If you have not done so recently, I strongly recommend time roaming the fourth floor of the Ralph Lauren store at 888 Madison Avenue. Its where I found myself one chilly December weekend rethinking how I live.
Or perhaps more precisely, where I live, and what it might look like in 2025. The fourth floor of 888 is the Home Collection floor. It’s where you will wonder why you don’t surround yourself everyday with mahogany tables and wicker chairs with gingham pillows. Why your crystal decanters aren’t full of good brandy. Why your paperclips aren’t all in silver trays. Why you don’t have a Christmas tree in your bedroom.
Garrett Garrett Double Nut Bowl
Moisture-wicking canvas, supple leather, and solid brass hardware unite to create the Garret double nut bowl, a classic bar accessory with refined style.
For me it was the nut bowl that really did it. It stood, elegantly casual, on a home bar set with pictures in RL leather frames, and gilded coasters, and vintage match strikers. Its tan leather handle promised easy transport to the living room in case the party moved in there later in the evening. Its two glass compartments were both filled with pistachios. They looked very fresh. It was the kind of small object that raises the stakes for every single thing around it. The tan leather of the handle also encases the glass containers which almost gives it the sturdiness of a picnic basket while remaining streamlined. It makes its presence known on a table but doesn’t overpower or take up unnecessary space. You can, if you prefer variety, have two different kinds of nuts as the glass is divided well and evenly, but one thing in abundance always makes a more dramatic impression.
Now one of my New Year’s resolutions is to make sure the rest of my cocktail table lives up to that nut bowl.
Editor-in-Chief Stellene Volandes is a jewelry expert, and the author of Jeweler: Masters and Mavericks of Modern Design (Rizzoli).
