The Ornament & Décor Guide
How to build a Christmas tree with a point of view — from heirloom glass to a martini shaker at eye level, plus the mantel, the table and the ornaments that end up mattering most.
A great tree isn't bought in one trip. It's built, a few pieces a year, each one with a reason to be there. This is how we'd do it: seven chapters, from hand-painted heirloom glass to a martini shaker you'll want at eye level, plus the mantel, the table and the first-Christmas ornaments that end up mattering most. Everything here is in stock. Start anywhere.
In this guide
- 01The Heirloom TreeCollectible glass
- 02The Quiet Luxe TreeCrystal, clear glass & gold
- 03The Conversation-Piece TreeWitty glass
- 04Vintage ChristmasMid-century, big bulbs and all
- 05Santas & NutcrackersEvery house needs a guard
- 06The Mantel & the TableDecorate past the tree
- 07Firsts & KeepsakesThe ones that end up mattering most
- 08How to build a treeSix steps
Glass shaped over the flame. Photo: Old World Christmas
The Heirloom Tree
Some ornaments are decorations. These are inheritances.
Christopher Radko's ornaments are made in family-owned Polish workshops: blown, silvered, hand-lacquered and hand-painted, a full seven days for each piece. Old World Christmas, at it since 1979, mouth-blows glass into carved molds, silvers it from the inside and paints it by hand.
Start with one anchor piece a year — a Santa, a jeweled tree, a gingerbread house — and hang it at eye level, deep enough in the branches that the lights catch it from behind. Give each one room. A collector's tree reads best with fewer, bigger pieces and plenty of green between them.
CHROME tipHang heavy glass close to the trunk, where the branches are strongest, and use a proper ornament hook rather than the ribbon loop alone.
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Christmas Tales balls, flame-worked by hand. Photo: Ichendorf
The Quiet Luxe Tree
More gallery than toy chest. Clear, gold and one color, full stop.
Crystal and clear glass do the work of the lights twice. Baccarat has been making crystal in the French village it's named for since 1764; hang its clear candy cane and gold shooting star where they'll throw light. Waterford, founded in 1783 in the Irish harbor town of the same name, brings the gold angel and star.
For texture, Ichendorf's Christmas Tales balls — designed in Milan, hand-made and flame-worked, with a tiny elf inside — and Michael Aram's metal pomegranate and twisted candy canes. Keep it to three materials and the whole tree looks expensive.
CHROME tipWarm-white lights flatter crystal and clear glass; multicolor lights fight it.
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Photo: Vondels
The Conversation-Piece Tree
The best trees have a sense of humor.
Cody Foster & Co., the Nebraska company Cody Foster started with his mother, puts a martini and shaker, a tin of caviar and a shrimp cocktail on the branches. Vondels' ornaments are mouth-blown and hand-painted, each one a little different: champagne on ice, a whiskey bottle, a beauty cat in curlers. The espresso martini coupe is from kat + annie, started by two designers who spent years making ornaments for Christopher Radko.
Theme a whole tree around the bar cart, or tuck one in for everyone who'll get the joke. These are the ornaments guests pick up and photograph.
CHROME tipPut the funny ones at eye level and toward the front. Nobody laughs at an ornament they can’t see.
Photo: Vondels
Cocktail hour
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Her favorite things
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Tru-Tone C7 Jeweltone, lit. Photo: CHROME
Vintage Christmas
The tree your grandparents had, minus the burnt fingers.
Start with the light. Tru-Tone began as designer David Andora's project to make an LED Christmas bulb nearly indistinguishable from vintage incandescent; the C7 strings come in Classicolor glass or Jeweltone Dura-Bulb.
Then go full mid-century: our own retro Santa head vase and martini Santa, the shopping girl and the girl with her wreath, Cody Foster's vintage lights and Santa mug, and a candy-striped blown-glass cane or two.
CHROME tipBig C7 bulbs look best wrapped loosely around the outside of the tree, the way they were at mid-century.
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Santas & Nutcrackers
Line them up on the stairs, the mantel, the bar.
Start with One Hundred 80 Degrees: a classic wood nutcracker, a lit nutcracker in a tree hat, and the Papa Noel Santa cookie jar, which is as much centerpiece as cookie jar.
For a Nutcracker-ballet household: Clara on her drum, the Sugar Plum Fairy and a thirteen-and-a-half-inch Mouse King. Group them in odd numbers and at different heights.
CHROME tipThree nutcrackers of different heights beat six of the same size.
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Night Before Christmas, lit. Photo: Glasshouse
The Mantel & the Table
The room does as much work as the tree.
Run Cody Foster's Merriment garland along the mantel and group trees in threes at different heights: Michael Aram's gold ginkgo, a set of Cody Foster gemstone trees, a lit ceramic tree from One Hundred 80 Degrees. Under the tree, Furbish's Suzani tree skirt does more than any ribbon.
Light the table low with reindeer votives and gold tree tapers, then scent the room: Nest's Holiday candle is pomegranate, mandarin, pine, cloves and cinnamon; Glasshouse's Night Before Christmas is the one in the photo.
CHROME tipLow light, high shine: candles on the table, nothing taller than eye level when people sit down.
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Rockefeller Center matchbook ornament. Photo: Furbish
Firsts & Keepsakes
An ornament with a date on it.
The first Christmas together. The first with a baby. Frame ornaments from Furbish, Tart by Taylor and Michael Aram take a photo, so the ornament becomes the memory. Furbish's glass matchbook ornaments — Rockefeller Center, Aspen, Telluride — mark the trips.
Add one dated piece a year, like Waterford's annual first bear or Christopher Radko's Baby's First Tiny Travelers, and the tree starts telling the family story on its own.
CHROME tipWrite the year and names on the back of the box. Future you will thank you.
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How to build a tree, in six steps
- Lights first, and more than you thinkWork from the trunk out to the tip of each branch so the tree glows from inside, not just on the surface.
- Then garland or ribbonTop to bottom, in loose swags. Ribbon reads more modern; beaded garland more vintage.
- Anchor colorsSimple balls in your two or three base colors, tucked deep. They fill the gaps and give the tree its palette.
- Statement pieces at eye levelYour heirloom glass and best pieces go where people stand. Heaviest pieces closest to the trunk.
- Fill with the personal and the funnyThe cocktail ornaments, the first-Christmas frames, the ones with a story.
- Finish and step backTopper, tree skirt, then turn off the room lights and look. Move anything that disappears.
Taking care of glass
- Unpack glass over a towel or a rug, never over tile.
- Keep the original boxes; they were made to fit. Otherwise wrap each piece in acid-free tissue.
- Store ornaments somewhere with a steady temperature — not a hot attic or a damp garage.
- Hang heavy pieces with metal hooks and check them when you move the tree.
