Why Gift Giving Matters to Me

Every August my friend Elizabeth says, “It’s almost Christmas” and I cover my ears and hum a ditty.  And she uncovers my ears and says, “Before you know it, it will be Christmas” and I ignore her.  But here we are three days before Thanksgiving and she is sitting smug with a half filled Christmas closet and I wonder where September and October went. 

I love this Art Deco postcard of a messenger bearing gifts.

And so, as I try and cobble together a Christmas list, I find myself contemplating the nature of Christmas gifts and gift giving in general. 

This beautiful antique necklace is a French love token

I remember the first year I picked out my own Christmas gifts.  I was ten or eleven, and felt it was time I started participating in the gift giving as well as receiving. And so I counted my pennies, consulted with my grandmother and decided to give gifts to five family members.  I don’t remember most of the gifts I gave that year but I do remember giving my mother a beautiful cake platter that she uses to this day.

I always look for antique jewelry pieces with engravings.   This one is particularly sweet reading, "Sons to Mothers 1-13-14"

And I learned something that Christmas, that overused but true truism, it is better to give than to receive.  Or if not that, giving can be really great, because that Christmas I remember anticipating less what I would receive and more the expressions on peoples faces when they opened the presents I had purchased for them.

In Victorian England, Snake Jewelry were popularly gifted between lovers as two snake intertwined symbolized eternal love.

And ever since that Christmas, I have given gifts.  Which depending on the size of my bank account, has varied from the moderately lavish to the homemade.  One year I think I had to glue the wrapping paper shut because I ran out of money for tape.  And like my bank account, my investment emotionally in gift giving has also varied from the perfunctory to the heartfelt.  

Lockets were traditionally a gift given to a loved on and hold that tradition today.  

But this year I want to reinvest myself in why I choose to give gifts.  Because for me, when I get it right, a gift large or small can be an expression of how I value and love my friends and family. A gift can be a wonderful moment, a lasting memory of friendship or love exchanged.  Something my friend can look at and remember how much I love them.

Bands were often a place to engrave a message.  This one reads "WMH to RMN"

One of the very best gifts I’ve ever given was a 1920’s shell cameo with marcasite frame.  I gave it to my grandmother who adores cameos and it is her very favorite one.   She wears it on special occasions and she even rigged a little picture frame for it, so she can keep it on her bedside table whenever she is not wearing it.  For me it was the gift giving equivalent of a home run, because not only it is something she loves for what it is singularly, it is something sentimental and lasting and only a few people know how much which she loves cameos and I am one of them.

This cameo reminds me of the one I gave my grandmother several years ago.

I’ve given gifts that I’ve remembered and given gifts that I’ve forgotten and this year I want to give only memorable gifts.  Gifts that say I see you and I love you. This year I plan to be unabashedly sentimental.  This year I plan to wear my gift giving on my sleeve.

For more beautiful antique jewelry ideas go to isadoras.

Summer: A Time for Travel

Summer is always a fun time in Isadora’s.  Thousands of people visit the historic Pike Place Market each May through September, many of them taking a moment, a half an hour or even a half a day to pop into our store, and enjoy our collection. 

Seattle Pike Place Market

We so enjoy hearing each individual’s story as pass through our store and lives, enriching us with a greater sense of the people of this world we live in.  And sometimes those of us who work in the store get a chance to take a trip ourselves.

Tourism is not a new thing.  On my very favorite movies and novels (It is so rare I like both) is “A Room with a View” by E.M. Forster where the young Lucy Honeychurch is transformed by a trip to Italy during the early 20^th century.

Mt. Vesuvius Ash Cameo Brooch

I feel, the good vacations we eagerly anticipate, thoroughly enjoy, and hold as a memory for years to come.  The great vacations transform us.  And so I ask myself, how do we hold those memories after we leave, retain the beauty and the emotional sustenance they provide having returned to our normal life once again? 

Egyptian Revival Bracelet

I remember a quote from the movie Rebecca (another book/movie although I confess I never made it to the book after being captivated by Laurence Olivier’s Maxim de Winters).  Joan Fontaine’s character says, “You know, I , I wish there could be an invention . . . that bottled up the memory like perfume.  And it never faded, never got stale.  That whenever I wanted to, I could uncork the bottle and live the memory all over again.”

1920's Butterfly Wing Necklace

And I suppose one can’t truly live a memory again, but like Joan Fontaine’s imagined bottle, I believe an object can be the keeper for a memory.  You look at it and remember the smell of your vacation, the excitement, the transcendent moments.  And for me jewelry has always been a perfect memory holder.  It is something personal, so personal it is worn on your person and whether it is a ring on your finger or a locket on your neck you hold the memories close when you put that piece of jewelry on.

Vintage Italian Themed Charm Bracelet

And just as I love to look at my souvenir’s brought back from different parts of the world, I also like to look at what others chose to collect on trips aboard.  Particularly the tourists of yester year-whether it is an Italian cameo purchased on a Victorian lady’s grand tour, a piece of Egyptian revival enamel jewelry inspired by the opening of King Tut’s tomb, a British butterfly wing pendant sold at the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 or a sweet 50’s silver charm bracelet collected by a young girl as she traveled the world.