Hand-painted ornaments and collector Ann Amernick. (Marie Poirier Marzi - For The Washington Post) E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Version

By Stefanie Berry Stark
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, December 5, 2002; Page H01

Most people start putting up the lights and greenery sometime after Thanksgiving and dismantle the holiday trimmings after the turn of the new year. But inside the Chevy Chase home of Ann Amernick, it looks like Christmas year-round.

"I hope I don't come across as a real kook," says Amernick, sitting in her living room surrounded by eight trees hung with hundreds of ornaments on display 365 days a year. "I do feel like when people come in, they may roll their eyes and say, 'Boy, she's very weird.' But if you look at that tree there and that one, it's a lovely thing to see."

Amernick, who is in her fifties and a former assistant pastry chef at the White House, co-owns an eponymous bakery and the restaurant Palena, both in Cleveland Park. During the day, she spends most of her time dusted with flour making spritz cookies and strudels for the bakery and restaurant. But when the work is through, Amernick devotes a significant amount of time to her Christmas ornament collection, amassed over the past 11 years.

In one corner of the living room of her 1950s rambler, the largest artificial tree, about seven feet tall, is mounted on a rotating stand and festooned with white lights. With a flip of a switch, it begins to turn slowly, showing off ornaments on all sides. A four-foot tree claims space on the fireplace hearth opposite a sofa, and a slightly smaller all-white feather tree sits on a nearby side table. Three smaller trees are lined up atop a console on the room's far wall, set apart to display the antiques of the collection. A one-foot tree on a small display cabinet and another mid-size tree near the sofa blend in so well they're easy to miss.

Amernick estimates that "hundreds and hundreds" of ornaments adorn the trees, and boxes filled with about 250 more sit in a back room. "I don't have time to put them away," she says. But Amernick likes to keep them out where they can be seen, no matter the season. She even has some ornaments -- albeit less precious ones -- for sale in a display case in her bakery. And this week, she will decorate a tree at Palena with some of her 1950s ornaments.

Even a magnificent old dollhouse, on a table at one side of her living room, holds its own display of six scaled-down trees, along with two tables topped with miniature Judaica: a tiny menorah, a Torah, a Kiddush cup, a siddur (prayer book) and a tallit (prayer shawl). "I had to," says Amernick, who is Jewish, "There is this sense of how could I do this?"

But Amernick sees tremendous beauty in her Christmas ornaments, many of which are mouth-blown, hand-silvered and hand-painted glass from Germany and Poland. "I feel apologetic on a certain level, but I also feel that it's wondrous. When I come home, I can look at these things and it fills me."

So how did a Jewish pastry chef begin collecting Christmas tree baubles? The enthusiasm began in 1990 when a non-Jewish boyfriend brought a Christmas tree into their apartment.

"I went, 'Huhhhh!' A Jew with a tree? Because I think the tree does have a very religious significance. And I said, 'Oh my God, what are you doing?' . . . But we set up this live, wonderful-smelling tree in the apartment, and then I said, 'Okay, well, we have to get some ornaments.' "

Amernick still displays the first one she bought: a $12 gold heart found at a local gift shop. Next came some resin ornaments found at a post-Christmas sale. Then, in 1991, while on a seven-week trip through Europe, Amernick stopped in the medieval town of Rothenburg, Germany, and purchased about 50 ornaments, which she shipped back home.

That same year, Amernick was given a catalogue of ornaments by Christopher Radko, a popular New York-based producer and importer of mouth-blown glass designs based on traditional molds from Poland and other European countries (800-717-2356; http://www.radko.com/). Once she saw the high-quality ornaments made with old-world techniques, Amernick really got hooked.

"It took my breath away because the ornaments were like nothing I'd seen in the stores," she says. "I couldn't locate them. Nobody around here had them, except American Plant Food did carry a few, so I was able to buy the Woodland Santa. I was just in heaven. I just loved the way it looked."

Because Radko ornaments were hard to find, Amernick placed wholesale orders with the company for a couple of years, despite having to order a minimum of six ornaments per style. She gave extras away as gifts or sold them at cost. She also prowled estate sales and antique emporiums across the country.

Another happy discovery was D. Blumchen & Co., a New Jersey-based mail-order firm that specializes in antique European designs, many made from special glass molds and embellished with vintage Dresden trims and old chromolithographs dating to the 1880s (866-653-9627; http://www.blumchen.com/).

Amernick also signed up for a now-defunct newsletter called "Marilyn's Ornament Report," through which she discovered Patricia Breen, an American artisan who lives in Poland, where she creates highly detailed, mouth-blown glass ornaments sold through about 40 stores and a handful of museums in this country. (To locate a store, log on to http://www.patriciabreen.com/.)

Watching the collection of Breen ornaments slowly twirl by on her largest tree, Amernick names them as they pass.

"There's Andy Warhol's tree with a soup can, and Van Gogh's tree, Starry Starry Night. There's the underwater series, seashells and there's a two-part ornament with a pearl and clam. They're just so beautiful. See that? That's Manhattan Ape -- King Kong, the Empire State Building and the little blimp, a three-parter, and he's carrying Fay Wray. This is Salvador Dali's tree, you see the clock? There's her Seven Swans a Swimming and Four Calling Birds. This one is Five Golden Rings, and here's Two Turtle Doves. Here's Citizens of the World Santa, I love this one. They are just incredible."

She marvels at the craftsmanship of Breen's work, distinguished by detailed painting and liberal use of micro-glitter. "The quality of her painting has evolved," says Amernick. "You see how she's starting to paint on the glitter? That's unseen before."

Both Breen and Blumchen ornaments are produced in limited quantities and are coveted by fervent collectors who cultivate good relationships with sellers to get first dibs on new designs. Consider Amernick's relationship with Blumchen: "I used to not get my ornaments until January, but I've established a relationship with them. I've been buying since '91 and I send them cookies and lots of different things from the bakery," she says. "So now I get my ornaments fast."

The Breen and the Blumchen ornaments tend to be Amernick's favorites, but she still cherishes her old Radkos. "The early Radkos, like this one, Madonna and Child, got me into collecting. I thought she was beautiful. And there's Celeste in there, that little pretty face. She's an early Radko, '93. I just think her face is so beautiful."

Amernick also points to two Radko designs -- Jack Clown and Daniel Star -- she purchased with her grown sons, Jay (whom she sometimes calls Jackie) and Dan in mind. Fastened to each is a small photograph of the appropriate son.

She also has a special fondness for her vintage ornaments.

"Antique ornaments tell the story of the time that they were made," she says. "A good example is World War II. The ornaments had been made in what was East Germany in Lauscha, but once Germany was split . . . everything came out of West Germany. So the ornament caps then said West Germany, Western Germany or U.S. War Zone, and then there was the German Democratic Republic."

Amernick points to an American ornament, probably from 1942, on one of her "antique" trees. The ball is clear glass, she points out, because ornaments from that era were not silvered due to war restrictions; it's topped with a paper cap instead of a metal one. "They wanted to conserve metal for the war effort."

In recent years, Amernick has sold some of her duplicate ornaments on eBay, but she still orders new Breen and Blumchen designs every year. This year, she added about 30 to her collection. "I'm more selective now," she says. "I only buy the ones that I think are magnificent."

Sitting among the glow of her trees and ornaments, Amernick marvels at where her collecting has led. "You can just look and look and look, and they're beautiful," she says. "It's mesmerizing. When I come home, it's soft and the lights twinkle. It's quiet. It's almost reverent."