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3 days ago | Advertorial | Kirsty Pell

“For 23 Christmases my baubles never left Tasmania. This is the first and the last time.” – Rosslyn (71) is selling her final hand-painted Christmas baubles

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

George Town, November. For 23 Decembers, the same little scene has played out at the Christmas fete in the Uniting Church hall on Macquarie Street. A child walks past, stops dead, presses their nose almost against one of the glowing glass baubles and asks: “How did Santa get in there?”

Rosslyn Gourlay 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 cray boat in Bass Strait, runs through 31 years in a pottery, and ends this month in a small painting room that smells of tea and paint – where Rosslyn is finishing the last baubles she will ever make.

A father, a bottle and a pair of long tweezers

Her father, Col Bramwell, fished for crayfish out of Low Head. On the long trips out in Bass Strait, he built ships in bottles. When he came home, the newest one went on the kitchen windowsill, and little Rosslyn 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 Col’s bottles still stand on her windowsill today.

At 25, Rosslyn got a job painting china in a pottery in Launceston. For 31 years she painted gum blossoms, roses and gold rims by hand onto vases, lamps and Christmas plates – until the pottery closed its doors in 2011. “I painted on china longer than I’ve done anything else in my life,” she laughs.

The December the baby wouldn’t stop crying

The first bauble was never meant to be sold. It was Christmas 2003. Her granddaughter Jaimee, 18 months old, was staying with her over the holidays and cried every night in the warm back bedroom. Nothing helped.

So Rosslyn remembered her father’s bottles. She got hold of a clear glass bauble with a slightly wider neck. Over three evenings she modelled a tiny Santa, a Christmas tree and a lantern, painted them under her magnifier and set them into the bauble 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 cot, well out of reach. “She stopped crying the very first night,” Rosslyn says. “She just lay there and looked at Santa until she fell asleep.”

From one bauble to more than 2,000

The next December, the ladies from church wanted one. Then their sisters wanted one. Then people started driving up from Launceston and over from Devonport. The following year, she cleared out the old sleep-out at the back of the house 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, Rosslyn has made more than 2,000 baubles in four designs: Santa with his glowing present, 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 the shops. Only at the church Christmas fete and from her front verandah – which is why, outside Tasmania, hardly anyone has ever seen one.

What makes Rosslyn’s baubles 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 bauble is a clear glass ball, 10 centimetres across and 12 centimetres 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, presents with gold ribbons and pine cones no bigger than a grain of rice. “The only white Christmas George Town ever gets is the one inside the glass,” Rosslyn laughs. Santa’s face is six millimetres tall. His beard alone takes her forty minutes with a three-hair brush.

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

One bauble takes Rosslyn about nine hours, spread over two evenings. “People ask me why I don’t do it quicker,” she says. “Because then it would look quick.” Modelling, painting, setting the scene, fitting the light – she has always done every step on her own. Nobody else has ever made one of Rosslyn’s baubles.

“One family buys a new one for every grandchild”

Rosslyn keeps an old Christmas cake tin on top of the fridge. It is full of Christmas cards from customers. One woman from Burnie has bought a bauble for each new grandchild since 2006 – there are nine of them now, and each grandkid hangs their own on Nan’s tree every year. Another card simply says: “Mum passed in March. Hers was the first thing I hung on my tree.”

“That’s the part I’ll miss,” Rosslyn 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 July I set aside every third Santa face,” Rosslyn 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 any more.”

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

412 baubles – then it’s over

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

It was Jaimee – the baby the very first bauble was made for, now 24 – who talked her nan into offering them online for the first time. “She said: Nan, there are people in Perth and Cairns who would love these and will never come to George Town,” Rosslyn says. She agreed on one condition: until her last day in the painting room, the price stays what it has always been at the fete – forty-five dollars.

“I’ve asked forty-five dollars since 2015,” she says. Nine hours of work for forty-five dollars – barely five 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 30 November. After that, the remaining baubles will keep going out in the post at the shop’s regular price – but only until the last one is gone.

What sets Rosslyn’s baubles apart:

What owners say

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

Many of Rosslyn’s baubles were never meant for the buyer’s own tree. “Most people buy two,” Rosslyn says. “One for themselves and one for their mum, their daughter, their grandkids.” A first bauble for a baby. One for a new home. One for someone who is spending their first Christmas on their own. It needs no power point and no extension lead, it arrives carefully packed, and it will be taken out of its tissue paper every December for decades.

Where can you get Rosslyn’s baubles?

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

30 November – then it’s over

On 30 November, Rosslyn will switch off her magnifier lamp and wash her brushes for the last time. “Twenty-three Christmases,” she says, and looks at the egg cartons 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 baubles from Rosslyn’s final batch, don’t leave it too long. The special price ends on 30 November, and with the first-ever online sale, the 412 baubles aren’t expected to last long after that.

The verdict

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