A warm golden baroque pearl with a tiny green Christmas tree, red candy dots and white snow lights — like a piece of December wrapped into a pendant.
Collected Piece · Winter Tales Collection 2025
Xmas Candy Tree No.1
A small Christmas tree for a new chapter — made to celebrate her new job, her PhD milestone, and a friendship that now runs between two cities.
Xmas Candy Tree No.1 was created for a friend who shared the early years of my PhD with me. We spent those years figuring out new places, new routines, and a lot of half-planned weekend walks. Now she’s starting fresh in another city, with a new role and a different pace of life. The little green tree is simply a quiet way of saying: “I’m cheering for you from here.”
I didn’t know if I would manage to be in London this Christmas, so I sent the tree
ahead of me. The pearl holds a soft gold glow, as if someone turned on fairy lights
under the nacre. The deep green tree stands in the centre, decorated with tiny red
dots and falling white snow — part Christmas cookie, part childhood drawing, part
quiet blessing.
When she wears it, I like to imagine the tree lighting up slightly at the end of a
long workday: a reminder that even when our calendars no longer overlap, there is
still a little shared winter between us.
Piece Details
The Collector's Story · A Christmas Tree Between Cities
We spent the first two years of our PhD sharing the same map: same campus corners, same winter buses, same last trains home. We collected small rituals — wandering through new neighbourhoods, trying cafés we couldn’t really afford, talking about futures that felt very far away.
Then, almost at the same time, everything shifted for her. The thesis was finished, the robe was worn, the next job arrived. Our lives moved onto different tracks, and suddenly it wasn’t as simple as saying, “See you tomorrow.”
I painted this Christmas tree for that in-between feeling — proud, a little tender, and not quite ready to admit that our schedules no longer match. The pearl is brushed in soft gold, like the light from a kitchen window at 5 p.m. in December. The tree in the centre is small but bright, sprinkled with red candy dots and quiet snow, something cheerful enough to sit on a work badge or winter coat.
I don’t know if I will make it to London this Christmas, but I wanted the tree to arrive first, carrying my “congratulations” and “I miss our walks” at the same time. It is a tiny, wearable way of saying: I still remember those early years, all the wandering and laughing, and I am cheering for you from here.
Xmas Candy Tree No.1 is a small piece in the Winter Tales collection, but for me it is also a postcard in pearl form — a little evergreen tree standing quietly between two cities, keeping our shared winters stitched together.