Welcome to December! This is a special time of year
for us, as it is for many of you. Tom and I will be searching for our tabletop Christmas tree this weekend. The tree will be placed at one
end of our living room, and I’ll decorate it with antique and vintage ornaments. I look forward to sharing it with you
soon.

At our house, it’s about traditions and celebrating
the holidays in a thoughtful way. I try to decorate in an old fashioned style. I’ll
fill our house with seasonal fruit, berries, nuts, hollies and boxwood
similar to Christmas in Colonial America.

In addition, I love borrowing Christmas traditions
from Victorian times. This means using our antique mercury glass
pieces and forcing bulbs to flower.

I wish you all a happy
December and a festive holiday season ahead!

I cleared the top of our secretary in the living room, and set out our antique mercury glass collection. Many of these German mercury glasses were imported to Victorian America and sold through Woolworth’s.
I’m very proud of this collection as there are many unusually large pieces. There are also many pairs, which can be harder to find.
Antique mercury glass is double-walled and silvered with a nitrate solution (not mercury), then sealed with a disc or cork. It is usually etched. Below is a footed and fluted goblet.
While purchasing amaryllis bulbs, I found these bleached pine cones. Welcome to a new Tone on Tone holiday tradition!! 🙂
I made several visits to the mall recently (will tell you why in a future post), and dropped in on a few favorite chain stores. These new mercury glass acorns were on sale at West Elm, so home they came. I added the gray grosgrain ribbons…aren’t they cute? The creamware compote and acorns are much smaller than they look in these photos.

Look at all the new mercury glasses at West Elm…now on sale!

This snow globe from West Elm is charming and quite hypnotic, but I resisted. (I must have tried 20 times to get the right photo.)

Above: vintage looking mercury glass ornaments from Crate and Barrel. I think they are lovely.

Above and Below: mercury glass galore at Pottery Barn!