Christmas Newsletter 2025
- Johnny Grey
- Dec 14, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 16, 2025
Dear friends,
As we just about manage to cope with the darkness and the news, the coming time of hibernation will be welcome – if of course you are lucky enough to be taking a break. I would like to offer a few thoughts on down-to-earth matters that provide inner cheer, my personal favourites: food, wood, design and domesticity.
It wouldn’t be one of my newsletters without an appearance by Elizabeth David. I am very keen, as many of you know, to keep her legacy alive and relevant (which it most definitely is). Her voice is full of authenticity and pleasure, her often simple recipes a perfect antidote to our overprocessed, harried times. She gave me wonderful clues as to how to enjoy life. Her slow pace for one; she never seemed to be in a hurry. We ate around her table with the time and mental space to discuss food and other matters as a spirit of contemplation. She would pause, take a sip of wine and then ask another question. This was often about what we were eating, how it could be different or better, did the taste of the fennel survive? Did it need more salt? Was the bread risen enough, was the chicken too dry, maybe the apple charlotte the slightest bit stodgy? Sometimes she just put the food to one side. Her mind had moved to other matters: how was my sister?
For the first time ever Elizabeth David’s recipes can be found online with a choice of my top 15 from Elizabeth David’s Christmas (2011, edited by Jill Norman). CBCK, Be Your Best Cook, is a website that provides access to the world’s great cookbooks. The brainchild of Matt Cockerill, it captures thes essence of my aunt’s Christmas recipes with photography by his brother, Tom Cockerill. They offer a 14 day free trial but a subscription represents great value if you’re a keen cook.
For a limited time get 25% off a personal subscriptions or a gift subscription (click or use the code ELIZABETHDAVID)
Alternatively, Elizabeth David’s Christmas is available new and used from second hand bookshops and sites such as World of Books. It is terrific as guide to non-clichéd Christmas food from English and other traditions. There is nothing gimmicky or dull in its pages.
Speaking of food books, this next one’s a novel: Butter by Asako Yuzuki. While it is a strange, twisted tale reflecting fault lines in Japanese society including loneliness and misogyny, Butter is also a brilliant evocation of the effects of great food on our bodies and psyches. As the Guardian comments, ‘it isn’t entirely clear whether to read the novel or devour it.’ It is powerful stuff, a real page-turner. If you haven’t already, we recommend indulging.
MEDULLARY RAYS
These are like stretch marks in oak, wavy silvery lines separate from the main growth rings seen in cross section. Medullary rays can be viewed as flaws but are in fact an essential part of the tree’s growing process and are also called pith rays. Perpendicular to the growth rings, they are natural pathways for water and nutrients. The sculptor Alison Crowther, who is almost my neighbour in the next village towards the Downs, makes a feature of these medullary rays when determining the shapes for her work and carving her patterns. Her extraordinarily beautiful large-scale sculptures find their way around the world. She also creates smaller versions of her work, available by arrangement. If you are in the South Downs why not visit Alison’s workshop for an immersive experience of wood meeting art? Bookings for this can be made on her website.
Here you can also buy a copy of her new book. It doesn’t cover Crowther’s career in its entirety but shows a selection within specific categories: ovoids, spheres, furniture, and small pieces that help define what she does. These sculptures speak eloquently of the unique dialogue Crowther has developed with wood.
EXHIBITION PIECES
We are offering a few items of our Unfitted Kitchen furniture, some prototypes but all in perfect order, on the sustainable website Rehome. The Spice and Condiments Drum, Ambient Dresser and other pieces are available. Our Unfitted Sink Cabinet is a top favourite. It can fit into all sorts of existing kitchens, giving them a style and function boost, without drawing a huge amount of attention to itself.
While you can upgrade your sink area with this cabinet on its own, it would also work beautifully together with the Unfitted Plate Rack from our exhibition pieces at Rehome, plus a Circular Wall Cupboard. Someone you know – a daughter or son? – might be interested in the amazing value these prototypes represent.
THE GENIUS OF NIGEL BROWN
Vale Nigel Brown. A great sadness for me this year was the death way too young of this celebrated furniture maker. A delightful and principled alumnus of Dulwich College (!), Nigel studied nuclear physics at university before deciding to train as a furniture maker… interesting story there. He excelled and was chosen by John Makepeace to be the first resident furniture maker at Hooke Park, Makepeace’s School of Woodland Industries near Beaminster in Dorset.
We have a kitchen available now that was built by Nigel at Hooke Park before he started his new business Halstock outside Yeovil, where he worked for many years. This ‘approved used’ Johnny Grey kitchen on the Rehome website is craftsmanship on steroids, with metalwork from the blacksmith Paul Jobst that complements the cabinetry. Nigel was a maestro of curves in wood, which give any room elegance. The full height drum cupboard is maybe the star of the kitchen, with its artwork by Lucy Turner and fine veneers in aspen and maple made by Nigel. It comes with a Mercury range oven, Miele dishwasher, Quooker tap and tank and Daewoo fridge freezer. The appliances are newer than the kitchen which dates from 2006. Rehoming a premium hand built kitchen is a sustainable choice as well as fantastic value for money.
KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY
Our Unfitted Kitchen showrooms are all about collaboration in design-led retailing. We are excited by the showroom created by father and daughter team Mick and Natalie Murphy in Little Creake, near Fakenham in Norfolk. In a charming setting on the edge of an old village and laid out as a series of cottage-style rooms, Kitchens Etc deservedly won Showroom of the Year at the last KBB Awards.
We are also now working with a father and son team, Mark and Liam Butler! Butler Interiors is in Kirkby Lonsdale in the Lake District. They are currently building a brand-new showroom on a grand scale. The Unfitted Kitchen is going to feature there, including an example of our newest design, the Butterfly Working Table. While the kitchen island will always be a hallmark of our type of kitchen, the Working Table concept offers something new in that it is airier, with light travelling through its lower half. The rise-and-fall columns are hidden inside its wooden legs and the entire surface is adjustable in height. To go with this, we are offering a new technical gantry with safety sensors that switch the hob off when burning is detected. The Westin extractor included in the gantry has an innovative wider air capture approach system.
Kitchens Etc and Butler Interiors (from Spring 2026) make great destinations for anyone in or going to their parts of the world. Alternatively if you’re in London or the South, please get in touch with me directly to view some of the furniture.
SUSSEX GOLD
We discovered Alsop & Walker, artisan cheesemakers, on the famous cheese counter at Fred Duncannon’s gourmet farm shop at Stansted Park. My wife Becca and I fell in love with their Mayfield first. It earned a Super Gold at the World Cheese Awards. Then we got a taste of the Idle Hour! This is a nutty, quite strong and slightly soft cheese. You can eat its intense rind and it softens more as it ripens. It’s best when pretty ripe – absolutely sumptuous.
Mayfield is butter-yellow, also semi soft as it ripens. It’s a bit like a fine gouda and has some bubbles, It is a very beautiful cheese - do try it. There is time to order before Christmas but you will have to move quickly. For Idle Hour you need to email them as it’s not on the website, but hopefully should be available nevertheless. Good luck.
PEARS AND WINE BANNER
Julia Gardner painted the banner above especially for this newsletter, inspired by one of the recipes in Elizabeth David’s Christmas. She is a West Country artist who is a visual diarist. It is not unusual to see Julia standing alone on the Quantocks, looking at the landscapes or observing how people interact in it and around her. Check out Julia’s Instagram here.