It has such an inviting name, for starters. Handle Me is a new range of cookware designed as a collaboration between three up coming young Scandinavians Christoffer Angell, Øyvind Wyller and Simen Aarseth.


Launched this week at the Maison Objet design fair in Paris, the designers say they were inspired to make the range by the ancient roots of the product category. "Cookware has been an essential tool of basic human survival since before the beginning of civilization, like the wheel and stone axe," says Angell. "Cast iron is a very durable material, and as designers there was something intrinsically romantic about the idea of making near-immortal products. In a society overloaded with fast-food products we believe that basic cast iron cookware is more relevant than ever."


What could reconnect us with 'proper' cooking better than a proper casserole dish? Complete with dowel handle, this is a tool for creating some really hot stuff in the kitchen.

Tis the season for new furniture, and as we're making our merry way around Maison Object in Paris, and Stockholm and Cologne design weeks over the coming month, we're hoping there will be some wonderful and uplifting new ideas to inspire great trends for 2011 and ease the inevitable Fair Fatigue that tends to set in when you've seen too many new chairs you can't in, in too short a space of time.

Perhaps the most likely to trigger an attack of the latter is the massive and sprawling Cologne Furniture Fair, on now until 22nd Jan, so it's lucky we've already found a bout of new creative energy in the form of young Berlin-based designer Mark Braun. The trained carpenter has made a name for himself over the short couple of years since he made the transition to designer with beautifully simple, sharp and well-constructed pieces. This year he is launching three new products at the show:  LIFT, a series of mono-block roto-molded plastic tables; FLOOR 95, clever hallway furniture formed from bended metal tubes; and the versatile TON, a collection of wooden stools in bleached oak.

Love is in the air, again, and it's in the shops too, with an invasion of synthetic Valentines Day fluff and pinkness everywhere. But for all that it's a cynical commercial marketing ploy of a day in all reality, one thing is absolutely certain, whether you are in a relationship or just really fancy the pants off someone, ignoring Valentines Day is for loosers. So champion out and out declarations of passion loud and proud and from the rooftops. And do it with so much style no object of your affections could possibly resist. Yeah, baby.

And here's one way. Displaying really very promising commercial nous and more than a little talent, a selection of recent graduates from the Royal College of Art's  Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery MA course are setting up a selling exhibition and pop up shop in preparation for the big V day. Something for the Weekend? is opening at space fiftyfour in east London from 8th to 15th February with a host of limited edition jewellery pieces and gifts. The theme, romantically, is that each piece must fit into the size of a condom box, which are then sold through vending machines installed in the gallery. Supporting up and coming designers while at the same time indulging in the stuff that makes the world go round - what's not to love?