Stainless Steel Gloss was designed by Reiko Sudo, one of Japan’s most important contemporary textile designers. Educated at Musashino Art University, she and Junichi Arai were the co-founders in 1984 of the Japanese company and store, NUNO, which produces textiles of extraordinary ingenuity and beauty. Sudo and the other designers at NUNO combine tradition and...

Pewter, an alloy of tin and lead, used to bring to mind matte, anthracite-grey mugs, flasks, and tableware susceptible to serving up lead poisoning, in addition to whatever else the kitchen had to offer. In other words, anything but this lozenge-shaped, organic biscuit box, marked “KAYSERZINN”. This perception was changed when Engelbert Kayser created “KAYSERZINN”...

Russel Wright’s massively popular American Modern Dinnerware line remained in production for 20 years—from 1939 to 1959—but that was only after Wright spent two years prodding reluctant manufacturers to mass-produce his unconventional ceramics. The line was a departure from everything that design, and tableware in particular, represented in prior years. Instead of restrained and formal,...