So, what is tomorrow?
Tomorrow is one month until Christmas Eve. I’ve got to admit, I can’t wait. I think it’s been the busiest autumn ever in the office. We all need a little break! And Christmas is when it’s going to happen. But crikey – it’s only a month until Christmas.
Now one of the things I’m happiest about OF ALL in the shop is when Bridie and I have been able to make and design things ourselves. We absolutely love scouring junk shops and markets for interesting finds, and we love working with suppliers of really well designed things (Hunsletware anyone?) and bringing them to new audiences. But I must admit the thing which really gets me ticking are things we’re doing ourselves.
There is of course Bridie’s very own eponymous range—launched at the Cabinet of Curiosities and doing rather fantastically (I was going to write amazingly well, but actually I am not amazed). There is the Bloomsbury Library Chair. But one of the things I’m particularly excited by is our new range of Crackers.
I don’t often write about this sort of thing, because I prefer (frankly) to keep this blog, well, a little less commercial than other areas of our website. But every now and again, I am particularly inspired by some of the things we’re selling.
It all stemmed from last year—when I knew that I had House & Garden magazine coming down to take photos of my Christmas decorations down here at the Old Parsonage. I’ll just pop out and find a perfect box of Christmas Crackers, I thought. Easy.
Conran, Heals, Liberty, Selfridges, Fortnum and Mason, JOHN FLIPPING LEWIS….where were you in my hour of need? Nowhere. That is where. Everything was either grim or over-wrought or hundreds of pounds (literally) or covered in santas or… well… not really for the Ben P table. Sorry.
So a long time ago, in sunny May or June, Bridie and I set about talking to a fantastic cracker company based nowhere other than just down the road in Dorset; mocking up samples, testing papers, and developing our very first range of Crackers with unique Judd Street and Pollock’s Toy Museum papers. Fancy popping a Ravilious on Christmas Day? We can help. Prefer a zany 19th century Zeotrope design (which happens to be my favourite?). No problem.
Novelties include wooden dice, pencils, some marbles in a paper bag, pastry cutters, nutmeg graters… useful things like that. There is of course a terrible joke and a paper hat, without which the Pentreath family Christmas would not be complete.
And they come with the knowledge that you are pulling the most beautiful crackers in the world. Even the cracker-making-ladies are getting excited about them. And you would think the one thing they would not want to see on Christmas day was a cracker. There is a link to the Crackers page here. Time to get Cracking.
