Picture where they came from. A striped tent pitched in the snow. A procession of masked figures crossing a frozen square, trailing ribbon and confetti. Somewhere overhead, a star-shaped kite catching the last of the daylight before it goes. Equal parts Fellini’s fairground, Cocteau’s pencil-line dreams, and the geometric choreography of the Bauhaus Ballet, all tumbled together with the painted masks of the Commedia dell’Arte.
This is the world PORTA and Pangea dreamed up together this holiday season. Every object in it is doing a magic trick: dressed as something ordinary, while secretly being something fantastical.
What the spirits left behind
Giant Matchboxes. There once was a stage so small it fit in your hands, with a paper curtain that really opened and a paper moon that really rose: the toy theatres Pollock’s sold in 19th-century Britain. Our matchboxes are what happens when that tiny stage gets tired of being small and decides, quite suddenly, to become enormous. Over 11 inches long and filled with extra-long red-tipped matches, they come in two designs: the Harlequin, mid-drumroll, and Make a Wish, a great pale star under a crescent moon.
Notecards. A duke once asked his court painters for the most beautiful deck of cards in the world. Not to play with, not to tell fortunes, just to hold and be amazed by. That was the Visconti-Sforza tarot, in the 15th century. Centuries later, the artist Ray Johnson decided a letter didn’t need to say anything important, because the envelope itself could be the whole gift. Our notecards believe both things at once. There are 16 in a set, four each of four designs, including an elephant on a bicycle, a drumming harlequin, a leaping figure framed by the letters L-O-V-E, and a star that spells out W-I-S-H. Precious enough to be looked at before they’re ever read.
Party Hats. On one night each year, hundreds of years ago, a bean was hidden inside a cake, and whoever found it got to be king until morning, crown and all. That was Twelfth Night. On the stages of the early 1900s, meanwhile, the Ballets Russes put dancers in headdresses so tall and strange they looked like they’d wandered in from an unfinished dream. Our six paper hats borrow from both: a lyre, a heart, a paper boat, a crown of stars. Built for a dinner table full of impromptu royalty.
Christmas Stockings. Long ago, a trickster in a diamond-patterned suit belonged to no house and answered to no rules, and everyone loved him anyway. That was Harlequin, of the Commedia dell’Arte. In another story entirely, a kind saint was said to drop gold down chimneys into stockings left out to dry. Our three stockings look as though they wandered off from the circus and never went back: a blue jester’s slipper scattered with gold stars, a harlequin boot in pink and green diamonds tied with red bows, and a wavy yellow number with a black heel and a pom-pom at the toe.
Advent Calendars. A little boy once had a mother who drew a tiny chalk mark on the wall every December day, so he’d always have something small to look forward to. Grown up, Gerhard Lang turned that idea into one of the first printed advent calendars, in 1908. Years later, the artist Joseph Cornell spent his life building tiny glass boxes, each one holding a small, sealed universe. Our calendar is both. Shaped like a little house with “Joy to the world!” across the roof, it has a pink ribbon wandering across a checkerboard of pockets, each one a little world waiting for its day. In blue or green.
Flags. A dancer once discovered that fabric, lit just right, could become fire, water, or wings without her saying a word. That was Loie Fuller and her serpentine dance, in the 1890s. A painter, working almost in secret, filled her canvases with moons and spirals in colors nobody had thought to pair before. That was Hilma af Klint. These one-of-a-kind hand-painted flags borrow from both: fabric that still seems mid-dance, in colors that shouldn’t work and somehow do.
There are four. It’s Time, a sun-yellow bloom rising from a dark vessel. Full Moon, a night sky of moons and stars. Muse, a striped dancer leaping over a golden star. And Dance, Dance, Dance, the largest at over seven feet wide, with a winged figure and her partner twirling across a green field. Each comes with its own tiny invented story, the kind that’s never quite true, and never quite isn’t.
Come see the windows
There’s something wonderfully nostalgic about a decorated shop window at Christmas, the feeling that something magical is happening just on the other side of the glass. Together with Pangea, we’ve turned that tradition on its head. Our windows are now a stage, with stars, moons, and performers spilling across the glass, curtains drawn back, figures caught mid-performance, and a Make a Wish star painted on the door.
Part theatre, part circus, part holiday fantasy.
Because sensible can wait until January.
Pangea is Laëtitia Rouget and Colombine Jubert, longtime friends who met as students at Central Saint Martins in London. Laëtitia is a painter and ceramicist. Colombine comes from fashion design and creative direction. Since 2020, working between Paris and Lisbon, they’ve been building entire worlds out of color, cloth, and gesture, across textile art, installation, performance, film, and design.
The name comes from the ancient supercontinent, back when the world had no borders. Pangea imagines its own version of that: a utopia built on joy, nature, and collective possibility. Their work refuses to sit still. A hand-painted textile might be an artwork, a flag, a costume, or something for the home. An everyday object might turn out to be a story.
Beneath all that color is a serious idea, that imagination and joy are ways of answering a complicated world. It’s why this collaboration felt so natural. We both believe objects aren’t just things to own, but ways of making ritual, beauty, and connection part of everyday life.
