Our Holiday Gift Guide, Part One: Greatest Hits of 2023

Looking for holiday gift ideas? Today, in Part One of our holiday gift guide, we’re featuring some of our favorite new arrivals from 2023! This has been a really fun year in the shop for new products, from limited edition pens to new gift brands and cute and quirky accessories. We hope you’ll find inspiration in some of our greatest hits from the past year.

Writing Gifts

We expanded our calligraphy tool selection this year with a number of beautiful pens and inks, and we really love this gift set from The Written Word. It’s elegantly packaged and contains all the supplies you need to get started. 

Sailor’s Dipton pen and ink sets with shimmering inks are another lovely calligraphy gift. Sailor is best known for their beautiful fountain pens, but they’re experts at making beautiful inks, and their dip pens are cleverly designed.

Our final calligraphy-adjacent gift, Ferris Wheel Press’s Ink Carousel Inkwell is totally charming and rather unique. You can use it to hold ink for calligraphy and to spin shimmering inks so they mix well. It’s even designed to sit at different angles so you can reach the ink at the bottom of the inkwell.

Sailor has come out with some stunning limited editions this year, including the Manyo #2 series and their second playful Cocktail series, but we have to shout out their new Moroccan Mint Tea pens for their subtle and beautiful color combinations. They’re also available in ballpoint versions, which makes them a great gift for fountain pen fans and non-fans alike.

Personal Accessories

At the New England Handmade show this fall, we came across Farmer’s Body and their beautiful bath and body products, made from gentle natural ingredients sourced from small local farms. Their soaps and lip balm sets make lovely holiday gifts for anyone who needs a little pampering. 

Another favorite find this year was Trovelore’s stunning handmade brooches, embroidered by hand with thread, sequins, beads, and wires to create lifelike textures. Their designs are inspired by nature, and they make beautiful gifts.

For the cat lovers in your life, Pottering Cat’s adorable enamel pins are such cute accessories to decorate a backpack or jacket. 

Know someone who’s looking for a new wallet or who likes to carry around a tablet or e-reader? Wren’s wallets and tablet sleeves are unusual and creative designs that make lovely and useful gifts. They’re made out of tough paper from recycled cement bags and dyed in lovely colors.

Desktop and Decor

Making wax seals is a delightful activity, and we love the weighty feel of The Written Word’s brass seals. They come beautifully packaged in a gift box with a couple of sticks of gold sealing wax, which also makes them very giftable.

This year, Paper Mouse owner Victor started to offer his handmade wooden pen trays for sale after frequent requests from customers who admired our shop displays! A small desktop pen tray is a wonderful gift for a pen lover who wants to display their favorite pens and keep them within reach.

For a really elegant desktop gift, we love these classy gold-plated Italian staplers. They’re heavy and eye-catching, a beautiful object for someone’s desk that will also be useful and long lasting.

We’ve carried Aviologie’s hand-painted wooden birds for many years now, but new to the shop this year are their beautiful mini wooden owls. The larger wooden owls have always been a popular gift, and the smaller ones are just as sweet—plus a little more affordable.

Notebooks and Stationery

We’re always adding to our notebook collection, and it’s hard to pick favorites! But one stellar and very giftable notebook brand we brought in this year is Orom. Their vinyl record notebooks make a really cool and unique gift, their traditional Hanji paper notebooks are beautiful and scrumptious to the touch, and their Polar Fountain Pen notebooks have lovely smooth paper inside.

This year, Hobonichi started selling their planner covers separately from the planners—which is fabulous because the covers fit standard A5 and A6 notebooks, so you can pair them with lots of different notebooks for a great gift. Their notebook covers come in fun designs and have lots of handy pockets and pen loops. They make a wonderful gift for anyone who writes a lot and likes to carry their notebook around.

Since we became a Traveler’s Company partner shop this fall, we’ve been able to carry their notebook charms! These are a super cute gift for Traveler’s Notebook fans to let them customize their notebooks in a new way.

This year Felix Doolittle added several gorgeous new illustrated bookmark sets to their collection. Their bookmarks are always a hugely popular gift at our shop, and we love the new designs—a great gift for any bookworm.

We hope you’ve found some inspiration in our gift guide! For more wonderful stationery and gifts, browse our shop catalog, check out our everyday gift guide, and shop holiday cards to get in the spirit of the season.