Bring France home to your favorite Francophile. We’ve filled a panier du marché with five iconic and useful gifts with French DNA: a puzzle of a vintage Paris map; a notebook, said to be the one used by Julia Child to notate her recipes, from heritage brand Clairefontaine; a traditional net market bag; cocktail napkins with maps featuring Parisian monuments; and a guide to the quiet corners of Paris. 

French Market Basket

This is the authentic panier du marché, the traditional straw market basket used for centuries throughout France. With a spacious interior and durable construction, this handcrafted basket embodies the chic and practical French lifestyle. 

Dimensions: 20" long x 13" tall x 7" wide at the bottom. Expands to about 15" wide. Has two leather straps on each side so you can carry it in one hand or sling it over your shoulder.

Vintage Map of Paris: 1,000-Piece Puzzle

The perfect gift for a flâneur: a virtual stroll around the City of Light. Assembling this bird’s-eye-view map of Paris is an enjoyable way to (re)familiarize yourself with the twenty arrondissements and their gardens, boulevards, monuments, and other attractions. Each major building and site is identified in a key on the lower part of the puzzle.

The puzzle is presented in plastic-free packaging—a sweet muslin drawstring bag inside a sturdy, illustrated cardboard tube. A small poster guide is included.

Original 1951

The Original 1951 is a reissue of the original notebook made in that year by the renowned French manufacturer Clairefontaine. Legend has it that this is the model used by Julia Child to record her recipes when she was a student at Le Cordon Bleu. (The notebook made a cameo appearance in Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron’s 2009 movie.)

The A5 pages are smooth, white, French-milled, 90 g ruled paper; the notebook is softbound with a cloth spine.

Views of Paris Cocktail Napkins

The five views of Paris on these 2-ply cocktail napkins are based on a map of 1867 that portrays the Paris created by Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. They include: the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile and environs; the Luxembourg Gardens, Hôtel des Invalides, École Militaire, and environs; the Place de la Concorde, Tuileries Palace, Louvre, and environs; the Madeleine, Opéra, and environs; the Île de la Cité, Notre-Dame, and environs.  Twenty-five napkins in the pack.

Sometimes it seems there isn't a centimeter in Paris that hasn't been discovered, described, and recommended. Yet even frequent visitors who know the city well can often get the feeling that the "real" city somehow remains elusive.

In the pages of Quiet Corners of Paris, first published in France, author Jean Christophe Napias, along with photographer Christophe Lefébure, has found more than eighty of the loveliest, most tranquil, and sometimes hidden places in Paris. Most wouldn't be considered "destinations," and certainly not tourist attractions. There are winding lanes that lead nowhere in particular, but that are exquisitely lovely in themselves (one called allée des Brouillards, "fog alley"); rue Georges-Perec, one of the city's smallest streets, is a mere staircase without a single numbered address. There's a square in the fifteenth arrondissement where pétanque players gather in a "sublimely relaxing provincial atmosphere with an almost Mediterranean feel…right down to the sweet scent of pastis."

Classic French Market Bag

Whether you’re at the Marché Raspail or Rue de Buci, you’ll see a net bag on the arm of almost every shopper. Chic as Chanel, it’s eminently practical: it takes up hardly any space in a purse or tote, is machine washable, durable, and made of 100% cotton.

The bag is manufactured by a textile company based in Normandy that since 1860 has been a manufacturer of nets and cords and hammocks (and candlewicks!).