Sewing Box

Joint sewing, embroidering, knitting, or tongueing has always provided the opportunity to speak about personal experiences, to talk about private things, in short: to chat out of the sewing box as a German saying goes. It’s not to imagine what stories the many embroideries of my offer could tell if they could speak to us … Here I’m talking a bit out of my own sewing box, in the hope that one or other little thing could be of interest for you.

Flowers on the way, again: Some pictures from my summer hiking tours in the Swiss Alps region.
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The June edition of the Golden Glow Newsletter, well knonwn to all American Christmas past collectors, features a photos page of Sebnitz ornaments with pictures that I was allowed to provide. At this opportunity, I feel delighted to show here some more examples to people who may be interested therein. A relevant quote from the booklet Of All the Trees Most Lovely! may serve as a short introduction:

A Sebnitz ornament has got its particular non-interchangeable characteristics. The major determining feature is the imaginative use of an inexhaustible abundance of different materials. Stamped-out celluloid-foil, little glass tubes, glass beads, cotton batting, paper, chenille, wax, cardboard, tin-foil, mica, wire, scraps, wood, and even grass and beech nuts’ pods were used to create fanciful ornaments, which can not entirely deny their relationship to artificial flower products. All kinds of subjects where a wax child could be put in had got a preferred status — such as beds, cribs, sleighs, baby-carriages, cradles, baskets, sedan chairs, altars, ships, airplanes, and so on. Since the ornaments had been manufactured by homeworkers’ families with materials to be occasionally on hand, each piece quasi won the status to be unique.

The first 31 pictures show examples from Sebnitz ornaments that were made by means of stamped celluloid-foil, a waste product from the sequin manufacturing. For other pieces plain silver foil was used as is to be seen on 13 more pictures.

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Here are some pictures of my kugel ornaments and the feathertrees standing up in our living room at Christmas time in 2011.
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Flowers on the way: Pictures from a hiking day in Central Switzerland.
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Trees on the way: Pictures from my hiking holiday in Southern Tyrolia.
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Here are some pictures of the tree standing up in our living room at Christmas time in 2008.
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The annual Christmas Collectors Fair in Zurich, held traditionally at the beginning of December, was a great event for enthusiasts of old Christmas ornaments in this year, too, despite of the economically difficult time. Here are some pictures from around my stand as presented in 2008. They were taken on the second last day of the event and show what has been left of my offer.

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From my hiking holidays in Tyrolia I brought along some pictures of trees that are almost so lovely and beautiful as our beloved Christmas tree.

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The annual Christmas Collectors Fair in Zurich, held traditionally at the beginning of December, is a great event for enthusiasts of old Christmas ornaments. Here are some pictures from around my stand as presented last year (2006).

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Though my personal collection of antique Christmas ornaments isn’t that extensive, I feel honoured that in winter 2003/04 I was allowed to show my treasures in the Elztal Museum in Waldkirch. That’s a pleasant small German town in the Black Forest, not far from Freiburg (Breisgau). The following sheet of pictures, taken on the occasion of a visit there, is dedicated to the wonderful and engaged people of the museum, and I would like to add a heartful thank you to all of them.

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