The duo behind Cold Picnic, Peter and Sung Buer, have brought their young daughter’s illustrations into the fold with the introduction of the Frames Collection. The bamboo silk rugs and runners include five playful designs made using slightly iridescent yarn, a color palette with pops of neon, and the intention to embrace the contradictions of self-expression: reserve and spontaneity, delicacy and practicality, self-preservation and recklessness.

Bamboo silk is best known for its soft, luxurious, ethereal feel that comes to resemble crushed velvet as time passes. A delicate yet durable fabric, the yarn’s dimension allows its colors to appear differently, depending on the angle views and which way the pile is facing. Bamboo silk is also very fine, enabling the inclusion of more details and delicate lines in the design, which makes the rugs appear more like drawings through a range of shades, shadows, and highlights.

Time Frame Rug

“Working in bamboo silk yarn allows us to use darker colors without worrying about heaviness, since the sheen gives such a wide spectrum of light and color,” said Peter. “We deliberately chose colors that interact with light in order to highlight this feature.”

Frames Rug

Peter and Sung’s daughter, Freya, inspired the collection with her oil crayon-on-paper drawings. They include frames drawn along notebook edges and even “mommy’s tummy,” created when Sung was pregnant with her second daughter. The childlike motifs and dark colors of the Frames Collection remain true to the young artist’s original sketches and vision.

Frames Rug

“‘Frames’ literally refers to the pages of frames Freya used to fill her notebook with and in our minds, we were translating them into rugs as soon as we saw them,” said Peter. “It made us so happy to turn her drawings into a realized collection, and felt like her official inclusion into Cold Picnic, which she has been influencing since before she was born.”

Frames Rug

Sung added, “For us, the mood of the collection conjures a period of childhood that is so short and filled with tenderness. There’s a sense of nostalgia and wistfulness in the collection, as an attempt to capture something almost impossible like time and self-confidence. But the story here is also about acceptance, evolution, and expression.”

Frames Rug

Cold Picnic uses color as one of the most important elements of their work, selecting hues according to medium. The Frames Collection features dark greens, blues, and black with pops of neon green and yellow set against a golden palette. Each rug is made in India by skilled artisans at a factory that runs exclusively on solar energy. The rugs are available in sizes 2’x3’,2’3”x6’, 5×5, 4’x6’, 6’x9’, and 8’x10′.

Frames Rug + Frames Runner Rug

Frames Runner Rug

Frames Runner Rug

Frames Runner Rug

Freya Rug in Black

Freya Rug in Black

Freya Rug in Black

Freya Rug in Gold

Freya Rug in Gold

Freya Rug in Gold

Freya’s Drawing

Freya’s Drawing

Freya’s Drawing

To learn more about the Frames Collection, visit coldpicnic.com.

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Kelly Beall is Director of Branded Content at Design Milk. The Pittsburgh-based writer and designer has had a deep love of art and design for as long as she can remember, from Fashion Plates to MoMA and far beyond. When not searching out the visual arts, she’s likely sharing her favorite finds with others. Kelly can also be found tracking down new music, teaching herself to play the ukulele, or on the couch with her three pets – Bebe, Rainey, and Remy. Find her @designcrush on social.

Know someone with a bad case of wanderlust? Or someone who has to travel often because their work demands that single-serving, carry-on lifestyle? The holidays are also a time when many of us are traveling to return home or visit family, making it an ideal opportunity to give those near and dear gifts to make the stress of travel a little more comfortable, fun, and maybe even a bit more fashionable. Check out some of our favorite modern travel accessories below!

A dopp kit/toiletry bag should be compact in size, durable in construction, and easy to fill with all of your travel necessities. But what sets apart the Acne Studios version from all others we’ve perused is its more fashionable style, a durable nylon-ripstop bag with a big ole handle, a cool looking tonal-sand grid pattern, and a suede-trimmed ID slot to make sure nobody mistakes your kit for their own. It’s pricey, but the material guarantees it should last many trips around the globe.

Most of the gifts listed in this guide are intended to make travel easier while en route or upon reaching a destination. But Artifact Uprising’s hardbound photo book is what we’d gift our favorite globe trekker when they’ve returned home, a template to turn their digital photos into a visual record of where they’ve been, what they saw, and who they’ve met all in printed form. Beyond being a great memento, a customizable photo book is an effective means to compel the traveler with hundreds of smartphone photos to pick out only the most cherished “wish you were here” memories.

