Gathered Stories
With Colin Gray Antique dealer, Interior designer, retailer and restaurateur, from South Somerset.
Colin always creates such welcoming scenes in his beautifully decorated home in South Somerset, which I follow along on Instagram. Whether it is through his home cooking, his walks with his dearest dog Lottie or his informative videos of local villages and their architecture. I have always admired how Colin decorates for Christmas. This year there are strings of hand strung popcorn garlands, paper chains and gilded golden walnuts. I was interested to ask Colin about his Christmas tree decorating rituals.
Do you have a ritual in selecting your tree? Where do you go? Do you visit the same place each year?
I always buy a real tree each year, I go to a local farm to choose a nicely shaped one.
When you think about your Christmas tree, what feelings or memories come to mind first?
When I was a child my mother didn’t let me help, because I’d probably drop the baubles!
Do you plan your tree ahead of time, or do you decorate intuitively?
I try and make the tree a tad old school, and I do not follow current trends.
I don’t plan that far in advance really and it is always a lightbulb moment of what I’ll do this year.
Did your family have any specific tree decorating traditions when you were growing up?
Are there decorations or ornaments that have been passed down across generations? Can you tell me the story behind one or some of them?
I have so many happy memories of Christmas spent with both sets of grandparents, as they allowed me to help decorate. Interestingly not long before my mother died, she gave me certain decorations as she bought them with my father, for my first Christmas and I was very touched that she did this.
If you could pass one tree decorating tradition on to the next generation, what would it be?
When my daughter was young I always let her have her own tree to decorate how she wished. She was very creative and it was lovely to see what she came up with. Incidentally she’s a primary schoolteacher and makes Christmas very special for her pupils.
Do you buy or make a new decoration each year? How do you choose it?
I do buy some new decorations each year & usually go to Rossiters in Bath as they have a good selection. I do think about the colour scheme for the dining and sitting room so that it compliments.
Do you follow traditions or ideas from previous years?
I have to admit that there is no tradition that I follow each year.
But this year I went back to popcorn garlands, which was something that I did 3 years ago for the sitting room fireplace decorations and I thought that they would work for the tree this year. Making them is time consuming though, as the threading is tedious, but worth the end result.
Overall my taste is probably nostalgia and traditional. The colours I am not that keen on for Christmas are pink and blue. I suppose that my decoration ideas don’t really change other than using what I’ve built up over the years and a lot of pieces are from shop window displays from the days that I worked in retail.
Follow Colin on Instagram: colin_awgray