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Leather piggy bank at Plastica

It's no big secret anymore that since reunification Berlin has become a vibrant design hub. MoMa Store is celebrating the great design coming out of the city with a new collection of products called "Destination Berlin."

Jeremy Fish pillow for Upper Playground from Giant Robot

Tivoli Home in Brooklyn is our latest addition to the shopping guide. Take a look at some of their product (available online!)

Rose knows beautiful objects. The store took the place of Pearce, one of our favorite furniture galleries in LA, so it had big shoes to fill in our eyes. Owner Mark Rose fills the space with collection of antique, vintage and new objects for the home or the person.

The vintage and antique items can be anything from a 1950s studio pottery vase to a 1930s parrot bottle opener, a vintage Japanese lacquer box to a Spanish trunk dating back to the mid-1800s. The new items include a collection of jewelry by a select group of designers.

Do contact the shop if you see anything you like. Items are quite often one-of-a-kind.

Rose Thorn Ceramic Bud Vases in Warm Gold Exclusively for Rose by Kathleen Walsh - $145-$165

1980s Massive Puzzle Link Collar Necklace - $585

Vintage Taxco Mexico Open-Work Cuff Bracelet - $265

1960's Turned Walnut Bowl - $350

Super Bead Necklace by Jemima Rogers

Sterling Silver Wire Work Earrings by Lauren Wolf - $345

The second shop in our SF design shop triumvirate is Scandinavian Details. Yes, it's exactly as its sounds. Accessories from Scandinavia. Nice ones. Take a look.

Rosendahl vase

Orrefors bowls

BodaNova glasses

Orrefors water decanter

Iittala serving bowl

Royal Copenhagen thermos

Today we add to the guide the first of a triumvirate of San Francisco home design shops that set a new standard for what such shops can be. This is for all the design shops that fill the shelves with Alessi and call it a day.

Rose & Radish began its life in 2001 as a flower shop focusing on creating exquisite arrangements, bouquets and floral sculptures. More recently the shop decided to morph into a home design shop, still working with flowers, but also now importing elegant, hip housewares from all over the globe.

The selection of various home accessories the shop has brought together is nothing short of astounding, marrying Japanese, German, Scandinavian and American design disciplines. Let's take a quick sampling:

Porcelain vase from Nymphenburg, Germany.

Glass vase from Arcade, Italy.

Glass candy bowls from Koziol, Italy

Faux grass mats from Kikkerland, America

Dishcloth from Atelier LZC, France

Even more impressive than the assorted accessories is the collection of tableware, again spanning multiple countries, styles and materials.

Bone china from Dibbern, Germany

Glass tumblers from Sugahara, Japan

Tray from Kose, Italy (If you've ever needed a tray that's undetectable by radar, you've found it!)

Bowl from Wetter Indochine, Vietnam

Wood bowls from Piacenza, Italy

Esther Derkx is the Sarah Cihat of The Netherlands. She takes castaway porcelain pieces and gives them new life using funky screen-printed graphics.

See what we mean? Have you seen even half of this stuff online before? We certainly hadn't.

While researching brands for a store we'll be adding to our guide shortly, we came upon the work of Wunderwurks Design. The design studio was founded by industrial designer and glassblower Tony Whurman. Accordingly, most of the earlier designs do some beautiful, modern things with glass. Oh and for those looking for a nice Christmas gift the site does have online shopping!

For future designs however it looks like Mr. Whurman will be moving away from colorful glass and be going in a more conceptual direction, including a series of (seriously creepy, but cool) lighting designs based on human anatomy. These will be available soon.

Moss updates its site every weekday with a different item; something they call The Daily New. Sometimes it's a new item, sometimes it's a long time favorite. Here are two of our more recent favorites.

While we're playing favorites, we'd like to talk a bit about our favorite industrial designer right now, Jason Miller.

Jason Miller designs objects and furniture out of his studio in Brooklyn. After graduating from the New York Academy of Art in 1995, Mr. Miller started working for artists and designers like Jeff Koons and Karim Rashid. In 2001, he set off on his own and started Miller Studio. His work at Miller Studio has centered around, in equal parts, the fantastical and the imperfect. Our introduction to his work was the daydreams mirror, a mirror that puts you in the middle of beautiful natural setting (above).

Other past projects include a second-hand tea service that's been transformed with new imagery.

A vase that looks like it's been broken and then reconstructed again.

And an antler-shaped chandelier.

It seems like every year, we can depend on Mr. Miller releasing 4 or 5 products that are different, thought-provoking, and beautiful. He is holding his latest exhibition until November 4th at P Design Gallery in Denver. But if you can't make it out there, go to Miller Studio's site to look at all his projects, or visit Twenieth (in LA or online) or Matter (in Brooklyn online) to see and buy his designs.

When we first received an e-mail from Canoe announcing the opening of their online store, our first question was what's Canoe? We sign ourselves up to so many mailing lists it's easy to forget what's what. Canoe it turns out is a lovely design store in Portland carrying home accessories, personal accessories, toys, books and more. They do a rather impressive job of bringing together well-designed items from Japan, Italy, Scandinavia and the good old USA. Some are classics designed by mid-century masters, some are fresh designs from young upstarts. Check out some of our favorites from their store.

Salvor Kiosk, that New York/online shop that seeks out and sells the unique wares from different countries, recently uploaded its selection for Mexico, which will be the country in residence through January. We thought we'd pick out a few of our favorites, but you should really take a look yourself.

After hearing about San Francisco based online shop Branch several times, we knew we it was perfect for our shopping guide. The concept of Branch is to seek out and sell stylish, well designed items that are made with sustainable materials and methods. While still an online only operation, the shop did have a "flash" shop a few weekends back in San Francisco and is apparently looking for a permanent place in the area.

As for the sustainability factor, they're really not kidding about this stuff. Each and every item comes complete with meticulous information of where it was made, who made it, and an "ingredients" list the FDA would be proud of.

So if you're looking to give the environment a hand, you should probably take the 5 large you were going to spend on this chaise and plant some trees or something. But isn't it comforting to know that if you were in the market for a $5k environmentally friendly chaise lounge one is available for you to buy?

The selection of tableware and home accessories is more accessible and affordable than the furniture. Frankly we would like them whether they were environmently friendly or not. Which we guess is sort of the point with Branch. The store makes buying sustainable goods the easy, obvious choice. Seeing as he's hanging his hat in SF these days, we wonder if Mr. Gore is a customer.

The design company Salvor is best known for its line of fauna pillows and T-shirts. But we're enamored with their latest project. Salvor Kiosk opened late last year as a space in New York and an online destination. The concept of the shop is this: every few months, the store concentrates on one country, importing interesting objects that are unique to the country. The current country in residence is Sweden. If you've ever wondered what freezer bags look like in Sweden (we know we have!) Salvor Kiosk is the place to go, but they also find unique artful items such as birch bird houses.

We've all, at this point seen the flip flop door/bath mat that made the rounds through every home magazine and home design blog a while back. But check out these latest plastic mats from Plastica. Would you even guess they're plastic at first glance? Plus, we'd like to put it into public record that we're generally in favor of any furniture or home accessory whose maintenance instructions are "hose off to clean."