20 December, 2023
Our Top Christmas Gifts for Interior Design Lovers
It can be incredibly tricky to buy presents for friends and relatives who have a well-honed style or aesthetic. What we fill our home with is deeply personal and often influenced by a lifetime of relationships and experiences. However, if you are lost for where to start, we are here to help by suggesting our top 10 Christmas gifts for the home in 2023. We have trawled through some of our favourite purveyors of interiors (a taxing task as you can imagine) and drawn up a list we hope might come in useful.
OUR FAVOURITE HOME DECOR CHRISTMAS GIFTS
Hand Painted Ceramic Bell from Rowen & Wren
We love bells at Christmas. What is more festive than their gently tinkling chimes. For this hand-painted beauty, Rowen & Wren have teamed up with British artist, Alice Passingham to create an elegant seasonal offering with a Bloomsbury Group feel. The soft olive silk that accompanies it provides an excellent counterpart to the bell’s rounded and sculptural form. In our opinion this is a perfectly sized package filled with insouciance and charm.
Interiors: The Greatest Rooms of the Century from Glassette
If there is one thing you can be sure of, people love reading about the things they love, especially if the book also contains page after page of enviable mood board-ready photos of said love object. This huge book will make anyone with a love of interiors happy regardless of their style. There is something for every taste in here. The only small caveat we would offer is to make sure the recipient of your gift likes pink - bright, unapologetic “Barbie eat your heart out” Pink.
Our Wild Fig & Saffron Candle
Candles, understandably, play quite a key role in this list. Not only because it is our particular area of expertise, but also because candlelight has played an incredibly significant role in how we light our homes for millennia and electricity hasn’t changed that. A gently flickering flame, dancing behind our deep brown glass will sit well in any home. If it softly gives out one of our best-selling scents, Wild Fig & Saffron is a perennial favourite, all the better.
"Elise” Hand smocked Lampshade Skirt from edit58
The art of smocking is an ancient one and more often used in dressmaking but for this pretty little lampshade, edit58 have teamed up with Smock London to bring this treasured craft into our homes as well as our wardrobes. This lampshade is perfect for lovers of delicacy and tradition, of petticoats and intricate patterns. The modest cotton fabric is hand smocked and embroidered and available in several colourways and sizes. Elise would make a generous gift for anyone with a feminine and nostalgic style.
Broadfield Candle Dome from Neptune
Candlelight pops up again here with this elegantly shaped glass candle dome. Candle domes are a wonderful way of preserving the scent of a candle but also a brilliant cheat with the dusting. In addition to this, the dome holds onto the scent which enables you to lift it as you walk past for a little hit of something yummy without the need of a match. This can be particularly useful at this time of year if placed over one of our scented candles for Christmas and lifted when you need a quick dose of frankincense as you rush to collect the goose. It needn’t be a candle that sits snugly beneath it either, whether it’s a heap of biscuits or a trinket bowl, these domes are both a little bit special and really very useful.
Blue Basketweave Faceted Jar from Daydress
Even the most organised among us will often have a trinket or two: spare coins or bobby pins, old conkers, pebbles, shells - those bits and pieces that set up residence in our pockets. It is for these random assortments that this choice is intended. Exquisitely made from cotton rag paper, this lidded jar is as environmentally friendly as it is beautiful, using cotton waste from the clothing industry. The rag paper is then block printed by hand and finished with its contrasting, red ceramic handle. We are particularly fond of the print which calls to mind the dancing prints of Jaipur and the more austere fabric designs made in the UK in the 1930’s. Playful and perfectly pitched.
Our Geranium & Orange Diffuser
Geranium & Orange is a really hard-working scent. It has all the gentle comfort of a floral but with a bright freshness that invigorates and energises. It is a particularly good addition to a bedtime routine, especially as a diffuser. The nostalgia of the Geranium wraps blankets of safety around the uplifting zing of the citrus. Beneath both, heart notes of Lavender soothe and relax. Diffusers release fragrance gently as air moves over the reeds, making them ideally placed in window seats or by doorways. If you want something especially festive you could swap out the Geranium & Orange for one of our Christmas-scented diffusers instead.
Cephalopod Ornament from Berdoulat
Interior design titans, Patrick and Neri of Berdoulat have teamed up with master caster Alexander Griffin to create an exclusive series of decorative plaster casts for the home. This little beauty was cast directly from a four million year old fossil. Often known as Ammonites, these geometrically pleasing spirals contain the worlds of both science and legend among their curves. Whether it links you back to Mary Anning or the Egyptian god Ammon, this is a present fit for any lover of The Ancient.
Winkie Candle Snuffer from Rowen & Wren
The thing we really love about this clever tool, is the sense of formality it brings to the end of a candlelit evening. As with many of Rowen & Wren’s beautifully designed pieces, this snuffer would sit with equal ease among rambling Dickensian rooms and polished minimal apartments. In any setting it suggests a comforting feeling of nostalgic ritual. (it would look particularly well alongside one of our seasonal votives…)
Porcelain Dog Bowl from John Julian
We are a team of dog lovers here at Plum & Ashby so no gift guide would be complete without a small nod to the hounds. If you have a loved one with a beautiful kitchen housing just any old dog bowl, this is the Christmas gift for them. And quite frankly even if there is no dog on the scene, this dish is quite beautiful enough for the table too. John Julian champion skill and tradition in everything they do. Their hand-crafted pieces are timeless and would sit beautifully among any number of differently styled homes.
AND SO THERE YOU HAVE IT, THE PERFECT GIFTS FOR A INTERIOR DESIGN LOVER
We hope we have given you a few ideas, we have certainly given ourselves some. Whether maximalist or minimalist, traditional or modern, we love nothing more than window shopping Christmas gifts for our homes.
Naturally, we'd love you to take a glimpse at our Christmas range too. From cosy scented candles to diffusers sure to prove nostalgic, you're sure to find a little something for family and friends this Christmas (or yourself, of course).