Wooden, colourful animals
Yet another materialistic little post. We start at U-Plan, a Japanese shop who make cute little decorations and puzzles out of natural looking, painted wood. They do look very baby's-toy-like but actually I'd be happy to have one for myself. I guess that says a lot about my infantile taste. Most awesome are these "2-way animals" (as found down the left-hand navigation) - some are a bit contrived, but there are an impressive number of them, which each made me smile.
Second is Branch who have set up shop on the currently hot grounds of sustainability, and fair sourcing. They're stuff is pretty funky, like the vintage-belt floor mat below.
This does mean things are quite pricey though - a single one of those shallow bowls costs $34, which seems like an awful lot to me at least.