William Morris famously said to have nothing in your house that you don't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. These things do their best to hit both targets.
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Coffee x Art
La Pavoni’s ‘semi-professional domestic coffee machine’ (pictured at the top of the page) is too beautiful to use, yet too intriguing and tactile not to. ‘The Diamantina is hand built piece by piece,’ they tell us. ‘The attention to detail makes it an object for the true specialty machines lovers.’ Or anyone, indeed, who just really likes shiny things.
For the VR-curious
Last year, the new must-have virtual-reality (VR) headset was the Meta Quest 3. This year, there’s also an Apple option — the Apple Vision Pro — but at £3,500 it’s far too expensive for the curious wondering if they’d enjoy the new take on VR and AR (augmented reality). Meta have a new headset too that’s priced exactly with the curious in mind: the Meta Quest 3S, which is not quite as good as the 3, but you could buy one each for an entire football team before they cost you as much as a single Vision Pro.
Meta Quest 3 — £469.99; Meta Quest 3S — £289.99; Apple Vision Pro — £3,499.
Lattice-back garden armchair
All this shopping must be making you tired. You need a place to sit down, and this beautiful chair provides just that. (It is quite expensive, unfortunately. But just *look* at it.)
£7,782 from Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler
To those who are about to rock, we salute you
‘We’re the generation who saw the Sex Pistols live,’ said Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on the Country Life podcast a few weeks ago. And Marshall’s amplifier-style mini speakers really lean in to that whole thing. Thankfully the range sounds as good as it looks — your Sex Pistols songs will sound far better on this than on that little Alexa speaker you have in the corner of the kitchen.
Marshall Acton III Bluetooth speaker — £189 from marshall.com
Google Pixel 9
If you want an iPhone, this is never going to cut it. For everyone else, the quality of Google’s phones these days (particularly in terms of what actually matters, namely the camera, the screen and the robustness) is so good that you wonder why anybody buys anything else, especially now that these models are promised support for seven years — including the (somewhat terrifying) AI features that now seem to be part of the picture. For those who need the fastest thing going and a stronger telephoto lens, there’s a Pro version; for those wanting to save a few quid, the previous generation models are all worth a look too.
Google Pixel 9, £799; Pixel Pro 9, £999
Watch the birdie
Why have a bird feeder when you can have a solar-powered, smart camera bird feeder? The Bird Buddy records the feathery visitors to your garden, uses AI to identify their breeds.
£299 from www.johnlewis.com
It’s 5 o’clock somewhere — and that’s both bathtime and drinking time
There’s no getting away from it: the Tombolo bath racks really are made with wine glasses in mind. Kudos to them.
£401.26 from Victoria + Albert
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