It’s an end-of-summer emergency. I always come back from holidays with more than just photographs on my phone: my bags are crammed with things I couldn’t resist – a hand-painted ceramic bowl, a fridge magnet, a corny mug from a museum shop, a handful of shells, a pebble slipped into my pocket after a swim, a scrap of fabric. The list feels endless, as if temptations lurk at every corner from the moment I land until the second my flight leaves for home.
I’m not the only one. Parisian designer Marin Montagut admits that as soon as he arrives somewhere new, his first instinct is to dive into flea markets and vintage shops. ‘My two greatest passions are traveling and antique objects,’ he told me. ‘When I was younger, I would sometimes return to France, open my suitcase, and realise that some objects, so charming in their original setting, had somehow lost their magic once placed in my home. In those moments, I used to joke – this object didn’t survive the journey.’
That’s the risk with souvenirs: they feel precious at the time, tokens of places and moods we don’t want to forget. Yet once home, they teeter on the edge of clutter, doomed to languish at the back of a drawer. So I started asking myself: is there a way to make souvenirs look stylish, or must I finally resolve to resist buying them? Let’s unpack it – with a bit of history first.
The habit of bringing things back is as old as travel itself. The very word ‘souvenir’, borrowed from the French verb meaning ‘to remember’, captures our urge to anchor memory in objects. Travel was arduous during the Middle Ages, but pilgrims venturing as far as Jerusalem, Rome or Santiago brought back some of the earliest keepsakes – small flasks filled with holy water, oil or sand, along with scallop shells and lead badges pinned proudly to their cloaks.
By the time Horace Walpole popularised the word ‘souvenir’ in the late 1700s, mementoes had become a fully fledged industry, and a grand one. Young British aristocrats on the Grand Tour filled their trunks with antiquities, Old Master paintings and plaster casts, shipping them home to decorate country houses with trophies meant as much to impress guests as to recall their sojourns in Italy.
Few of us can rival those Georgian collectors, but the question of how to place what we bring back from our travels remains as relevant as ever. For decorator Tamsin Saunders of Home & Found, the key is to fold souvenirs into everyday life. ‘Home is a feeling and it makes me very happy to be surrounded by things that remind me of places and precious times. Wherever I go, I’m always on the look out for little treasures, rubies in the dust,’ she says.
In her London cottage, unpretentious keepsakes such as shells, pebbles and pine cones have become part of the decoration. ‘They remind me of times of happiness, in places of incredible beauty with the people I love most – they are some of my most precious belongings. I also bring ceramics back from my travels and use them every day. A lot of the ceramics in my kitchen were found on holiday.’
Editing is key, too, when it comes to buying souvenirs, and experience helps. Often it can be good to limit your buying to a certain kind of object, whether it is the ceramics that Tamsin collects or specific types of decorative piece. ‘Over time, I’ve learned to choose more wisely, to sense what will blend harmoniously with the atmosphere of my home,’ reckons Marin Montagut, whose eclectic finds often feed into his work. ‘I often bring back Portuguese reliquaries made by nuns in the early 19th century – I collect them passionately. From Italy, I always return with a handful of ex-votos, which I display in my studio. These ancient treasures fuel my imagination and inspire new creations for my eponymous brand. I also love discovering patchwork quilts in Sweden, which I collect as well, and hand-embroidered kilim rugs from Romania, whose vibrant colours bring joyful touches throughout my home.’
And if mixing high and low is your thing, souvenirs are the perfect excuse to be playful. Designer Bridie Hall is refreshingly unapologetic: ‘I love souvenirs, especially ones I have picked up myself and treat them the same as I would a prized work of art or object of desire. They’re all treated the same in my house and so displayed the same, always playfully and together with other things that make me happy.’
Too often, she feels, people separate them nervously, as if to apologise – ‘This is temporary! This isn’t really what I’m about…’ – but she takes the opposite view: ‘Whereas I say the tackier the better, I have a lot of fun and like to be reminded by surrounding myself with fun things.’
My suitcase will probably still be full, but at least next time I’ll know better what deserves the trip home – and hopefully you will too.
