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2 days ago | Advertorial | Joanne Pruitt

“For 24 Christmases, these handmade ornaments were never for sale” – Why a 74-year-old glassmaker is letting go of the treehouses he made for his grandchildren, at half price

In the woods behind Halvor Brekke’s house on the North Shore of Lake Superior stand the treehouses he built for his grandchildren. For every one of them, he made a tiny copy in stained glass to hang on the Christmas tree. For 24 years, he refused every offer to buy one. This November, he is closing his studio – and changing his mind.

Grand Marais, November. The snow came early this year. It sits heavy on the pines outside Halvor Brekke’s garage, and inside, the little space heater ticks away beside a workbench that has seen more than half a century of glass. Sheets of amber, emerald and cobalt lean in a wooden rack along the wall. A soldering iron rests in its stand. On the windowsill, catching the pale winter light, hangs a tiny glass oak tree with a round wooden door and a fairy sitting on the steps.

“That one was the first,” Halvor says. “Christmas 2002. Linnea’s first Christmas. She was four months old and she couldn’t take her eyes off it.”

Linnea is 24 now. She is the reason this story is being written at all. Because for 24 years, her grandfather had one answer for anyone who asked to buy one of his ornaments: “They’re not for sale. They’re for family.”

A treehouse for every grandchild

Halvor learned his trade in 1974, restoring church windows across northern Minnesota – long days on scaffolding, piecing together saints and lambs from glass that was older than the towns around it. Later he opened his own small studio in the garage behind the house he shared with his wife, Solveig, on the edge of the woods above the lake.

When Linnea was born, Halvor did what grandfathers in those woods have always done: he built her a treehouse. He chose the old oak at the end of the yard, gave it a round door and little steps, and Solveig told the baby that fairies lived inside. That first December, Halvor went into his studio and made a copy of the treehouse in glass – no bigger than the palm of his hand – so Linnea would have it on the tree even when the real one was buried in snow.

Then more grandchildren came. And with every one, a new tree in the woods got a new house – and Halvor’s studio got a new design. “Solveig used to say I was building a village up there,” he laughs. “She wasn’t wrong.”

Over the years, the woods behind the house filled up. So did the family Christmas tree. And every December, people who saw those little glass treehouses – at the church bazaar, in a daughter’s living room, in a photo on someone’s phone – asked the same question. Halvor always gave the same answer.

The six treehouses – and who they belong to

“Every piece of glass has to be cut on the line. There’s no cheating”

Each ornament is built the way Halvor once built church windows – only smaller. He cuts every leaf, every window pane and every piece of bark from sheet glass, wraps the edges in thin copper foil, and solders them together so the seams become the branches, railings and roof lines. Then comes a warm gold patina, and the tiny details: a brass telescope, a lantern, a staircase that actually winds around the trunk.

Hang one on a tree and you see why people kept asking. When the tree lights shine through the glass, the leaves glow green and gold, the little windows light up amber, and the whole treehouse looks like someone just came home. Each ornament is about 4 inches tall and 3½ inches wide – big enough to be the first thing guests notice on the tree, small enough to sit among the branches like it grew there. A fine gold-tone chain is already attached, so it’s ready to hang the moment it comes out of the box.

“Factory ornaments are painted plastic,” Halvor says. “You can tell from across the room. Light doesn’t go through paint. It goes through glass.”

Why he finally said yes

Halvor is 74. His eyes don’t follow a cutting line the way they used to, and by the afternoon his hands start to shake on the fine work. His daughter has asked him to move down to Duluth, closer to the family. The house above the lake is going on the market in the spring. The studio closes on November 30.

Last winter, Halvor did something he had never done before. He took every sheet of glass left in the rack and cut it into ornaments – all six designs, one final collection. “I thought I’d make enough for the family and the neighbors,” he says. “I made far too many. I think I just didn’t want to stop.”

That was when Linnea sat him down at the kitchen table. “Grandpa,” she said, “the treehouses are staying with the house. These ornaments are all that’s going to be left of them. Let other families have one. Let them start their own stories.”

It took him three days to answer. “She was right,” Halvor says. “What’s the point of keeping 400 treehouses in boxes in Duluth?” 418 ornaments from the final collection are left. Linnea found him a small corner in an online shop for handmade goods and set a price of half what similar handmade glass ornaments sell for. “I don’t want the money,” Halvor says. “I want them on trees. I want some little girl to stare at one the way Linnea did.”

What sets Halvor’s treehouse ornaments apart:

What the first owners are saying

“The kind of present people keep for fifty years”

Most of Halvor’s ornaments never stay on one tree. They go to grandchildren, to new parents, to newlyweds hanging their first ornament together. Many customers buy the design that matches someone they love – the stargazer, the kid who collects acorns, the twins, the grandmother who reads by moonlight.

“That’s what they were always for,” Halvor says. “A grandparent and a child in front of a tree. If one of mine ends up in that picture, I’m happy.”

Where can you get one?

Halvor’s treehouse ornaments are only available through Backroad Goods, an online shop for real handwork from selected makers, where Linnea runs her grandfather’s small corner. Only there will you get the original ornaments from Halvor’s final collection. Look-alike “treehouse ornaments” in printed acrylic have started to appear on Amazon and other big sites. They may look similar in a photo, but they have nothing to do with Halvor’s glass.

After November 30, the studio goes dark

Halvor will lock his garage studio at the end of November. Linnea will keep shipping from Duluth after that – but only until the last of the 418 ornaments is gone. With Christmas this close and the special price, that is not expected to take long.

“24 Christmases I said no,” Halvor says, turning the little Moonlit Willow in his fingers. “Solveig would have told me I waited too long.” He smiles. “She usually did.”

The verdict

Halvor’s treehouse ornaments are the kind of Christmas decoration that becomes a family heirloom: real stained glass, made by hand, each one with a story you can tell while you hang it. When the tree lights come on and the little windows glow, it’s easy to see why he kept them in the family for 24 years. Thank you, Halvor, for finally letting them go.

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