There seem to be two styles of popular housewares that make their way around the internet. First there are the impeccably chic ceramics in all manner of beige, handmade and certainly impressive but doing nothing to make my heart sing. And then there is the stuff with blobs of color and whimsical visual references that seems so self-consciously kitschy I can’t imagine incorporating it into any lasting aesthetic.
I wasn’t really thinking of this when I entered the gift shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently, after an afternoon of playing tourist with an out-of-town friend, enjoying the air conditioning and a look at tchotchkes of the Northern Renaissance. I wasn’t even in the market for salad plates. But when my partner spotted a set of six blue-and-white plates, each featuring a design of a different ceramic object in the museum, for sale, I suddenly questioned why we hadn’t been buying all of our kitchenware at museum stores. If you want your dinner table to have a distinct look, why not turn to our finest institutions of art and design?
Perhaps you’d like these teacups featuring a contemporary North American Indigenous design of an orca, from the National Museum of the American Indian. LACMA has plates with Robert Mapplethorpe photographs (not those ones), and splattered mugs made by locals in Echo Park. At the New-York Historical Society, you can get tea towels with the songbirds of John James Audubon, or a table runner featuring a Louis C. Tiffany peacock design. And at the Art Institute of Chicago you can get a set of glasses with designs by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Museums also offer more than just tableware. The MoMA design store stocks chic electric kettles, a set of rainbow steak knives, and colorful moka pots, as well as serving bowls and bottles designed by contemporary artists. The Cooper Hewitt sells cute food storage sets, and the iconic Eric Magnussen vacuum jug. And the Virginia Museum of History and Culture sells bakeware and kitchen tools made locally.
Outfitting your kitchen from museum stores gives you limitless options in terms of design. There are museums for just about everything, from science to modern art to salt and pepper shakers (where you can buy, you guessed it, a whole bunch of weird salt and pepper shakers). And your purchases have the added benefit of supporting a local cultural institution. But mostly, you are going to get stuff that you probably won’t see in other people’s kitchens. It is boring to walk into every kitchen and see the same mid-century designs or whatever is a registry suggestion from Williams Sonoma. At a museum, you might find some pieces that actually feel like you. Or at least show off that you have been to a museum.
