The considered gift

Difficult recipients are rarely difficult about taste. They are difficult because they have already solved every problem a gift usually solves. What remains is specificity — an object with a story short enough to tell at a table.

For a parent

Choose something used daily rather than displayed. A brushed cashmere wrap or a carafe set will be handled every evening; a decorative object will be admired and shelved.

For a colleague

Keep it un-personal in size and personal in quality. A card holder or a bud vase reads as considered without implying intimacy.

For a new home

Avoid anything that must match. Stoneware in a single glaze and a candle in a keepable vessel will sit in any interior.

For someone who has everything

Give something made in a countable quantity. A candle from a run of four hundred, or a scarf whose edges took forty minutes to roll, carries information that price alone does not.