Christmas Tree Baubles

Christmas tree ornaments or baubles come in a bewildering shapes and materials. Over the years my better half has patiently collected an enchanting set of baubles. It takes a very special person to curate a collection one piece at a time over a period of thirty years!!

Nothing ever seems too bad, too hard, or too sad when you've got a Christmas tree in the living room. ~ Nora Roberts

Some Christmas tree ornaments do more than glitter and glow, they represent a gift of love given a long time ago ~ Tom Baker

The first decorated trees were adorned with apples, white candy canes and pastries in the shapes of stars, hearts and flowers. Glass baubles were first made in Lauscha, Germany, by Hans Greiner (1550–1609), who produced garlands of glass beads and tin figures that could be hung on trees.

Soon artisans started heating a glass tube over a flame, then inserting the tube into a clay mold, they'd blow the heated glass to expand into the the mold shaped as fruits, objects and whatever else they could imagine. After the glass cooled, a silver nitrate solution was swirled into it, a silvering technique developed in the 1850s by Justus von Liebig. After the nitrate solution dried, the ornament was hand-painted and topped with a cap and hook.

But we owe their popularity to a coy little gal Victoria who on Christmas Eve 1832 wrote about her delight at having a tree, hung with lights, ornaments, and presents placed round it. In the 1840s, after a picture of Victoria's Christmas tree was shown in a London newspaper decorated with glass ornaments and baubles from her husband Prince Albert's native Germany, the craze of making and collecting baubles spread throughout the world ... the rest is history!!