INDEX antiques
Christmas Collecting
Magic
Antique and collectable Christmas ornaments can rekindle the feelings of Christmases past, says Jennie Buist Brown
Christmas begins in our house during the first weekend in December when the tree has taken pride of place in the living room. Once we have agreed that
the tree is standing almost straight, one of the kids will clamber into the attic and retrieve the Christmas ornament box. The magic of opening it year after year fills me with great delight as I pull out small wooden ornaments and the wonky reindeer made by the children when they were tiny. However the most exciting ornaments are my antique German snow babies, Dresdens and glass ornaments.
The oldest snow babies date
from the early 1900s and are typically three inches or taller. These figures portray children and adults, although other figures were also made – Santas and bears for example. Some snow babies were decorated with a fine porcelain “grout” that represented snow. Mostly this grout is white but I have seen babies decorated in beautiful blues or pinks. After WWI the pieces made were smaller and included Santas, elves, snowmen, children and animals. These pieces are more plentiful than the earlier, larger pieces. Dresden
ornaments – or Dresdens as they are known – are some of the most charming and beautiful
decorations ever manufactured. Taking their name from the Dresden-Leipzig area from which they were made, these embossed cardboard creations come in a seemingly endless variety of shapes: suns, moons, fish, every imaginable animal, including polar bears, storks, eagles, peacocks and alligators. There were sailboats and ocean liners, musical instruments, sleighs, coaches pulled by horses with tiny coachmen – everything one could imagine. Most
Dresdens were only 2-3 inches in size and were gilded or silvered, although some were painted by artists. Dresdens were
made between 1880 and 1910. They were manufactured using cardboard, dampened to make it flexible. It was pressed in a stamping die, with each piece having an equivalent depression on a counter die. One ornament was made of several pieces which, when dry, were taken home by cottage workers and assembled. Despite the fact that many thousands were produced, relatively few Dresdens remain, making them the holy grail of Christmas ornaments. They sell between £300-£700, with one Dresden selling in America
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for £7,500 a few years ago. Cousins to the Dresdens
are Sebnitz ornaments, named after the German village where craftsmen would wrap cardboard forms in cotton, foil, and in later years, plastic perforated with small holes. The craftsmen would embellish the forms with glass beads, fine crinkle wire, chenille, wax or miniature Dresden figures. But for me the king of Christmas decorations is the glass ornament. Until the start of World War II, the glass ornament capital of the world was a little German town called Lauscha. In the early 1800s Lauschan glassmakers blew kugels – spheres – as window decorations but they soon caught on as tree ornaments. They were hand-blown and made of thick glass, coloured or clear, and sometimes decorated with paint. Painted kugels are hard to find because the paint has often worn off with time.
Lauscha was filled with family businesses in which men would blow kugels and women and children would decorate them and add metal caps. These glass ornaments received a boost in 1848 when they were shown in a woodcut depicting Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and their children in the Illustrated London News. Glass ornaments went
from a cottage industry to an international phenomenon when Frank Woolworth opened
a store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He discovered that local German
immigrants hung the kugels on their Christmas trees. He bought $25 worth of the lightweight glass ornaments in 1879 and they sold out in two days. In the years following he bought tens of thousands of Lauschan glass balls and ornaments and sold them one at a time.
The market for vintage and antique collectables is huge. There are collectors of Christmas crackers, Christmas cards, Santa figures, Christmas tree lights, tin Christmas tree holders and many more. Perhaps it’s the joy of owning something that has been treasured for many years or perhaps it is simply the sheer beauty and craftsmanship of the items that attracts the collectors. For me it’s the delight of discovering my collection every year and knowing that once I am no longer around, my children will still enjoy them and the memories they invoke.
Where to buy
• I have found most of my collection at flea markets and antique shops.
• Online auction sites such as eBay can yield some beauties but beware of fakes.
• Local auction houses with general sales are also worth exploring.
49
The INDEX magazine December 2011
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