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Once upon a time the fashion crowd wouldn’t have been seen dead with anything in their mouth but a cigarette. These days, however, shopping for deli goods at the weekend is practically a compulsory pastime for the cosmopolitan. Have you seen the super-sized tins of Perello olives? Caught sight of those colour-blocked cans of Ortiz tuna, or stocked your pantry with the tall glass jars of Bold Bean Co’s pulses? Even butter can be bragged about these days, and there’s status to wearing a T-shirt branded with certain restaurants (see St John’s merch being paraded around, and look out for Little Bread Pedlar beanies). With all these eye-catching culinary designs about, it’s perhaps not a huge surprise that the fetishisation of food has transcended the kitchen in the interiors world, too.
Kitchenware has been playing with foodie forms for a while now – peruse our vegetable-patch favourites for just one case study – but now the craze is clearly branching out into other rooms. Here is a delightful shopping list of homeware gifts for the food-lovers in your life.
Flaky fakery
First came Daylesford’s food-themed candle, imbued with the aroma of vine tomatoes, but it was the croissant-scented number from Overose that went viral on social media. The brand has now rolled out the pretty pink smash hit in a range of tempting scents, including croissant aux amandes, pain au chocolat and cinnamon roll. Hitting a slightly different note – thinking more about the aesthetics than the aroma – is this rather realistic croissant-shaped candle from Holly & Co, a small-business-boosting online shopfront.
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Clean eating
North London’s favourite bakery Pophams seems to strike gold with every new venture. This imaginative take on soap on a rope, for instance, is part of its wonderful homeware collection. All-vegan, the eye-fooling product is made from olive oil and hung with a natural brown twine to look like a bunch of grapes, and comes in the appropriate colourways of purple and green. Needless to say, we’re drunk and in love.
Ware and fare
If you’re after dishes to echo the edible, happily there’s a wide range we can recommend – among the more well-known name in the field being Portuguese maker Bordallo Pinheiro, whose cabbage crockery have made quite a splash (for our part, we’re particularly fond of their peanut-shaped trinket box).
But here’s one slightly off the beaten track: Oculus London. Though it has a by-appointment showroom in Camberwell, the brand is chiefly an Instagram affair, selling all sorts of joyful pieces to its devoted follower base – including this stoneware box disguised beautifully as a bread roll. Staying within the realm of pottery and pain, Augarten also makes a range of dishes shaped as baguettes and croissants (with sunny lemons thrown in, too) in hand-painted fine porcelain – elegant containers which could be used to store anything from butter to jewellery.
A light lunch
Pursuing the ceramics vein in a quirkier direction: Alma Berrow made a name for herself by converting overflowing ashtrays of stubbed-out cigarettes, fruit peel and other bits of overlooked ephemera into works of sculpted art. But, more appetisingly, she’s got a great line in foodie objets too. Her celery lamp is particularly lovely – as are her peas on a plate.
Aroma al dente
From the wonderfully quirky Brooklyn perfumer DS & Durga, whose candles are known for their unexpected scents – among them ‘Big Sur after Rain’, mimicking the smells of coastal California’s microclimate after a shower, and the self-explanatory ‘Concrete after Lightning’ – comes a new collaboration with New York restaurant Jupiter. Known for its incredible pasta, this candle has a faint umami scent that mimics the smells coming out of that eatery’s kitchen.
Cheesy peasy
Keeping with the kitchen candle theme, shoppers today are spoilt for choice as far as savoury eye-foolers go – plates of jelly, tins of fish, fried eggs and, very pleasingly, ones mimicking those honey-dispensing bears you get in classic diners. If you’re minded, though, to swap out American-style accoutrements for a Parisian picnic, this set of cheese board staples from Choosing Keeping should do nicely. Alongside a line in fruit – and even a trompe-l’oeil plate of spag bol – the wax baguettes, cured meats and cheese wheels are all produced in Italy by a small family-owned business who have been making candles for six generations, since 1840.
The crisp clip
Here’s another kitsch kitchen accessory you didn’t know you needed from Pophams. These tortilla and crinkle-cut clips are incredibly useful for keeping your Torres truffle crisps fresh – as well as the contents of whatever other half-finished snack bag you might have lying around in your larder.
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