an ancient breed from Turkmenistan. “They have a metallic sheen to their coat and are the most glamorous creatures … They gleam gold.” If she can’t have a horse, she says she’ll be “moderately happy” with a handful of crickets.
“I shan’t be asking for a Qing Dynasty cage (or even the plain wooden one that Salvador Dalí used for his pet crickets in his bedroom at Portlligat), because I don’t believe in prisons. Mine will live in the fruit bowl beneath a sunlamp where they’ll break my heart every day with their songs of Mediterranean summers long gone.” Speaking of, Polly wrote the perfect summer novel about just that.
Polly’s daughter-in-law, the set designer, long-time Simone Rocha collaborator, and activist Janina Pedan, recommends Gushka wool, a Ukrainian company based in the Carpathian mountains. Janina prefers “super-practical” gifts. This Gränsfors Wildlife Hatchet is a favorite of hers. “It fits in a normal bag. Equally good for chopping up kindling or big pumpkins.”
Dan Simon, publisher of Seven Stories Press, had a quibble with last year’s guide. “Everyone,” he says, “knows about Bonnie Slotnick,” the cookbook store on Second Street. The best-kept secret in Lower Manhattan, “if not the whole world,” is actually his neighbor, the specialized antiquarian bookstore Joanne Hendricks Cookbooks, at 488 Greenwich Street. (Joanne is the wife of Fluxus artist and archivist Jon Hendricks.)
“In her shop, you’ll find a pristine copy of La Cucina Futurista for $5,000.” Dan recently published a Boxed Set of Annie Ernaux’s work ($180, and you get a poster). For the slut in your life!
New Yorker critic Merve Emre said that “for that Business Insider profile, they photographed me at B&B rare books, where there is a first edition of Ulysses for $45K.”
Buffy Easton, the director of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, recommends a little clock from Verdura. “The smallest thing from the fanciest store. Always a good policy.” She has five of them in her bedroom. She notes: You can’t buy them online. “They wrap them beautifully and deliver by hand in N.Y.C.—so I haven’t been to the store in years.” (“Ask for Adele”: 212-758-3388.)
The painter Cecily Brown says, “This is not obscure, but I always take Florida Water, from Bigelows, to England. My whole family is obsessed with it. Nothing to do with Florida.”
One of our greatest living writers, Jamaica Kincaid, says, “I want nothing for Christmas really for I am Jew.” I felt a little crazy when I read that e-mail. To the point: the gardener in your life will enjoy her book, My Garden (Book).
The journalist Edward Helmore recommends a cheese house with a chicken-wire front. “Keep your cheese at room temperature.” He also recommends a subscription to Sparticist, the socialist newspaper. “It’s quite relaxing to read.”
For children, journalist Alice Gregory recommends personalized name bowls from Brittany. They’ve got “ears,” perfect for grubby little hands.
Jon-Jon Goulian, whom The New York Times describes, correctly, I think, as “his own best character,” says someone once had his favorite book, Portrait of a Marriage, by Nigel Nicolson, made out of marzipan. “A cool and thoughtful gift, and, if you like marzipan, which most people don’t, delicious.” E-mail Dahlia’s Custom Cakes.
Jon-Jon also recommends the perfect stocking stuffer for people who hang out in the woods: “A pack of three original Tick-Tey Tick removers, for $11.99, in blue, red, and silver. The advantage of using a tick-key to remove a tick from your body, as opposed to a tweezers, is that the tick-key stands a greater chance of removing the whole tick, whereas tweezers might leave the head.”
The critic Rosa Lyster says You’re All Invited: Margot’s Recipes for Entertaining, by Margot Henderson, wife of Fergus and founder of Rochelle Canteen, “contains, to my knowledge, the first written instance of the term ‘Negroni roar,’ i.e., what happens to the volume in a room after everyone is two Negronis down.”
The artist George Condo says he greatly appreciated this truffle set and a lordship in Scotland. Gifts from his daughters, Eleonore and Raphaelle.
For funky-plate lovers, journalist Eleonore Condo recommends Seletti Hybrid China. For those into silly ceramics, she recommends flying to Margarites, the town in Crete dedicated almost entirely to ceramics. “At this shop called Kerameion Pottery Workshop (no Web site; phone number: +30 2834 092135), we found a salt shaker that looks like a little pebble. You pour salt into a hole at the bottom of the shaker, but it doesn’t spill out, it only shakes out. It’s like magic.” (She sent me a video, it does what she says.)
The only critic to put fear in the hearts of her fellow millennials, Lauren Oyler, says her friend Monika Grabuschnigg makes nightshade sculptures that look like “goth pets.” Though “wary of book recommendations,” she usually gives people A House in Norway, by Vigis Hjorth.
The English writer Ella Cory-Wright, who as it happens is a glamorous ex of my husband, says “most days” she wears cowboy boots from Heritage Boot in Austin. (“I bumped into the shop’s owner at an airport, and she said: ‘You’re wearing my boots.’ And I said, ‘No! They’re mine.’”) She says she was given a copy of Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life by an ex. “A remarkable poetic/photographic story of life in Harlem in the 40s and 50s. It is dirty and it is holy and it is joyful. (‘I done got my feet caught in the sweet flypaper of life and I’ll be dogged if I want to get loose.’)”
The best book critic at The New York Times, Molly Young, recommends “this perfume called Miss Tranchant, by Italian madwoman Hilde Soliani—the primary notes are butter and oysters.” She also says it’s “weird how many people who are ‘into design’ DON’T have this book.”
Home-goods store owner Audrey Gelman recommends The Tiny Dollhouse, New York’s only dedicated dollhouse-and-miniatures shop. She’s building an elaborate English country-themed dollhouse. “I purchased this darling miniature paper-towel holder and this cheese dome the size of a pushpin. And for the morbid lover in your life, you can even buy this 1/12th scale tiny coffin.”
Artist Willa Nasatir recommends buying a portrait of your loved one from the artist Emma McMillan—$1,000, and she does pets too. (Willa has been known to make people fake press passes for Christmas. A mensch.)
Expert reader Francine Prose says “for adults still waging the good fight to make kids fall in love with books,” try The Planets and The Mysteries of the Universe. “Our seven-year-old grandson coveted his school-library copies: the pages were edged with gilt! When we got him his own, he seemed to think he’d gotten the Gutenberg Bible, and when his friends came over to play, my proudest moment: he showed them … his new books.”
By the way, for Christmas this year I want someone to build me a bookshelf, in my kitchen, stocked with the best books ever written, plus all of Frances Stark’s oeuvre (so many of our greatest living writers are painters).
Kaitlin Phillips is a publicist who splits her time between Manhattan and Marseille
