While autumn brings mists of mellow fruitfulness elsewhere, here it brings picnics. And for the true connoisseur of vintage design, the R Horn Viennese picnic set is how to dine al fresco.
This clever, compact set, a revival of a 1950s version, is a capsuled salute to European design heritage, remodelled with a sharply smart, contemporary style. It's also one of the many highlights of the uber-cool online shop of New York's Neue Galerie museum, devoted to early 20th-century German and Austrian art and design.
The set contains two sets of distinctive Rundes Modell cutlery and two cotton napkins in the wonderful Riva fabric (both designed by the Austrian architect and designer Josef Hoffmann at the turn of the last century), plus two handcrafted maple sandwich boards and a stainless steel bottle opener.
It's all contained within a hand-stitched, pebbled calfskin carrier (available in black, camel, chocolate brown, cobalt blue and forest green) with an inside pocket for salt and pepper, which fits inside a fleecy tote which deftly doubles as a warm, water-repellent blanket. As a suitably fitting finishing touch, the blanket/bag is made from loden cloth, the fabric historically worn by Austrians for their outdoor pursuits.
US$680 (Dh2,500), www.neuegalerie.org
