Travel Girl’s Gift Guide: Check your list twice at local museum gift shops for the perfect presents
NEW ORLEANS — Warning: these are gifts you’ll want to keep for yourself, not just purchase for others. If you want some fabulous finds with historic flair, head for Royal Street, and the gift shop at The Historic New Orleans Collection. If you can’t get there in person, click here to link to the online shopping site.
There are brightly colored ornaments, pillows sporting holiday cheer and even decorative holiday stockings with a dose of New Orleans whimsy. But beyond the traditional festive items, there are gifts that will cherished and used year-round.
Teresa Devlin, of The Historic New Orleans Collection, takes pride in featuring products that are made by artists in New Orleans and from other parts of Louisiana. Several products are exclusive to the shop, and feature prints or photographs that can be found in the museum’s galleries.
Night lights, handbags, purses, lamp shades and serving trays can all be found with exclusive images on them. The night lights can add a classic New Orleans feel to any hallway or room, with art, maps, icons and botanical prints.
“We have 12 designs that are exclusive to the collection,” says Teresa.
Items can range in the hundreds of dollars, but there are stocking stuffers too: such as playing cards featuring homes in the French Quarter, or notebooks with covers that show vintage postcards. Those items cost less than $10 each.
One interesting gift is a collaboration between Corksicle and THNOC, and features a sketch done by the museum’s first director, Boyd Cruise. It’s a whiskey glass that comes with a silicone mold. When filled with water and put in the freezer, the mold creates a perfectly sized ice wedge that fits in the glass, ready for whiskey to be added. It’s a deal at less than $30.
Two Travel Girl Steph favorites: Beautiful decorative stockings with New Orleans images on them, perfect to deck a hall. They are $50 each and there are many to choose from. And to deck yourself, there’s the muffuletta necklace, a fun piece which lets you wear all the sandwich ingredients around your neck, capped off with a king cake baby charm too. It’s a splurge at $250 but it’s authentic New Orleans and something that works for everyone’s diet!