A Texican Christmas Tree

We are slowly changing over the decor in our house to be a little more SouthWestern / Old West / Texican Ranch style (YAY! some of our cute things can come out of storage!), and this year we used items from my collections to decorate the Christmas tree.

Some things are on our tree every year - like the Nina, Pinta & Santa Maria ships in bottles and old world explorers globes. We carried these in our gift shop when we lived on the coast. Down there, they were "beachy". And I saw pics of a great steam punk Christmas tree the other day that used similar ones of steam ships (done by Steampunk Awareness on Facebook).




Paul had the brilliant idea of putting hangers on my redware salt & pepper shakers (they are in the Tlaquepaque style). He also me brought the tiny Native American baskets.








The DeGrazia bells are miniature versions of the traditional wind bells so common in Arizona and New Mexico. I have some large ones hanging on the porch. Their deep and sonorous toll is a low, occasional sound on the wind. Because of their weight, it takes a strong wind to move them at all, so high or constant winds are not a problem for them.



Here's a bona-fide mexican pottery ornament. This type of ware is called "burnished", and it is characteristic of some Tonala pottery. The piece is rubbed - or burnished - with a smooth stick before firing. This gives it a nice matte finish compared to glazed pottery. My heart still belongs to the old lead-glazed redware, though.



This box reminds me I need to show off my Mexican lacquerware sometime. That is a stylized rabbit figure in case you can't tell. This kind of work used to be done by painting on layers and carving down to the different colors. Now, it is often done as a sort of decopage, by pasting on cut-out paper shapes and then painting and glazing over them. Mexico is the only other culture to have developed genuine lacquer work as a decorative art.




The little Madonna was originally part of a creche set.






What is a tree without toys? This pottery whistle and pyrography (wood burned) gourd rattle are worlds apart but both are owls! :-)

Feliz Navidad to one and all!