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3 days ago | Advertorial | Corinne Labarre

“For 23 Christmases my ornaments never left West Virginia. This is the first and the last time.” – Nedra (71) is selling her final hand-painted Christmas ornaments

For 23 years, Nedra Haddox has made tiny Christmas scenes inside glass ornaments in her little painting room in Sistersville – every scene modeled, painted and set into the glass by her own hands – and sold them only at her church bazaar. But this year, those hands have told her it’s time. On November 30, Nedra puts down her brush for good. Her final 412 ornaments are being offered online for the first time.

Sistersville, November. For 23 Decembers, the same little scene has played out at the bazaar table in the basement of the Methodist church on Wells Street. A child walks past, stops dead, presses their nose almost against one of the glowing glass balls and asks: “How did Santa get in there?”

Nedra Haddox always gives the same answer. She smiles, taps the glass with one finger and says: “Very carefully.”

The real answer takes a little longer. It begins on a towboat on the Ohio River, runs through 31 years in a glass factory, and ends this month in a small painting room that smells of coffee and paint – where Nedra is finishing the last ornaments she will ever make.

A father, a bottle and a pair of long tweezers

Her father, Homer Pyles, was a deckhand on the towboats that push coal barges up and down the Ohio. On the long weeks on the river, he built ships in bottles. When he came home, the newest one went on the kitchen windowsill, and little Nedra would sit there for hours trying to work out how a ship with three masts got through a neck no wider than her thumb.

“He showed me when I was nine,” she says. “Long tweezers, bent wires and patience. Mostly patience.” Three of Homer’s bottles still stand on her windowsill today.

At 25, Nedra got a job in the decorating room of a glass factory in Williamstown. For 31 years she painted holly, roses and gold lines by hand onto vases, lamps and Christmas plates – until the factory closed its doors in 2011. “I painted on glass longer than I’ve done anything else in my life,” she laughs.

The December the baby wouldn’t stop crying

The first ornament was never meant to be sold. It was Christmas 2003. Her granddaughter Brylee, 18 months old, was staying with her over the holidays and cried every night in the dark spare room. Nothing helped.

So Nedra remembered her father’s bottles. She got hold of a clear glass ball with a slightly wider neck. Over three evenings she modeled a tiny Santa, a Christmas tree and a lantern, painted them under her magnifier and set them into the ball piece by piece with her father’s tweezers. Last of all, she fitted a tiny warm light into the gold crown.

She hung it in the window beside the crib, well out of reach. “She stopped crying the very first night,” Nedra says. “She just lay there and looked at Santa until she fell asleep.”

From one ornament to more than 2,000

The next December, the women from church wanted one. Then their sisters wanted one. Then people started driving in from Parkersburg and Wheeling. The next year, she closed in the old back porch and turned it into her painting room: a long worktable under the windows, shelves full of paint pots and the magnifier lamp she still uses today. Over 23 Christmases, Nedra has made more than 2,000 ornaments in four designs: Santa with his glowing gift, the angel holding a star, the little steam train with its lit windows, and the snowman in his red scarf.

Not one of them was ever sold online or in a store. Only at the church bazaar and from her front porch – which is why, outside of West Virginia, almost nobody has ever seen one.

What makes Nedra’s ornaments so special

From across the room, they look like a little piece of Christmas caught in a bubble. Up close, you see how much work is inside.

Each ornament is a clear glass ball, 3.94 inches across and 4.72 inches tall with its gold crown – about the size of an orange. Inside sits a complete three-dimensional scene on a bed of glittering snow: the figure in the middle, a tiny decorated tree, a street lantern with its own wreath, gifts with gold ribbons and pinecones no bigger than a grain of rice. Santa’s face is a quarter of an inch tall. His beard alone takes Nedra forty minutes with a three-hair brush.

The scene goes in the way Homer’s ships went into their bottles: piece by piece, with long tweezers and bent wires, each figure already painted and dry. Finally Nedra fits the crown with its little warm light, powered by a button-cell battery that is already installed. One flick of the small switch and it comes on. No cord, no plug, no outlet needed: you hang it on the tree, in a window or from the mantel, and the whole scene glows from inside – the gift in Santa’s hands, the angel’s star, the lit windows of the train.

