A hand-painted cathedral ball ornament glowing on a lit Christmas tree

The Ornament Annual

OrnamentTracker's guide to the tree's small treasures
Vol. INo. 1Kept the whole year round
Plate the Fourth

The painted cathedral

Photographed where ornaments live: among the branches, lit from within.

OrnamentTracker
A German Christmas market at dusk in the 1890s, lantern-lit stalls beneath a cathedral tower, rendered in the hand-tinted photochrom manner
FrontispieceThe Christkindlesmarkt at dusk, where the ornament trade met its public.
Vol. I · No. 1

Your ornaments have stories. We keep them.

Where they come from, who makes them, how to care for the ones you love. Set down in the manner of the old annuals, with plates.

Page 1 Kept the whole year round In this number
I

History

How a glass ball conquered Christmas, from Lauscha to the Keepsake era

II

An Atlas of the Ornament Box

Five traditions, and how collectors tell them apart

III

The Craftsmen

Family glassworks and painting studios whose names collectors trade on

IV

The Markets

Nuremberg, Dresden, Strasbourg, Vienna: buying well at the source

V

The Brands

House histories from Shiny Brite to Radko, told properly

VI

The New Releases

Keepsake premieres, Radko collections, and the studio scene

VII

The Traditions

The pickle and its disputed legend, the birth of the ornament, and collecting beyond Christmas

VIII

The Collector's Wing

Where to hunt, how to grade, and the customs families keep

IX

Care & Keeping

Six guides with museum conservation sources cited

The Plates

From the collection, hung at full size

Plate the First A hand-painted diorama ornament ball, opened to its snowman scene, held in the hand
Plate the First

A painted diorama ball, opened to its little theater

Lift the tissue

The diorama ball

Opened to its little theater and held, as ornaments are, in the hand of the family that keeps it. This plate wears its tissue, as plates did in the bound annuals; pass the hand over it to look beneath.

A cobalt blue glass tree topper, photographed tall against the dark
Plate the SecondThe cobalt finial

The crown of the tree, given a full page and the room it deserves.

A gilded coronation coach ornament in a red silk-lined presentation box
Plate the ThirdThe gilded coach

A presentation piece in its silk-lined box: the kind of ornament that arrives as an event and is kept as an heirloom.

Crates of colored glass ornaments nested in paper shavings on a market stall

The market number

Wooden crates, paper shavings, and glass by the gross: how the great December markets sold the ornament to the world, and what a collector should carry home from them today.

Continued in Chapter IV, The Markets
An antique feather tree with a few glass ornaments and candles, in the tone of an old albumen print

Before the electric age

The feather tree, the wax candle, and the sparse old way of dressing a tree: a study in restraint from the years when every ornament had to earn its branch.

Continued in Chapter I, History
1