Over the past 25 years or so, a number of artists have taken to embellishing the INSIDES of ordinary cardboard boxes to great effect. Barbarians that we are, we take their work as inspiration for novel holiday gift boxes, on the premise that we give what we’d love to receive ourselves. All are do-it-ourselves-able, if we start soon.

The first box we became smitten with was Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s Floor Piece, 1992-07: a cardboard box lined with flourescent paper. Curiously wonderful!

Friðfinnsson did a number of plays on the theme…

…you can kind of feel what it would be like to open a box with a big color inside…

In 2011, Kirsten Pieroth painted the inside of a cardboard box white.

But our all-time favorite are the gold-leafed interiors Jose Dávila created…

…utterly transforming the ordinary into something…precious and memoriable…