Traversing airports with a huge backpack or purse slung across the shoulder can be cumbersome, so traveling with a slimmer option like this waterproof rucksack is not only practical, but tons more comfortable. This slim silhouette bag is deceptively large, and is outfitted with enough capacity to carry a 13″-15″ laptop in its own dedicated pocket. There’s even a concealed external phone pocket on the back panel that simplifies reaching for your phone or passport without making a big production out of it (and it also makes for a handy secretive spot to keep cash). With 10 different colors to choose from, you might want to buy more than one.

It’s a bummer traveling abroad and unpacking a suitcase filled with folded or wrinkled clothes only to discover your hotel room doesn’t have an iron and board easily on hand. Traveling with a garment steamer is a pro-level solution, making anyone’s shirt or dress more presentable. Using a steam wand does especially well for wardrobes leaning heavily toward light cottons and linens, and it packs light and slim.

Who hasn’t heard the big sad trombone after realizing you’ve arrived somewhere abroad that requires a completely different power plug with limited charging ports available? The Super Bagel isn’t just a great name, but a handy design that allows charging a multitude of devices all at once, with an 18 watt fast charge USB-C and USB-A charging port, alongside 5 AC sockets and an international plug adapter. Pulling out a bagel to share is always a welcome gesture, but even more so when someone is in dire need of a recharge.

I tell everyone who travels regularly that a pair of active noise canceling headphones is a complete game changer. I’ve sat next to crying babies – alongside a few tantrum-prone adults – numerous times over the last year after buying a pair of Sony’s top-of-the-line ANC headphones, and they’ve never stopped impressing with their ability to neutralize unwanted wails with impressive ease. They’re also great for watching movies onboard or connecting wirelessly to a phone or tablet, making dialogue intelligible even with the constant sound of a jet engine thrum. There are other headphones with comparable audio, but the 1000XM5 stands out for their lightweight comfort, something you come to appreciate during flights measured in hours.

Even the aforementioned slim backpack above might be overkill while exploring a city, when all you want is a place to safely keep the bare necessities during sightseeing excursions. The Tanker Travel Case opens up like a salesman hawking wares from their trench coat, with seven pockets and two pen sleeves, with vibrant splashes of rescue orange on the inside. Constructed from the same 3-layer fabric developed for US Air Force flight jackets, this nylon twill, polyester cotton, and taffeta sewn bag is tough, but super lightweight. Designed to sling underneath a jacket or coat out of view, you’ll be tempted to show off your Japanese made bag to all to admire.

I don’t know how many times I’ve wished I had packed my Rumble Roller to massage out the knots after enduring a long international flight. If you know someone with frequent flyer mileage tallied in the six or seven figure range, chances are they’ll really appreciate being gifted one of these compact vibrating massage balls. It’s the next best thing to carrying around a roller or booking an expensive appointment with a masseuse, and can also be used en route to soften the edges from flying coach.

Despite my tech-laden ways, I still like to write everything down while traveling, including details about my itinerary, accommodations, sights to see, places to eat, and contacts on the ground. Something about the hand + brain connection aids in the retention of all sorts of information and memories no amount of pecking on my iPhone ever does. This colorful notebook by Poketo is ideal for that purpose, small enough to slide into a travel pack, and always ready for a note or a reminder at a glance.

If you plan to buy a nice toiletry bag, why perpetually ruin it by tossing in a wet toothbrush? That’s the argument for investing in a toothbrush holder. These cheerfully pastel hued cases aren’t just cute, but include a small drain at the bottom to keep your dental implement from getting gnarly and a rubber pull tab up top makes getting to it easier even when jet lagged. Combine a holder with a bottle of toothpaste bits and a fancy toothbrush to say you care about your wanderlust-stricken recipient’s most missed smile.

Follow along so you don’t miss any of our 2023 Gift Guides this year!

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Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.

The Design Academy Eindhoven graduate show is always a highlight of Dutch Design Week – and is in some ways the beating heart of the city’s creative scene, as many graduates choose to base their studios here after they have completed their studies.

