Christmas table decorations

Choosing the right Christmas table decorations 

Christmas table decorations are easiest to choose in layers, and the order matters. Linen goes down first, because it sets the palette everything else answers to. The table linen here is either pure linen or a cotton-linen blend, much of it stonewashed or pre-washed before it reaches you, so it drapes softly from the first use rather than after a winter of washing. Cloths and runners both come in 250cm and 350cm, which cover most dining tables with the drop that suits them.

Ceramics come next, and they are the part most people underestimate. Many pieces here are hardwearing stoneware,
hand-finished in Portugal with a reactive glaze that fires a little differently on every piece, so a set has the variation of something collected rather than the flatness of something bought all at once. Plate size deserves a moment at Christmas in particular. Dinner plates here run to 28cm and 30cm, the bistro size that replaced the narrower plates of a few decades ago, and Christmas
dinner is the one meal of the year that genuinely uses the extra room. The 30cm plates also work as charger plates, the larger under-plate that stays put while the smaller plates come and go.

Glassware and candlelight finish the table. Several of the glasses are mouthblown from lead-free crystal, which catches low light in a way pressed glass never quite manages. It is worth thinking about how the table will look at four o'clock and again at eight, because Christmas lunch is one of the few meals that runs long enough to need both.

How our Christmas tableware is made 

Christmas tableware either earns its keep in the making, or it does not. Much of the ceramic here is hardwearing stoneware from Portugal, where a reactive glaze is applied by hand and then left to do what it does in the kiln. No two pieces come out identical, and that is the point. It is slower than spraying on a uniform coat, and it is why a stack of them reads as a collection rather than a production run.

The glassware divides the same way. Several of the glasses and carafes are mouthblown by hand rather than machine-pressed,
with lead-free crystal used where clarity and weight matter most. Those small irregularities are what make candlelight move across a table instead of sitting still on it.

The linen is woven from flax, some of it grown in France and Belgium, then finished with mitred hems so it hangs rather than lies flat. The tapered candles are handmade in Denmark from mineral wax and burn for around 14 hours. The cutlery is 18/10 stainless steel, the grade that resists pitting from salt and acid, which is what a long lunch puts it through.

A Christmas table that outlasts the season

Most Christmas table decorations are bought to last one Christmas and replaced by the next. None of this is made that way. What differs here is not how long a piece lasts but how often it comes out, and it helps to know which is which.

Some of it is unmistakably for Christmas: garlands, a tree small enough for the table, pieces made for December. They come out once a year and go back in their box, which is rather the point. These are the ones you unpack each December and are glad to see again.

The rest is not seasonal at all. Underneath the festive layer sits Neptune's everyday tableware, gathered up for Christmas rather than made only for it, which is why the stoneware holding the roast potatoes in December holds a Tuesday supper in March.

What runs through both is material and form rather than motif: the weight of the glass, the way a reactive glaze pools at the rim, the drape of a washed linen hem.