Museum tour includes tutorial from tree-decorating author

By Morgan Barker

If you’re eager to make your own Christmas ornaments but you’re unsure of your artistic skills, don’t give it another thought.

“The beauty of folk art is not following any rules,” says Christina Westenberger, who leads ornament-making tutorials to Colonial Williamsburg visitors. “Folk artists are untrained.”

Westenberger, a tour host at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum throughout the holiday season, is co-author of “The Art-Full Tree.” The Colonial Williamsburg book illustrates holiday ornaments at the folk art museum and offers instructions on how to make them. The museum tours include a look at folk art and conclude with an ornament-making tutorial.

Westenberger and her co-author, Jan Gilliam, embarked on an ornament-making adventure when the museum acquired a 16-foot tree in 2007. “We did lots of research and creation that led us to ‘Let’s write a book on how to do this,’” Westenberger said.

“The ornaments on the tree are inspired by pieces of the museum’s collection,” Westenberger said. An earthenware fish that was created by Moravian potters in Salem, N.C., for example, inspired the foil fish that graces the tree.

The butterfly ornaments that are scattered throughout the tree were taken from a butterfly on a Baltimore Album Quilt made in the 1940s. “The folk artists are providing us with great patterns for ornament-making,” Westenberger said.

After a recent tour, Westenberger asked visitors to created butterflies from tooling foil. The tutorial includes cutting out the butterfly patterns, embossing the foil with designs, and assembling them using double-sided tape. The result: Beautiful butterfly ornaments that were easy to make.

Westenberger said her favorite part of the museum’s Christmas tree is finding surprises hidden in the tree.

“Every year when we take the tree down, we always find things we didn’t put on the tree ourselves. It’s always fun to see what people left us,” Westenberger said.

Morgan Barker is a Colonial Williamsburg volunteer writer.

Learn more:

Take a tour; make an ornament.

Read about the book, “The Art-Full Tree.”

 

Add a loop, hang on the tree and enjoy!