VW Van Ornament

The VW Van ornament ranks among the more original van life gifts this year, in hand-blown glass with a hand-applied two-tone paint job. My aunt Delia drove a VW van across three states the summer she turned twenty, with a cooler that leaked the entire way and no plan beyond a general westward direction. She still tells it as her best summer.

It tends to do well at yankee swap, mostly because people crowd around to ask about the paint job the moment it's actually unwrapped. Delia tells that summer's story slightly differently every single time she brings it up, and nobody in the family bothers correcting her details anymore. The feeling clearly matters more than the facts.

It makes a strong gift idea for whoever still talks about a road trip decades later like it happened last summer. Delia sold her actual van to a total stranger who answered a newspaper ad, and still wonders out loud, at dinner, whether it's out there somewhere, still running, still going nowhere in particular. She never asked for a name.

It is made from hand-blown glass, gathered and shaped whole at the torch, with the second paint tone applied entirely by hand. Delia's actual van broke down twice on that trip, in places she genuinely no longer remembers at all these days. This version, thankfully, never has to leave the shelf it's hung on.

The VW Van ornament measures about 4.3 inches long, sized to sit proudly among the tree's other small vehicles nearby. Delia's real van fit two friends, one leaking cooler, and absolutely no fixed itinerary whatsoever, considerably more cargo than this glass version ever needs to manage on its branch. The branch has it easy.

Wrap it in tissue and store it upright, away from anything that could press against the paint. Delia's actual van has been gone for decades now, sold off to a name she never even wrote down at the time. This ornament, at least, is one road trip nobody in the family has to worry about losing track of.

The Big Ben ornament makes a natural companion piece, keeping a considerably stricter schedule than any van Delia ever actually drove. Delia would probably still pick the van anyway, regardless of any schedule or the lack of one entirely. Browse the Travel ornament collection for the rest of that same wandering spirit.

It does not ship in a presentation gift box, but it does travel in secure, padded packaging built to protect the paint. Delia never once packed properly for that entire summer, leaking cooler very much included in that assessment. This one, at least, arrives exactly the way it left the studio floor.