HOLIDAY WORKS OF ART
Trees of Historic Bethlehem a Christmas wonderland of beauty and creativity
For this year’s edition of Trees of Historic Bethlehem, a small army of volunteers decorated two dozen Christmas trees, each based on a specific piece of art — a painting or piece of pottery, an old map or quilts — found in the Historic Bethlehem collection.
It’s no exaggeration to say the trees are works of art themselves. The Bethlehem Garden Club decorated 21 artificial trees of various sizes, including 11 at the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts, six at Moravian Museum and four at the Single Sisters House. Visitors at the 1810 Goundie House can see three trimmed trees at the Winter Vintage Market by Marche Maison. The trees there evoke a snowy Bethlehem.
Museum curator Lindsey Jancay came up with the idea for this year’s theme linking a piece of art to each tree to spotlight the Historic Bethlehem art collection.
The trees are manifestations of creative imaginations but they also teach about the Moravians and the history of Bethlehem. One of the trees in the Moravian Museum is linked to a beautiful old map of Moravia, the region in Europe from which the settlers of Bethlehem emigrated. Ornaments include small maps and also golden angels like the ones found in a corner of the large old map, which is hanging a few feet away.
The Star of Bethlehem tree in the Kemerer is decorated to reflect a chalk pastel drawing of the same title by artist Margaret Cantieni. It depicts a modernist view of the Bethlehem star that shines on the city from South Mountain.
“We thought we would go with vintage,” says Sharon Donchez, chairwoman of the Garden Club’s Christmas Decorations Committee. “We pictured ourselves standing at the Civic Center and looking at the Star of Bethlehem. If you notice, you see all those little houses going up the hillside.”
The decorators added small ornaments of houses on the tree and then re-created the angles in the picture with strings of lights slashing down the tree and back and forth “just like the angles on the painting,” Donchez says.
A white Christmas tree in the Kemerer is specially for children, festooned with tiny circus animals such as lions and tigers, an homage to a lithograph of Barnum & Bailey’s Circus.
The Garden Club tapped its extensive collection of Christmas ornaments from years of decorating but also had to make other decorations and buy some to fit the themes.
The Bethlehem Steel tree at the Kemerer required a trip for some hardware to pair it with a drawing of the Steel plant. For other ornaments, the volunteers used pieces from an old Erector set, the kind children build with.
The music room in the Moravian Museum has a tree with paper ornaments made of sheet music and an announcement for the Bach Choir of Bethlehem. A tree all decked out in silver ornaments sits near displays of silver and pewter plates and other dining ware.
“Moravians were very well known for the quality of the craftsmanship,” Jancay says.
The Moravians also were progressive in supporting education for girls and women even back in Colonial times, and they had a philosophy that combined compassion with not sweating the small stuff.
Unlike the Moravian Museum and the Kemerer, the cavernous Single Sisters House where single Moravian women once lived, is largely bare of artifacts, partly because the temperature and humidity can’t be controlled. But near one of the four decorated trees is a sign with advice that speaks volumes: “In Essentials, Unity. In Non-Essentials, Liberty. In all things, Love.”
Visitors to the Trees of Historic Bethlehem can vote for their favorite tree — there’s a small box next to each tree. After the exhibit closes Jan. 13, Donchez and Sandy Gass, co-chairwoman of the Christmas Decorating Committee, will count the votes. Those who voted for the winner will have their names entered into a drawing for a gift basket.