Hawthorne Fine Boxes is a family-run business and both of us – Ian and Kate – work closely together on each box with precision and care to ensure you get the box you want. Based in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland, we started our box making business in 2002. While Ian handcrafts each box and sends image updates to you via social media, Kate and our small team of artisans concentrate on lining, administration and organising delivery.
Whether you are a corporate business or private individual, we can specially design and create handmade wooden boxes to suit your specific needs. As well as commissions, we create a small selection of wooden boxes that can be purchased via Galleries in Ireland and England.
Customer involvement is the key to the continuing success of our box making business and we keep you up-to-date during key creative stages of your bespoke box by sending work-in-progress images via social media together with written details and telephone calls where appropriate. We find this method of keeping in touch with our customers particularly useful when giftware is being personalised or specially commissioned. For those who are having a box personally created for them, we can produce a 3D computer generated model.
Gift Personalisation is available for all our handmade box creations. All of our boxes are available with Certificates of Authenticity. Another option is to have marquetry inlaid to the exterior or a plaque added to the inside. Gift Tags can also be specially made and for a handmade wooden box that requires extra special packaging we can provide a gift wrapping service (for further details please contact us).
Our Limited Edition boxes can be purchased from a small selection of galleries in Ireland and England. Please contact us for further details on the Colour Fusion Boxes,
We create
A range of bespoke boxes that we have created for customers can be viewed in Past Commissions. These will hopefully inspire you and give you an insight into the possibilities available when creating a box.
Our limited edition boxes can be purchased from a small selection of galleries where they are on display.
If you have something in particular in mind that is not currently on our website then you may wish to consider contacting us to tailor-make/commission your box idea. To learn more about commissioning a box please go to our Bespoke Process section.
An exciting commission in 2011 involved creating a bespoke box as a wedding gift for Prince William and Kate Middleton. A more recent commission was the creation of a watch box for Seiko which they presented to their Ambassador and top tennis player Novak Djokovic in late 2014. To find out more about this and many other commissions we are currently undertaking please ‘like’ and follow us on Facebook.
As a well-known artisan box maker, Ian has written articles for UK woodworking magazines including Good Woodworking and Furniture and Cabinetmaking. An article on the making of the Thulean Box features in Furniture & Cabinetmaking magazine, issue Jan 2014. A further article featured in Furniture and Cabinetmaking (edition 182, August 2011) describes how the Royal Box was created.
Mental Health Awareness has recently been highlighted by several public figures, including HRH Princes William and Harry who were devastated by the sudden passing of their mother. So, when mental health charity Compass Counselling reached out to local Northern Ireland businesses for support in early 2019, Ian responded by generously donating two bespoke boxes to auction at their annual fundraising event. Hawthorne Fine Boxes also donated boxes to support two more charities in late 2019 – Heads Together UK and Sense.