A warm virtual welcome everyone to my home in Boston this holiday season!
Since Boston is full of old architecture in the style of even older architecture - including my house, which is brick Tudor - it is natural to decorate in historic styles too.
The outer entry hall, with an unusual hybrid of pointsettia, with curling bracts which give the effect almost of peonies.
A balsam fir, decorated in a nineteenth-century German style with mostly glass balls and candle lights. My mother was of German descent, and of course Christmas very often celebrates family heritage along with everything else - that's definitely how I celebrate it. I was interested to see Penthesilea's tree, back a few posts ago, decorated in much the same way, with lots of the green showing through. There's just one set of twenty candle lights on my whole seven-foot tree. Also, I only put it up today, Christmas eve, just as described in E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker. This custom is all but extinct in the United States, the norm seems to be to put them up at the beginning of December when the stores do.
The clock is not German, it's French, a Morbier - but that is a town in the Jura, which is not that far from Germany.
Here it is with a hat of balsam and berries. In the original scenario of the Nutcracker ballet, the clock starts to behave oddly when night falls and the magic starts.
Here are two intricate filigree brass ornaments which like the clock remind me of Drosselmayer's mechanical ingenuity in the Nutcracker. In the story he presents the children with a castle full of mechanized moving figures.
The musical angel is a reminder of Hoffmann's fascination with music especially Mozart, for which he was rewarded long after his death by having his story become the basis of Tchaikovsky's work. Tchaikovsky too admired Mozart almost beyond any other composer. This candlestick is certainly in an Austrian style.
These translucent glass ornaments are my favorites. They usually look opaque white, covered with glitter which flashes a little turquoise. But if there is light behind them, a rosy dawn shines through - another effect I remember being described as part of the journey to the magic kingdom in the story. I hung this one in front of one of the candles to make it easier to get this effect. It also reminds me of a very pretty Christmas card from one of my great friends on this list, with a snowy glittering pale rose dawn.
I hope everyone is enjoying a fabulous holiday tonight and tomorrow, celebrating your own traditions!!!
Best wishes all,
Andrew