Vessel delights with sensible and stylish housewares
If variety is the spice of life, then versatility is the sweetener. You’ll find the latter in many of the products at Vessel (125 Kingston Street, Boston, 877.805.1801; 652 Tremont Street, 877.805.1801). Designers Duane Smith and Stefane Barbeau opened their store two years ago near the Chinatown gate in a bright, airy space that once housed their design studio. (The studio has since been moved to an adjacent space.) In April, they opened a second shop in the South End; while there’s more funky furniture on display at the Kingston Street outpost, both branches offer a sundry assortment of stuff, including housewares, kitchen tools, accessories, art books, and ferociously practical curios you never knew you needed. We asked Smith and Barbeau to show us a few of their favorite items that will help make summertime gatherings streamlined and stylish.
Lighten up
Smith and Barbeau created the Candela light range in 2002 under the Vessel brand. The lamps use LEDs with adjustable brightness. Plastic tops in various shapes are available to diffuse the light. They’ve since designed a few additional styles, including the portable, hangable lanternlike Luau ($199), and today they’re manufactured under the OXO label.
Stephane Barbeau: Our approach with lighting was to make it look nice and work well. When you put it on the charger, it turns off. Pick it up, it turns on, but there’s a switch so you can turn it off, too, when it’s off the base. It’s easier than lighting a candle — there’s no flame, you can reuse it, it’s childproof, there are no metal surfaces, you don’t have to worry if anyone knocks it over. It’s versatile — you can use it as an emergency light [or] mood setting.
Duane Smith: It’s economical, too. It’d be 32 times more expensive to buy taper candles that last as long as the lifespan of this light. It’s one-third the price of tea lights.
Carry on
Vessel is the exclusive North American distributor of the German brand Authentics, which makes sleek, sturdy Technicolor housewares, the kind you’d expect an interior designer to grab when sprucing up a NASA shuttle or the latest Miami Beach restaurant. Their bags are perfect for a day in the sun.
SB: The beach bag ($44) they designed is a standard carryall, a durable thing to bring to the beach. You can dump all your food in it.
DS: And all your beach stuff.
SB: It looks like a tote, but it unfolds and you can use it as a mat to lie on. There’s a pouch that zippers up on the side for your keys and valuables. And unfolded, you use it as a mat.
SB: There’s also the Rondo ($39). There’s a specific purpose it’s made for, but it’s designed in a simple enough way that you could even fill this with beer.
DS: Or use it for gardening tools.
SB: It’s universal.
DS: You could use it as a reasonable shopping bag.
SB: Part of being environmentally responsible is buying something that will last for a while. We’re all focused on the end product, what we throw out. We’re forgetting about the life span of a product.
Cooked
A mini tabletop charcoal grill by Danish company Eva Solo ($249) looks like a new-age hibachi.
DS: You can take it apart, and you have a ceramic bowl that you can use as a salad bowl in the winter or whenever. And you can stick the grill in the middle of the table, so it’s more about communal dining than having a grill in the corner.
SB: And depending on what your landlord is like, you can probably get away with this more than you could a fullblown barbecue on your roof deck.
Book it
The popular artbook publisher Phaidon recently added to their moderate inventory of cookbooks ($39.95). These dictionarysized volumes have padded covers, swoonworthy photos, and more recipes than you can shake a grill brush at.
SB: They’re not weatherproof, but they’re kitchenproof.
DS: Pork & Sons is by a chef [Stéphane Reynaud] whose family has been pork butchers in France for generations. There are stories and recipes for everything from terrines to pigs’ feet and crazy stuff. The pork tenderloins are surprisingly simple. French food is surprisingly simple.
SB: I don’t know if people think it’s presumptuous to give a host a cookbook — people don’t give
them as gifts often enough — but if you’re going to a house party, it’s a great gift. People love it.
DS: The pizza in there is just a vegetable pizza with prosciutto, but it uses phyllo dough as a crust.
SB: Creole [by Babette de Rozières] has lots of recipes for summery grilled things.
