For over three decades, we’ve conjured up annual gifts, conceived as a response to a particular moment in time. This year we decided to make a sampling of Elixir’s cabinet of thoughtful curios & useful ephemera (treasures not found elsewhere) available to all. Our friends at Park Life have been stocking some of these goods, but we are also making them available for custom orders on our online store (elixircabinetofcuriosities.com), where we’ve gathered a selection of items ready to serve as corporate gifts, donor thank-you’s, or well-made swag.
MANY THANKS
“Many Thanks” is a box of 16 cards that together weigh 1 pound, with the idea being that you could order a pound of thanks, five pounds of thanks, or more, depending on how grateful you’re feeling. The cards are printed on super heavyweight cotton board, wrapped in gold foil, and packaged up with 16 envelopes.
Custom box designs and inserts available, and make for a great thank you gift; pictured below are the sets Alder Graduate School created for their donors.
CLEAN START COMPUTER GROOMING KIT
Sometimes the inspiration starts with what the receiver might like best, and sometimes the inspiration comes from a need of our own that we are sure others share. Such was the case with our computer grooming kit. After having been to more than one presentation embarrassed of a dirty monitor, we thought, ‘surely there must be others who have this problem.’ We set out to solve the problem of dirty screens and keyboards and offer the new year a “clean start” in a concrete way.
The set includes artisinally-crafted spray (a drop of vinegar in filtered water), wooden keyboard brush made in Germany from goat hair and pig bristles, and a microfiber cloth. All assembled in a customizable paper box to clean up your digital act.
Imagine this in your company colors, with your logo embossed on the top and a nice note tucked inside.
COUNTDOWN TO SOMETHING
We created this “Countdown to Something” in the days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, but decided to leave it open for recipients to countdown to what matters to them. Visualize a pad of paper with a giant number on it, starting at x and counting down to 1.
We could all use a little something to look forward to, and hope is a valuable commodity—take it where you can get it. Available in reusable spiral-bound or tear-off.
RESOLUTION FORM
They say if you put things in writing you are more likely to make them a reality, so we thought these “official” forms would help to that end. Each form is printed in quintuplicate, with a copy for you, three witnesses, and one for your mother (customizable, of course).
1:1 ACTUAL SIZE CURIO CARDS: BOULANGERIE EDITION
True-to-size baked good cards featuring breadstuffs from San Francisco’s beloved Jane Bakery, printed on swanky heavyweight board. Comes with a handmade envelope. Enduring shelf life.
1:1 ACTUAL SIZE CURIO CARDS: FLORIST EDITION
True-to-size floral arrangements printed on heavyweight board, with custom envelope included. Wilt-free.
CUSTOM-BUILT JOURNALS & NOTEBOOKS
We acknowledge that there are a few near perfect journals out in the marketplace that we love… but please consider one more journal. Ours is metal wire-o. This means it is plastic-free and can be folded back on itself. The paper is of a nice quality with low “show through” which means you can’t see through it very much. The colors are the nicest we can find anywhere, both for outer cover and inner pages, and can be customized depending on your needs (imagine this in your company colors, embossed with a logo or message on the outer or inner cover).
If you can read between the lines, we welcome sweating the space between (the lines). Should it be 6mm, 6.5mm or 7mm? Depending on how people respond to this, we might even add some with different spacing because this matters quite a lot to certain people. We have them available in ruled, plain and dot styles, and in journal and notebook size.
Perhaps best of all, we wanted to price it really fairly relative to its quality. All the shareholders in those very large greedy companies making notebooks with crap paper may have a lot more money than we do, but we can sleep well knowing that we can wake up and write our morning pages in a well-made, well-priced journal.
If you—or someone you know—is tasked with finding distinctive gifts at scale for clients, customers, or stakeholders that rise above the humdrum, please email us for more information.