Because there are few things more appetizing than a naked man and woman with nine cyclops heads, the free-spirited Mexico City firm DFC—who also showed a dubious set of glass pipes at this year's New York International Gift Fair—have commissioned an illustrated Disposable Place-Mat Pack by local emerging artist Mauricio Limón. The look is Dzama meets Darger, so it's almost more tempting to put them on the wall than on the dinner table. Available at The Future Perfect; $55 for a set of 60. www.thefutureperfect.com or www.dfcasa.com

You wouldn't expect a super-strength, cast-iron casserole to be called Ding, but Office for Product Design's squat dish for local brand Jia Inc in fact owes its name to the ancient Chinese bronze cooking vessels that inspired it. Although Ding retains the essence of traditional Chinese cookware, the Hong Kong–based duo tweaked the design to meet modern cooking requirements: A three-legged, trivet-like base keeps the pot aloft for tableside cooking or is removable to provide a flat cooking base. Contact manufacturer for price. www.jia-inc.com

We've seen plenty of designs for death, but not too many that contemplate eternal life. Eindhoven-based duo BCXSY's Forever! collection includes plastic trinkets gilded in gold, octagonal silicone trivets that depict the food chain, and the Infinity Aquarium, which finds goldfish swimming themselves silly inside a torqued geometry—objects that not only explore the concept of eternity but also the disposability and lifecycle of design itself. Contact designers for price. www.bcxsy.com

A collaboration between German designer Bernd Benninghoff and Craig Bond of New Zealand's Candywhistle yielded Stix, a family of colorful electro-welded "baskets" that slot directly into their shelves' pre-cut grooves—no screws or brackets required. Shown here with matching Pedro stool. Contact manufacturer for price. www.candywhistle.co.nz

Part kitchen tool, part Tonka truck, Chef’n’s GarlicZoom lets kids join in on pre-dinner prep. Simply place a clove or two inside the plastic, palm-sized device, and as you roll it back and forth on its wheels, four stainless-steel blades inside mince the garlic into tiny, uniform pieces. The blade is safely removable, and the whole thing dishwasher safe. Added bonus: Your fingernails won’t smell as though you’re trying to ward off creatures from the Hellmouth; $9.99. www.chefn.com

Alessi’s Pop-Up isn’t the first pressurized bottle opener we’ve ever seen, but it’s easily the classiest. Designed by Giovanni Alessi Anghini—great-grandson of the Italian manufacturer’s founder—it’s the designer’s first solo effort, having recently completed a short stint at Stefano Giovannoni’s studio. Simply clamp the mirror-polished steel device down on a bottle’s neck and with a gentle push, the cap pops off, held in check by a magnet inside; $47. www.alessi.com

Antlers may be out of fashion but no one ever said anything about hippopotamus butts: For his black polyester resin Trophy Hangers for Charles and Marie, New Zealand designer Phil Cuttance sliced up three common game animals—hippos, giraffe, and, yes, the omnipresent-but-still-cute-in-miniature moose—using their heads and hindquarters to create three, uh, cheeky sets of coat hooks; $50. www.charlesandmarie.com

For Umbra’s latest U+ line, the Canadian manufacturer’s design team looked to the Goodwill next door for inspiration, harvesting everyday objects like old suits and mismatched glassware and then classing them up a notch for production. The collection’s Balloona stool, by recent University of Alberta graduate Natalie Kruch, also turns water into wine, transforming a naked wooden seat and what looks like the reject pile of a frustrated birthday party clown into a whimsical Campana-esque piece. Constructed by stretching 500 multi-colored ballooons around a frame with an open top, the stool has a slightly elastic surface that makes for the perfect perch; $350. www.umbra.com and www.natattack.ca

Over the years, Acme Studio founders Adrian Olabuenaga and Lesley Bailey have persuaded everyone from Sottsass to Sagmeister, Boym to Branzi, to lend their designs to the Hawaii-based company's catalog of watches, pens, leather goods, and the like. This fall, Israeli-born, New York–based designer Ran Lerner, formerly of Adam Tihany's studio, joins that growing roster of luminaries. Lerner's Step Watch is marked by single, elegant element: three tiers of concentric steel rings on the watch's face mirrored by a neon laddered hand that ticks the time away. Price upon request.  www.acmestudio.com

At this summer’s inaugural 100% Design Shanghai, local designers Lyndon Neri & Rossana Hu launched an eponymous tabletop and furniture collection to be distributed by Design Republic, the husband-and-wife team’s two-year-old retail outpost in the Chinese metropolis. Each piece in the Neri & Hu collection is handmade and inspired by traditional Chinese artifacts: A series of mirrors based on the form of slim, bamboo household ladders; an ashtray inspired by a calligraphy brush rest; a lacquered bowl that interprets an ancient Qing dynasty relic. For their Extrude stools (above), Neri and Hu abstracted a segment of bamboo, exaggerating its scale; their People series (below) is similarly based on the human form. www.neriandhudesign.com or www.thedesignrepublic.com