Tiny ceramic gifts bring Christmas cheer and ‘heart-warming’ response online

A graphic designer who has turned her love of ceramics into a unique way of making Christmas gifts for colleagues has said that it was “so heart-warming” to see the response from people online.

Veronika McQuade, 31, from central London, told the PA news agency that going to ceramics classes, and a “really small lump” of clay which she had at home, sparked the idea to make miniature objects which represent her colleagues, friends and family.

“I’ve been taking [ceramics] classes for a little over a year once a week, and it has been great fun,” she said.

“I really wanted to make something like tiny ceramics and I had this small lump of clay at home and had a last-minute thought – ‘what if I made everyone a tiny object instead of a Christmas card?'”

She has cited Eleonor Bostrom and Joey Rutherford as inspirations behind the idea, as they “also make adorable clay objects”.

She has created objects including a corgi, banana, cat and her take on the infamous Sports Direct mug, with the latter being given to her brother Samuel.

“Before I started making miniatures, I kind of got known in my pottery class for making huge mugs with really big handles, so big that you can fit your hand through”, she said.

“It’s practically the size of the whole mug as well and I remember making one mug so big that people in my pottery class were like, ‘that’s not even a mug, that’s a flowerpot with a handle’, which I called ‘sports indirect’ because it’s off brand.

“My brother and I always fight for it because it can literally hold a pint of tea.”

She also gave one of her bosses a mini ceramic banana because her office is usually overflowing with bananas and he usually jokingly berates the team for not eating them – and her colleague Ryan a corgi, referring to him as a “corgi enthusiast”.

She added that one colleague asked if he could eat one of the ceramic creations.

The project took a couple of days to complete and she got most of them finished on December 4, with a little help from Netflix playing in the background.

Ms McQuade said her colleagues were “really happy” when she gave them the presents on December 19 as part of a Secret Santa.

“Actually, a couple of colleagues did not realise that I’d made them – it wasn’t until the next day when I shared a screenshot of a tweet I wrote about the objects in the group chat that they told me – ‘you made that, aren’t we lucky’.”

The tweet she posted on December 20 received more than 170,000 likes and over 8,000 retweets, with Ms McQuade being particularly drawn to the comments.

“It was so heart-warming to see because all the comments are so positive and everyone was being so lovely about it”, she said.

“It is nice that they are something for people to enjoy, especially around Christmas.”