You’ve selected your tux, curated the perfect dance floor playlist, and chosen something special to give your bride. (Um, right?) Now you just need to find the perfect gifts for your guys. (Nope, a six-pack of beers won’t cut it.) With wedding season in full swing, we’ve rounded up some options that will make your pals say, “Aw, thanks, dude.”
Tony Holman working in his Plano, TX studio, photos by NéQuana Rollings
“Being a full time artist is never easy, but it’s certainly worth the hard work (and gray hairs),” says Tony Holman, a potter who makes practicality and purpose look good.
Tony began honing his pottery skills almost 40 years ago at Indiana University, fine tuned them soon after at Bloomington Pottery, and now runs his own studio in Plano, Texas. It’s here where he creates his line of handcrafted helpers that play a vital part in the well-appointed kitchen.
Tony created these statues in grad school. They now stand in the Holmans’ garden
His kitchen creations—an all-in-one fondue warmer and platter set, self-draining utensil caddy, and omelet maker that turns out fluffy eggs in 45 seconds flat, to name a few—are an irresistible blend of form and function.
Utensil Draining Caddy | UncommonGoods
The fact that dad jokes are terrible isn’t exactly carved in stone, but it’s often taken for granite. Recent studies show that dad humor is actually full of useful information. For example, the fact that chicken coops have two doors because if they had four, they’d be chicken sedans. Or the fact that employees of calendar factories can get fired if they take a couple of days off. Or the fact that dreaming about being a muffler can leave you exhausted the next morning. So the astounding secret of dad humor is that it’s really a covert campaign to share fatherly wisdom, in the guise of cringe-worthy jokes and punishing puns. But don’t look to your dad to help with your knowledge of math: another study has shown that 5/4 of fathers are bad with fractions.
Dad’s Playbook | $13
Our makers never fail to motivate us, encourage our creativity, and fill us with inspiration. So, when a new design enters our assortment, we’re always excited to learn more about the people behind the product.
What gets an artist going and keeps them creating is certainly worth sharing, and every great connection starts with a simple introduction. Meet Amanda Slaughter, creator of our new Blooming Spoons Necklace.
Some Father’s Day gifts fall squarely in the category of “you shouldn’t have” (we’re looking at you, football-shaped TV remote from the mall). But some gifts for dad are truly stellar. Take for example the talking picture frame presented to cosmonaut Yuri Usachev in 2001. A gift from his daughter back on earth, the state-of-the-art frame made its odyssey from earth to the International Space Station thanks to Radio Shack, which filmed the presentation for a commercial. Guess Moscow’s department stores were fresh out of “My Dad’s Out of This World” mugs.
Outer Space Sand Art | $110
Papa don’t reach: If you’ve ever tried to recall dear old dad cooing to you as a child but couldn’t, your memory likely isn’t to blame. Researchers have known for decades that moms tend to speak to their babies in high-pitched, repetitive “baby talk” voices, or what they refer to as parentese or motherese — isn’t that right wittle muffin muffin? But after deciding to check, they recently discovered dads don’t do the same. At this past summer’s Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, speech scientists at Washington State University revealed what they found after recording mamas and papas speaking to their 2 ½ year-olds for a full day: Each mother raised the pitch of her voice by an average of 40 hertz when talking to her preschooler, whereas very few fathers changed their tones.
Earlier studies have concluded that baby talk may help kids learn language skills, but word to your father: his pitch is still perfect. “Dads talk to kids like they talk to adults,” said study co-author Mark VanDam — something his team surmised could help wee ones communicate better with the outside world. Seems like the language of love is universal, indeed.
In early May, UncommonGoods was fortunate enough to host U.S. Labor Secretary, Tom Perez. He spoke with a handful of team members about their experience working for a company that values “conscious capitalism,” praising UncommonGoods for investing in team member development, paying a living wage, and actively listening to team member feedback. He also took a tour of the warehouse space, eagerly chatting with individuals out on the floor about their daily tasks. You can read about Secretary Perez’s recent visit to New York in The Guardian, and see for yourself in the photos below.
UncommonGoods Founder Dave Bolotsky (left) with U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez in the Brooklyn Army Terminal Lobby.
Secretary Perez listening to comments from UncommonGoods employees.
The blockbuster’s iconic poster image owes as much to a museum as it does to pulp fiction illustration. The monstrous Great White shark surging from the bottom of the frame toward a hapless swimmer was designed by Roger Kastel for the paperback edition of Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel. From that, you might expect that Kastel spent weeks in a wetsuit and a shark cage, studying the ocean’s uber-predators firsthand. Nope. He just took the C train uptown to the American Museum of Natural History to study their shark exhibits, dry and threatened only by mobs of tourists. Kastel’s museum inspirations might have included the fearsome, disembodied reconstruction of a Carcharodon megalodon’s jaws, a shark ancestor that terrorized the seas some 10 million years ago. The bathing beauty at the top of Kastel’s image was actually a model that he had been sketching for a Good Housekeeping ad. He asked her to stay a little longer and had her pose for the image by lying on a stool and pretending to swim.
Handmade Shark Slippers | $42