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This year ditch the popsicle stick art and put down the plastic googly eyes and pine cones and deck your halls right. We like to trim our tree with a collection of ornaments we’e designed and made ourselves as well as few store bought pieces, which can be really hit or miss. To save you time hunting down those elusive, not horrendously ugly mass produced ornaments, we’ve made a list of our six favorite picks.
Themis Mobile Mono, Artecnica (above) Though technically not an ornament, we’d love to decorate exclusively with Clara von Zweigbergk’s cheery geometric constellations.
Pantone Christmas Ornament, Cooper-Hewitt Shop. Buck the tired red and green motif with ornaments in your favorite Pantone colors.
Astro Ornament, CB2. A flocked, retro astroid ornament makes for a very midcentury Christmas.
Felt Ball Garland, Crate & Barrel. You could easily make this yourself, and with better colors, too, but if you’re short on time chances are there’s a Crate & Barrel not too far away.
Flock Together Ornament, ABC Home. Wooden ornaments make for a nice mix of materials on typically glass-heavy trees.
Elf Mobile Ornament, MoMA Store. Time design by Bent Knudeen, 1953
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You’ve probably seen at least one of the first three editions of the colorful Themis Mobile collection that Stockholm-based graphic designer Clara von Zweigbergk created for Artecnica, but the company swears that Mono, the newest edition, is “vastly different than any other mobile of its kind.” First off, Mono has more sides than von Zweigbergk’s previous mobiles. D&D fans will know even without counting that this baby is a dodecahedron – that’s 12 sides – each in a different eye-popping color “painstakingly handpicked by Clara in her creative process, which she describes as ‘intuition and the way the colors work in contrast to one another.'”
Which brings me to my next point, which is somewhat tangential, but bear with me. As you might imagine, I read a lot of copy for product descriptions, and sometimes when designers, manufacturers or distributors aren’t content with a basic item description they go to great lengths to entice potential buyers with language so belabored and verbose it becomes comical. Nothing against Artecnica -they’re a truly wonderful company – but is this not just the long-winded way of saying that Mono is fun and colorful?
“The harmonious play of colors instill into the viewer a sense of visual pleasure and fulfillment further enhanced by the faceted nature of the geometry of Mono that allows each individual color to appear in four different shades.”
All critiquing aside, Mono works equally well above a crib and a dining room table, and there aren’t many design objects you can say that about.
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