One ornament takes Nedra about nine hours, spread over two evenings. “People ask me why I don’t do it faster,” she says. “Because then it would look fast.” Modeling, painting, setting the scene, fitting the light – she has always done every step alone. Nobody else has ever made one of Nedra’s ornaments.

“One family buys a new one for every grandchild”

Nedra keeps an old fruitcake tin on top of the refrigerator. It is full of Christmas cards from customers. One woman from Clarksburg has bought an ornament for each new grandchild since 2006 – there are nine of them now, and each child hangs their own on Grandma’s tree every year. Another card simply says: “Mom passed in March. Hers was the first thing I hung on my tree.”

“That’s the part I’ll miss,” Nedra says quietly. “Not the painting. Knowing where they all went.”

“My hands have started telling me no”

It started last winter, with Santa’s beard. The forty minutes became an hour, then an hour and a half. The three-hair brush that had always done exactly what she wanted now sometimes did a little more. “Last January I set aside every third Santa face,” Nedra says, and holds up her hands. “They’re 71 years old. In the mornings they’re stiff, and by the evening they shake a little. Even the long tweezers feel heavier than they used to – and they weigh next to nothing.”

Handing the work over was never an option. There is no apprentice, no daughter at the worktable, no workshop that could take it on. “Nobody else has ever made one of these,” she says. “If somebody else makes them, they’re not mine anymore.”

So in September, Nedra made her decision: one last batch, and then it’s over. “I’d rather stop while every ornament is still exactly the way it should be,” she says. “Not when people start to notice that Grandma’s hands are shaking.”

412 ornaments – then it’s over

On the worktable and the shelves of the painting room, in old egg crates lined with tissue paper, sit the last ornaments Nedra will ever make: 412 of them – this year’s batch, plus every ornament she had kept back in boxes over the years for the next bazaar. A little over a hundred of each design.

It was Brylee – the baby the very first ornament was made for, now 24 – who persuaded her grandmother to offer them online for the first time. “She said: Grandma, there are people in Texas and Oregon who would love these and will never come to Sistersville,” Nedra says. She agreed on one condition: until her last day in the painting room, the price stays what it has always been at the bazaar – twenty-nine dollars.

“I’ve asked twenty-nine dollars since 2015,” she says. Nine hours of work for twenty-nine dollars – barely three dollars an hour. “Nobody does this for the money. And I’m not going to get greedy on my way out.” The special price applies until November 30. After that, the remaining ornaments will keep shipping at the shop’s regular price – but only until the last one is gone.

What sets Nedra’s ornaments apart:

What owners say

“The gift that ends up on the tree for the next 30 years”

Many of Nedra’s ornaments were never meant for the buyer’s own tree. “Most people buy two,” Nedra says. “One for themselves and one for their mother, their daughter, their grandkids.” A first ornament for a baby. One for a new home. One for someone who is spending their first Christmas alone. It needs no outlet and no extension cord, it arrives carefully packed, and it will be taken out of its tissue paper every December for decades.

Where can you get Nedra’s ornaments?

Nedra’s ornaments are only available through Backroad Goods, a small online shop for real handwork from selected makers. Only there will you get the original ornaments from Nedra’s painting room. Look-alike lighted ornaments from mass production have started to appear on big marketplaces. At first glance they may look similar, but they have nothing to do with Nedra’s work.

November 30 – then it’s over

On November 30, Nedra will switch off her magnifier lamp and wash her brushes for the last time. “Twenty-three Christmases,” she says, and looks at the egg crates on the table. “That’s a good run. I’d just like every one of these to be glowing on somebody’s tree this year.”

If you would like one of the original ornaments from Nedra’s final batch, don’t wait too long. The special price ends on November 30, and with the first-ever online sale, the 412 ornaments are not expected to last long after that.

The verdict

Nedra’s ornaments are what Christmas decorations used to be: made slowly, by one pair of hands, to be passed down. A complete little scene behind clear glass that lights up from inside every evening – and that, after November 30, nobody will ever make again. Thank you, Nedra.