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2 days ago | Advertorial | Bronte Hext

“This is the last Christmas my hands can make them” – Why a 73-year-old grandmother from the Adelaide Hills is selling her last woodland garlands online, for the first and last time

For 39 Christmases, Ilma Kleemann sold her hand-beaded garlands at one small stall at the Christmas market in Lobethal, South Australia. Now arthritis has forced her to stop – and her granddaughter is putting the very last ones online.

Lobethal, November. The big sliding door of the old apple-packing shed behind Ilma Kleemann’s house stands open to the warm spring air. For 39 years, this is where her Christmas season has begun, somewhere between the apple blossom and the first hot days. Tins of beads line a shelf made from old apple crates, freshly painted deer dry on a cake rack, and three little trees wait on the bench, their scalloped edges only half beaded.

Ilma picks up a bead with her tweezers, holds it for a moment, then sets it down again. “Ten years ago I could do a whole row before my coffee got cold,” she says. “Now I need three tries for one bead.” She holds out her hands. The knuckles are swollen, the fingers bend slightly to one side. “Arthritis. My doctor looked at the X-rays in September and said: Ilma, you have to stop. So this is it. This is the last Christmas my hands can make them.”

39 Christmases, more than 6,000 garlands – and it all started on her Oma’s dresser

Ilma was seven when she first saw it. Every December, her Oma, Hilde, hung a garland across the old dresser in her farmhouse near Birdwood: little green trees, two deer, silver stars, all strung on a piece of twine. “She made it herself, at the kitchen table, with whatever she had in the house,” Ilma remembers. “To me it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I would sit on the rug and look up at those deer for hours.”

When her Oma passed away in 1979, the garland was lost when the house was cleared. Ilma never forgot it. A few years later, with two small children, she sat down at her own kitchen table and tried to make it again from memory. “It took me all of November. The first deer looked more like a goat,” she says and laughs. “But when it hung across our dresser, my mother cried. She said: that’s Mum’s garland.”

Then the neighbours wanted one. Then the neighbours’ sisters. In 1987 Ilma carried a trestle table to the Christmas market in town with twelve garlands. They were gone by noon. She has gone back every year since – 39 Christmases at the same spot, with the same green tablecloth.

What makes Ilma’s woodland garland so special

At first glance it looks like a simple Christmas garland. Look a little closer and you understand why people have queued at Ilma’s stall for decades.

Three little trees hang along a 120-centimetre rope of natural jute, each one built in three layered tiers like the branches of a real fir. Every tier ends in a scalloped edge, and along every edge runs a row of small beads that look like a dusting of frost on the branches. A silver star sits on top of each tree. Between the trees stand two deer with gentle faces and a little wreath of greenery, tiny pinecones and a silver bead around the neck, as if they had just stepped out of the woods. Two more silver stars hang between them, and wooden beads, small pine sprigs and pinecones are knotted along the rope.

Then there is the light. Inside each of the three trees sit tiny warm-white lights that run on batteries – no cord, no power point. “Years ago I saw what a candle can do next to dry greenery on a hot December night,” Ilma says. “After that I promised myself: no candle ever goes near one of my garlands. So I put the light inside the trees.” Switched on in the evening, the trees glow softly from within, and the beads along the edges sparkle like frost.

The garland fits a sideboard, a bookshelf, a doorway, a staircase or the top of a window frame. Because the lights run on batteries, it can hang wherever it looks best – not only where there happens to be a power point.

“Some women have bought one for every daughter and every granddaughter”

Ilma knows most of her customers by name. “There’s a lady from Hahndorf who has come to my stall every year since 1991,” she says. “She bought one for herself, then one for each of her three daughters when they married, and now for her granddaughters.” Many of her garlands, she says, are already on their second or third generation. “People tell me their children are already arguing over who gets Nan’s garland one day. I tell them: then you’d better buy another one while I’m still here.” She laughs. This year, for the first time, that won’t be possible.

The reason her garlands last so long is simple: Ilma doesn’t rush. One garland takes her about nine hours, a full day at the table – shaping the trees, painting the deer, binding the little wreaths, setting the beads, fitting the lights and knotting everything onto the rope so it hangs evenly. “If one deer looks to the side when it should look straight ahead, I start that one again.”

Why her hands have said enough

The pain started in her right thumb about eight years ago. Then came the index finger, then the left hand. “At first it was only in the mornings. I’d run warm water over my hands and wait.” Lately it doesn’t go away. The finest part of the work, the beads along the edges, has become almost impossible. “You need feeling in your fingertips for that. And that’s exactly what I don’t have anymore.”

In September her doctor was clear: if she keeps going, the joints will only get worse. Ilma sat in her car in the car park for a long time afterwards. “I cried a little. Then I drove home and started counting what was still in the packing shed.”

There were exactly 260 garlands in different stages – trees shaped and deer painted over the winter, still waiting for beads, lights and rope. Ilma decided to finish them – slowly, and with help. Her granddaughter Kirra (25) comes over every evening after work to knot the ropes and pack the boxes. And it was Kirra who had the idea that changed everything: “Nan, why don’t we put the last ones online? Then the people who never made it to Lobethal can have one too.”

“I didn’t even know how that works,” Ilma says. “Kirra takes care of all of it.” Since Kirra put the final batch online, 117 garlands have already gone out. 143 are left. When they are gone, there will be no more – and for the first time since 1987, Ilma will not have a stall at the Christmas market.

To make sure the last ones go to good homes, she set a clear special price – about half of what she used to ask at the market. “It’s not about the money anymore. I don’t want them sitting in a box. I want them hanging where somebody looks up at them the way I looked up at my Oma’s.”

What sets Ilma’s woodland garland apart:

What customers say about Ilma’s garland

“The first thing my mum unpacks every December”

Customer Michelle L. (49) from Gawler bought her mum a garland at Ilma’s stall in 2015. “Every year since, it’s the first thing she unpacks – before the tree, before the nativity. She says Christmas doesn’t start until the little trees are glowing. This year I’m getting one for myself, before they’re all gone.”

Where can you get Ilma’s garland?

Ilma’s woodland garland is only available through Backroad Goods – an online shop for real handwork from a small group of independent makers. Kirra runs her grandmother’s little corner of the shop there. Only there will you get the original garland from Ilma’s packing shed. Lookalike garlands from mass production have started to show up on big marketplaces. At first glance they may look similar, but they have nothing to do with Ilma’s work.

Only this Christmas – then it’s over

At the end of November, Ilma will lock the packing shed for good. “I’ll still go to the Christmas market,” she says. “But this time as a visitor. I’ll buy myself a cold lemonade and walk past my old spot.” She smiles. “39 Christmases. That’s a good number.”

If you would like one of her last original garlands, don’t wait too long. With the special price and the number of orders since Kirra put them online, the remaining 143 are not expected to last. Kirra will keep posting them out after the shed closes – but only until the last garland is gone.

It is the only chance to get one of Ilma’s garlands without driving to Lobethal – and the last chance at all.

The verdict

Ilma’s woodland garland is the kind of decoration that becomes part of a family’s Christmas. Shaped, painted and beaded by hand in an old apple-packing shed in the Adelaide Hills, it turns any sideboard, doorway or window into a little woodland – with a warm glow inside every tree.

A piece with real heart – patiently made, built for many Christmases, and every evening a quiet little moment when the three trees light up. Thank you, Ilma!