Vicki Thomas Associates- Gift Design Consultancy

06/02/2026

Just clearing my desk after a month and half of trade shows. It was fun to visit rather than put up stands. I am still collecting information for to help us design gifts. This images was from the Lonodn Textile show sminar. I think we do need some Re-humaning.

30/12/2025

Seasons Greetings and A Happy New Year!

08/09/2025

Invitation to BLE 2025 -

Is the theme for our stand (AD17) at Brand License Europe. Yes, it is only a month away…7-9 October 2025. Some of you may be planning long journeys to come to the Excel, others like us can almost walk to the show. So, welcome to London’s Docklands, our home turf.

28/01/2025

We're at the Spring Fair but not as a Vicki Thomas Associates. The Stand is in Hall 3 H41, towards the Buyers lounge at the back. It is all part of The Year of The Gift. If you plan to come up let me know and wel will arrange to meet. I do not plan to stand there like a Gallery attendant. As I found that when I put it up in Exeter, people stopped and read the panels in when no one was looking....I want to create some moments of reflection.

31/12/2024

On New Year’s Eve 1984, I started Vicki Thomas Associates – a Gift Design and Research Consultancy. We will be celebrating our 40Th Anniversary.

I say, we as I am still working with many of the designers, academics and organisations that encouraged me to build on my gift research I had done at the Royal College of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum. Ceramics designers like Roy Simpson, Jonathan Plant, Jane Woolley, Mary Wilson - I had met when I interviewed them on their MA in Ceramics at Stoke. Classmates and tutors like Sophy Newton, Katy Ellis, Marion Hundleby, Penny Sparke, Charles Saumarez-Smith and Christopher Frayling. I am now working with them build a course Alumni group. We were the first graduates of a new joint course that brought back the museum and design school together, as envisaged by Henry Cole.

Henry Cole understood the importance of designing for others and for celebrations. He was a key figure at the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce but was mover and shaker behind the National Archives, Penny Post….and of course the Great Exhibition of 1851. The RSA invited me to be Fellow and are now encouraging me to share my work through their network of fellows.

Exhibitions were behind the Consultancy too. I took the opportunity to display my findings at the RCA Degree Show invited those that had helped mw with the trade research for the British Jewellery and Giftware Federation and those I had met at the Spring Fair. In 2025 the Spring Fair will be celebrating 75 years. Elkan Simons had started the Giftware Association after World War Two, launched the show and then was awarded a CBE for his export achievements. Top Drawer offered me stand for graduates - with new gift concepts and then Anita Roddick walked in and suggested I start the consultancy, and Morris Janis asked me to the join the GA. We’ve now worked with a host of companies and charities creating things to be given!

18 months ago, I realised that the anthropology of the gift is 100. So, 2025 looks like a year to celebrate the importance of gift exchange. Researching, designing, making and trading gifts remains important to the Consultancy 40 years on but I think its value to creativity, our economy, social cohesion and is worthy of more research and celebration. So, watch this space….

Thank you everyone for your encouragement. Happy New Year!

23/12/2024

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all Associates and VTA's Facebook Friends!

15/10/2024

Isobel Bushell's Christmas Card design for the Scottish Fire Service Museum in Edinburgh

08/05/2024

https://mailchi.mp/ed9eb1835144/coming-to-museum-heritage-show-next-week Test event/ I'll let the Associates know how it goes...

We’d love to see you at the Museum & Heritage Show, May 15th-16th at Olympia, London. Especially if you missed us at the Spring Fair.

14/12/2023

Merry Christmas - https://mailchi.mp/5a5383e716cc/merry-christmas and a Happy New Year to all the Associates and those you have collaborated closely with the Consultancy in 2023. It has been a limbo year with me personally. I left teaching and I am now refocusing my research and consultancy role. Business has not bounced back post Covid and Brexit - but the whole economy has slowed, so I do not know why I should think it should be any different for us.
Please watch this space...as there are plans and projects pending..

12/05/2023

I posted on Linked In that I had retired from teaching at the University on Tuesday and I am now focusing on the Consultancy and my own research and design projects. Yes an active retirement.

I've had a few initial conversations with contacts from organisations we belong to as VTA, and I realised we are coming up to the centenary of the social theories that underpin this Consultancy.

I was hoping in my teaching to share our USP but that rarely happened. But as I refocus on what we do and ask myself should I continue trading - I realise that I still feel strongly that we set out to do back at New Year's Eve 1984 - it feels even more relevant. Not all the Design team understand my overview.

By chance, I had an opportunity to sum the strategy for a last University event I am attending next week. So I thought I share it here, where the friends are Design Associates and involved in the Consultancy can comment.

Yes - I'd like to see if we can plan an event of some kind for 2025. What do you think?

"We design products that strengthen social bonds and build community. Our strategy is based on lessons learnt from diverse cultures; by creating and sharing, we generate innovation and trade. The social processes, we design for, are by their very nature circular. The earth has given us so much, we need to return its bounty and design well, collaborate and conserve our habitat together.

It is a sustainable business strategy. In 2025 we will mark 100 years since the publication of ‘The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies’ by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss and 40 years since we started Vicki Thomas Associates. Mauss’ understanding of gift exchange, underlies our approach and how we work with stakeholders. We aim to create, share and sustain."