'On Christmas Day, the dining table must look very attractive. Go out for a country walk and collect some bright twigs of berries, and, if possible, a few branches of teasel, some tall sedge grasses, and a few bulrushes. All these plants can be found in the fields and hedges, and this is how to use them.
Buy a sixpenny tin of aluminium and gold enamel and set to work to paint. The heads of the bulrushes are most ornamental if dipped in gold enamel.
The teasel twigs, as you know, have lovely prickly fruits, and these look really lovely when tinted at the tips with silver. Long dead twigs painted all over with gold or silver enamel and arranged in a pottery bowl or dark black bowl, with the other branches and some bright red berries look very effective.'
Buckinghamshire Advertiser and Free Press, 14th December 1835
What natural objects do you use in your Christmas decorations? Use the Comments box below.
Full article on the history of Christmas pudding eating
What natural objects do you use in your Christmas decorations? Use the Comments box below.
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| American Homes and Gardens, Munn and Co.., 1928. Wikimedia Commons. |
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| Cut-Leaved Teasel Wikimedia Commons |
Four family history books with a difference....
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