Coffee Table Book of: Christmas Stockings (Paperback)

Coffee Table Book of: Christmas Stockings is a large-format coffee table book about the Christmas stocking, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. It follows the stocking from the needles to the fireside, Christmas morning and the shoes set out for Saint Nicholas.

It opens with knitting: a Fair Isle stocking in narrow bands of red, cream, green and blue, a black and white stocking with a large eight-pointed star, thick cream cables, a red stocking half knitted on double-pointed needles, and an old grey stocking beside a darning mushroom.

Then quilted and patchwork stockings: red cotton quilted in small diamonds, crazy patchwork with gold-stitched seams, and plaid shirting and faded prints. Then velvet and felt: deep red velvet with an ivory cuff, green velvet edged with gold braid, red felt with holly and a little fir tree, and green felt edged in white blanket stitch.

Then by the fire: two red stockings under the mantel of a stone hearth, a white marble fireplace in a room with deep green walls, a stocking at each end of a heavy oak beam, a cream stocking under a garland of fir, and a red one beside a cast-iron stove in a log cabin. Then on stair rails and bedposts: stockings on a banister, a newel post, a door knob and a bedpost, and a tiny white stocking beside a red one on a cot.

Then through the night: empty stockings above the last embers, moonlight on the wall of a dark room, a stocking at a cottage window with snow falling beyond, and full stockings over a cold hearth. Then Christmas morning: an orange, walnuts and a wooden spinning top, mandarins in green tissue, candy canes in a green stocking, and small wooden toys beside an empty one.

Then shoes for Saint Nicholas and the Kings: a pale wooden clog with a carrot and hay beside a bowl of water, a black boot on a frosted windowsill with a bundle of birch twigs, and small boots by a door with grass and water.

Short notes run through the book. They are about the stockings, how they are knitted, stitched and woven, and the customs around them, rather than about the pictures: when crewel embroidery in wool became popular, how quilted cloth joins three layers, what an 1853 magazine told British readers about American children and their stockings, and what an 1871 newspaper poem joked about a baby's stocking.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.

Publisher - Cedar Pine Editions

Language - English

Perfect Bound

Contributors

By author

Dimitri Smith

Published Date - 2026-10-22

ISBN - 9671456005379

Dimensions - 27.9 x 21.6 x 0.7 cm

Page Count - 102