The installation above is a typically thought-provoking piece called Gaia, How Are You Today? by Yufel Gao. He 3D-printed 92 terracotta pots, each designed using a day’s worth of weather data – the further from average the temperature, humidity, and wind speed, the more distorted the form to remind us that nature is not submissive or static, but chaotic and unyielding.

The Popping Sound of Bubble Wrap by Ilaria Cavaglia is made using discarded bubblewrap, styrofoam, and newspapers, drawing inspiration from the grotto aesthetic, to blur the line between the organic and the synthetic.

Ben van Kemenade designed Regenerated to house the timber collection of 86-year-old carpenter Riky van Dullerman. A freshly cut tree trunk provides the necessary humidity to prevent the older pieces from warping or cracking. The project reflects on caretaking, preserving the old while the young matures, and the transfer of knowledge between generations.

Michelle Akki Jonker’s The Mutuba Spirit is a mask made from traditional Ugandan bark cloth, a popular material before British colonialists demonized it in favor of cotton, creating a stigma that exists to this day. Michelle plays with iconography from the two cultures, using horns that, in European countries often symbolize the devil, but within her Ugandan heritage represent protection.

The Trunk Bunk by Henry K Wein is a portable tree house that can be towed along behind a bicycle enabling city folk to escape into nature and get some respite from the “always-on” world that so many of us now inhabit.

Paul Schaffer explored the symbiotic relationships between different organisms in The Warp of Symbiogenesis – in each piece, the warp represents one species and the weft another. There are five sections each representing the different types of symbiotic relationships in nature. Competition is defined as “harm-harm,” amensalism as “no effect-harm,” parasitism as “benefit–harm,” commensalism as “benefit-no effect,” and mutualism as “benefit-benefit.” The intention of the piece is to remind us of the interconnectedness of nature – and to include ourselves in that.

“Trash for you is treasure for me,” says Dario Erkelens. Abandoned Treasures is his collection of sculptural furniture made of abandoned material to explore the creative potential of what we throw away. Having grown up in rural Switzerland, where resources were carefully conserved and reused, he was shocked by what city dwellers routinely discard, and created this work to raise awareness of the wastefulness of our contemporary throwaway culture.

In Unsettling by Tanay Kandpal is a series of sculptures designed to celebrate the material culture of Jugaad – a Hindi term that refers to quick and improvised solutions – and explore the practice as a critique of Western industrial design’s failure to accommodate the unexpected.

The Swarm Shepherd was created by Pablo Bolumar Plata as the outcome of a collaborative design research methodology exploring an experimental approach to beekeeping. The hybrid device above incorporates wax canvas with substances that attract swarming bees to guide them to apiaries. Once a colony nests inside, the cork outer layer provides protection for their honeycomb.

Sien Entius’ Couture Objects explores her conflicted sense of identity as she transitioned from her background as a furniture maker into a design degree at Design Academy Eindhoven. She compared the craftsmanship in furniture making with tailoring by making outfits for cabinetry. They were displayed in front of posters advocating for the role of craft in design.

The Beauty of Time Passing by Toshihito Endo uses smart technology to mimic the way Japanese architecture plays with natural light, inviting a sense of nature into spaces without direct access to it – you can even match the light patterns to the weather outside.

Fedora Boonaert created a speculative archeological site that draws attention to the forgotten and knowingly marginalized oral knowledge of 16th-century midwives and “wise women” – particularly regarding female health and wellbeing – in the Low Countries. As male physicians replaced them, traditional women’s remedies were condemned as “witch-crafts” and wise women as witches, resulting in persecution and even death. Fedora hopes to address this historical injustice, the ramifications of which pervade modern-day medicine, through lectures and archeological expeditions of her site, as part of her project An Archeology of Women’s Wisdom.

In/Outside included a set of ephemeral domestic objects by Lison Guéguen made in accordance with the natural life cycles of the materials from which they are made. The installation explores the notion of mutually beneficial relationships with the more-than-human world and Lison talks about “borrowing” resources from the Earth, which immediately suggests a different approach than if we “take” them.

Photography by Katie Treggiden.

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author and, podcaster championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. She is also the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a program and membership community for designer-makers who want to join the circular economy. With 20 years’ experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine and Monocle24 – as well as being Editor at Large for Design Milk. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.