UnBeige's Top Ten Valentine's Day Gifts

Whether you're looking to wow your Valentine, wish yourself a happy Chinese New Year, or find the perfect birthday gift for Mayor Bloomberg (who turns 70 on Thursday), we present ten lovely ways to do so: 1. MZ Wallace Valentine's Day Hamish pouch and card ($35, available from MZ Wallace). It's impossible to go wrong with a gift from MZ Wallace--particularly when the NYC-based company is in collaboration mode. This cheerful coated linen pouch comes with a valentine printed by the letterpress wizards at Swayspace. 2. Framed John Rawlings print ($139, available from One Kings Lane). Skip the perishable blooms in favor of this enduringly rosy vision by Rawlings, whose haunting brand of glamour has aged remarkably well. Plucked from the Condé Nast archive, the photo originally appeared in the June 1952 issue of House & Garden. 3. Keith Haring iPhone 5 Case ($35, available from Urban Outfitters). Shield your Valentine from heartbreak--or at least a shattered smartphone--with the help of a Haring illustration. 4. Julia Chiang's "Because of You" edition for The Standard ($300, available from The Standard). Get a piece of Brooklyn-based artist Chiang, whose handmade ceramic links are stamped "Because of You" along with her initials, date, and edition number. 5. Lisa Black Butterfly Dome ($288, available from Fab). "Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man," said novelist and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov. You're halfway there with Black's pair of Ulysses butterfly specimens. 6. The Missing Ink by Phillip Hensher (published by Faber & Faber). Do you know what the handwriting of your closest friends looks like? Hensher considers this endangered art. 7. Vintage pencils from Italy ($28 per packet of five, available from Terrain). Ready to preserve handwriting? Stock up on utensils with personality. We like these 1940s pencils, found amdist a cache of vintage art supplies in Rome’s Antica Cartotecnica stationery shop. 8. Robert Longo skateboard ($975, available from AHALife). Who wouldn't fall for the Sk8room's signed, limited edition plywood skateboard silkscreened with Longo's "Eric"? And 20% of the proceeds go to Skateistan, a non-profit organization for kids. 9. Handmade Haiti Stone Hearts ($20-$50, available from Urban Zen). Donna Karan's boundary-pushing Urban Zen initiative works with Haitian artisans to produce and sell works such as these handcarved soapstone hearts. 10. The Thing Quarterly ($240 per year, available from The Thing). The gift that keeps on giving, The Thing is a periodical in the form of an object. Subscribe now to get issue-things by David Shrigley, Tauba Auerbach, Ben Marcus, and John Baldessari.

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UnBeige's Top Ten Valentine's Day Gifts

Stephanie Murg

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Stephanie Murg