Weekendpaper* | How to host the perfect dinner party

As seems to happen for a few years each decade, the dinner party has sashayed back into the spotlight. Right now, when public life is just a plague of smartphones and anxiety, being behind closed doors in a home with friends can feel thrilling. The rules have changed, mind. With party season already upon us, humble host and Wallpaper* design critic Hugo Macdonald has a few words of advice for contemporary hosts and guests.

On guest numbers? Eight to ten are optimal for genuine conviviality: it’s the smallest number that can feel like a party and the largest number that can have a group conversation and still break away for subsidiary gossip without being rude. Good guests, meanwhile, bring food not booze. Shop shelves have never been so laden with small brands offering every type of cuisine, so introduce your host to your favourite Malaysian chocolates, Scottish salami or Amazonian insect.

And hosts, do not ‘tablescape’. In fact, never utter that word again. Laying a table in your own home for Instagram plummets new depths of social dystopia. Read on for more, on the food, the mood and the robot ban.

A decade ago, Orhan Niksic and his brother Adem relaunched their family’s century-old Bosnian woodcarving workshop, determined to breathe new life into the business. They knew that to save the past – their craft heritage – they needed to move forward. ‘We didn't want to destroy our heritage and start something completely new,’ says Niksic. ‘We understood, and I think we were very much attached also to the knowledge and history of the woodcarving craft and were determined to preserve it.’

Their vision – to modernise without erasing tradition – has become Zanat’s defining philosophy. It has extended well beyond the workshop – the brand has launched a woodcarving academy, a museum, and secured Unesco certification for the woodcarving heritage of its home town, Konjic. All its pieces are made using a combination of modern CNC technology and traditional handcarving techniques that are taught and practised at Zanat’s HQ.


At just ten years old, Zanat has built a roster of collaborators that would make even the most established design houses green with envy – Michele De Lucchi, StudioIlse, Yves Behar, Naoto Fukasawa, and Monica Förster among them.‘They felt they'd discovered a new artistic medium, a way to express something unique,’ says Niksic, reflecting on why so many creatives want to work with the brand. Ali Morris headed to Zanat HQ to find out more, and explore the one-off pieces created by major designers for the brand’s anniversary exhibition.

‘I do agree with Matisse, who said artists should have their tongues cut out for the amount of rot they talk,’ says Maggi Hambling. Self-effacing, yes, shrewd, sharp and unfailingly honest – but there’s no worry of any rot from the revered, respected, and often feared, Hambling.

When we visited her in October 2025, in the south London home she has lived and worked in for 40 years, the artist was about to turn 80. She is marking this milestone with both a joint exhibition with good friend Sarah Lucas at Sadie Coles HQ and Frankie Rossi Art Projects in London (from 20 November), and the release of an illustrated monograph of works from a five-decade career, from her 1960s studies at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing to her recent politically and emotionally charged war paintings.

Talking to Hannah Silver, Hambling discusses everything from oil paint (‘very sexy stuff, and you have to make love with it’) to Lucas’ ‘guts and humour’, feeling ‘about 15’, drawing with both hands, and Coronation Street – don’t miss this interview.

Our minds on hosting, we’ve taken a shine to Molteni&C’s newly reissued collection of Gio Ponti designs. The objects span the purely sculptural (origami-like doves) and the functional, such as this seven-stem vase or candleholder (centre), which is both beautiful and useful. Order online in the US, in-store elsewhere.