Tennis Racket Ornament

We make a tennis ornament for the tree, and this is ours — a hand-blown glass racket, string bed drawn by hand, painted and finished in-house and sold directly from this page. My niece Cordelia, a loud season-one convert who narrates every match aloud, went uncharacteristically silent to inspect the strings before pronouncing them correctly strung. She claimed it at once.

A yankee swap is a fine stage for it, distinctive enough to draw trades from anyone who has held a racket. Cordelia brought this to a swap and provided unsolicited commentary on each attempt to steal it, as though calling a match. The racket got taken twice under her narration. She considered the commentary essential. Competition suits the object.

It is a good gift idea for the player, new or seasoned, and especially the recent convert with strong fresh opinions. Cordelia gives it to relatives she is actively trying to recruit into the sport, a kind of starter trophy handed out in advance. Give it to your household's tennis obsessive. They will approve of the crossing.

Real blown glass, formed as one racket and painted by hand, frame and grip wrap and the fine crosshatched string bed alike. Cordelia checked the string spacing carefully against a vivid mental image of her own racket, a reference she trusts completely after a single full season of play. It matched her own racket exactly, string for string across the head. The head sits upright.

Sized for a swap and easy on a branch — a racket that settles into a cupped palm, reads plainly from a doorway, and hangs without ever dragging its branch down. It rides a standard hook and balances neatly from the throat so the whole head stays vertical and visible. Cordelia pronounced the proportions tournament-appropriate. The string bed holds.

Wrap it in soft tissue, seat it in a rigid box, and store it where the temperature stays even year-round. Cordelia keeps hers stored right alongside her actual racket, on the reasoning that the two really ought to winter together as a matched set. It emerges each December with its strings still perfectly taut. The grid just rests.

Do you have more sports ornaments like the Tennis Racket? We do, and the racket sports pair naturally on a branch — hang the Ping Pong ornament beside it and you cover a full-size court and a basement table at once. Cordelia arranges hers by skill demanded, tennis first. She delivers the ranking unprompted.

It ships in protective packaging built for hand-blown glass, not a gift box, so plan one wrapping step between the doorbell and the recipient. Cordelia rewraps hers in white paper the color of painted court lines, a themed choice she explains at some length whether or not anyone asked. The court-line wrapping is optional. The commentary is included.