Ask the Expert: Gift-Buying Tips from John and Linda Meyers

What is your go-to host gift? 

A Wary Meyers soap and a Wary Meyers candle. Soaps, $14 each, and candles, $28.50 each, from Wary Meyers.

What is your everyday bedding? 

280-thread-count pima cotton percale sheets from L.L.Bean. Queen sheet from L.L. Bean, $54.

What’s the best wedding present you’ve given or received? 

Received: the giant, boxed Bauhaus tome by the MIT Press. Given: the large Alvar Aalto cutting board. Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, by Hans Wingler (The MIT Press, 1969), $70; Cutting board by Alvar Aalto, $60–$90.

What would you give to a recent college graduate? 

Assuming they’re moving into their first apartment, we might select a really nice vintage Jens Quistgaard pepper mill or a nice framed print. I suppose it really depends on what they majored in. If it was astronomy, then a moon rock would be cool, or an AG7 Space Pen. It’s more thoughtful to give a more personal gift, so it would definitely need to be major specific. AG7 Original Astronaut Space Pen by the Fisher Space Pen Co., $55.

What is your go-to kitchen appliance?

SodaStream. Source Home Soda Maker by SodaStream, $250.

What is the best design book to give as a gift?

Absolutely Terence Conran’s The House Book from 1974. The House Book, by Terence Conran (Mitchell Beazley, 1974).

What is your most indispensable everyday gadget?

Our iPhone-Instagram machine. But a more fun answer is our old Braun Aromaster KF-20 coffeemaker.