Gifts that last a lifetime: nine presents made to be handed down

Most presents have a short life. They are opened, admired for a week, and then moved to a drawer, and by the following Christmas nobody can remember who gave what. I spend a lot of time in workshops with people who make things to outlast them, and it has changed what I want to give.

These are nine pieces from The Haud that I would expect to still be in use in fifty years. Each one is made by hand in Britain by the person whose name is on it, and each one gets better with use rather than worse. They range from twenty-five pounds to six hundred and fifty, so there is something here for a godchild as well as a fortieth.

WHAT MAKES A GIFT LAST A LIFETIME

Three things, in my experience: honest materials such as solid wood, wool, linen, clay and glass; construction that can be repaired rather than replaced; and a maker who stands behind it. Machine-made things tend to fail at the joints, and handmade things tend to be built around them.

An oak swill is a basket woven from thin strips of oak, split and boiled by hand, with a rim of hazel. Simon Cooper makes them in Crieff in Perthshire. Swills were made to carry coal, potatoes and washing, so they are built to be loaded and dropped, and this one will hold logs by the fire or apples in the kitchen for decades. It is the present I would give someone who claims to want nothing.

A solid oak and ash box with a lid carved by hand, made by Claire Broad. A box like this ends up holding whatever matters to its owner: letters, cufflinks, a child's first tooth. Solid wood can be waxed, mended and passed on, which is why so many of the boxes in our grandparents' houses are still around.

A double bed quilt in a checkerboard pattern, hand quilted and hand bound by Slow Progress in repurposed cotton. Quilts were the original heirloom, made to be used every night and handed down to the next bed. This one is for a wedding, a first house, or a parent you want to think of you every evening.

A ring of steam-bent ash inlaid with marble from the Isle of Skye, made to order in Cumbria by Ammonite Studio to the wearer's size and width. It is the kind of ring people wear every day rather than keep for best, and it carries a piece of a particular place with it.

Marquetry is the craft of cutting thin sheets of different woods and fitting them together into a picture. This small piece by Claire Broad is cut by hand and finished in an oak frame she makes herself. Wood darkens and warms over the years, so it will look slightly different in twenty years' time, and better.

A painted heart, leaded and set in iridescent green glass with a yellow border, by Alandale Glass. Stained glass hung in a window catches the light differently every hour, and properly leaded glass lasts for centuries; there are church windows in Britain that are more than eight hundred years old. A good present for a wedding or a new home.

An original oil painting of Teddington Lock on the Thames by Joshua Lea, painted on panel. A painting of a real place becomes part of the family story, especially if it is somewhere the recipient knows. Joshua also paints from your own photographs, so you can commission a view that means something to the person you are giving it to.

An eighteen centimetre flower embroidered on silk organza with sequins, glass beads and silver foil by Ksenia Semirova. Hand embroidery of this kind takes days, and a brooch is one of the few pieces of jewellery that is traditionally handed down, because it fits every generation's coat.

An encaustic tile by Cerameg Traed Bran, made by stamping a pattern into clay with a wooden block and filling it with a second colour, as medieval tilers did. Encaustic floors laid in the thirteenth century are still walked on today. At twenty-five pounds, it is the smallest piece here and one of the longest-lived.

WHAT IS A GOOD LIFETIME GIFT FOR HIM?

Something he will use every day without thinking about it: the oak swill for logs by the fire, the carved box for his watch and cufflinks, or the bentwood ring made to his size. If he is attached to a particular place, a painting of it by Joshua Lea will mean more than anything bought off a shelf.

WHAT IS A GOOD LIFETIME GIFT FOR HER?

The quilt, the stained glass panel or the embroidered brooch, because these are the things that tend to be handed down from one generation to the next, and each of them is used or worn rather than put away.

THE ONE I WOULD CHOOSE

I would choose the oak swill, because it is useful every day, it will outlive whoever receives it, and Heritage Crafts lists swill basket making as critically endangered, with only two professional makers recorded as earning their main living from it.

LOOKING AFTER THEM

Everything on this list will last a lifetime if it is used and looked after: wax for wood, a cool wash for cotton, a soft cloth for glass. Each piece's page has the maker's own care notes. If you want something made specially, such as a painting of a particular place or a ring to a particular size, our makers take commissions.

See all of them together in Gifts That Last a Lifetime.