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2 days ago | Advertorial | Leanne Corrigan

“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 grandkids, at half price

In the bush block behind Warwick Tully’s house in Bright, in Victoria’s high country, stand the treehouses he built for his grandkids. For every one of them, he made a tiny copy in stained glass to hang on the Christmas tree. For 24 years, he knocked back every offer to buy one. This November, he is closing his shed – and changing his mind.

Bright, November. The poplars along the Ovens River are in full leaf and the afternoons are already warm. In the corrugated-iron shed behind Warwick Tully’s weatherboard house, a pedestal fan hums 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 bright spring light, hangs a tiny glass oak tree with a round wooden door and a fairy sitting on the steps.

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

Kiara 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 grandkid

Warwick learned his trade in 1974, restoring church windows across north-east Victoria – long days on scaffolding, piecing together saints and lambs from glass that was older than the towns around it. Later he set up his own little studio in the shed behind the house he shared with his wife, Lorraine, on a bush block above the valley.

When Kiara was born, Warwick did what grandfathers with a big old tree have always done: he built her a treehouse. He chose the English oak at the bottom of the block, planted by the gold-rush settlers, gave it a round door and little steps, and Lorraine told the baby that fairies lived inside. That first December, Warwick went into his shed and made a copy of the treehouse in glass – no bigger than the palm of his hand – so Kiara would have it on the tree too.

Then more grandkids came along. And with every one, another tree on the block got a house – and Warwick’s shed got a new design. “Lorraine used to say I was building a whole suburb up there,” he laughs. “She wasn’t wrong.”

Over the years, the block filled up. So did the family Christmas tree. And every December, people who saw those little glass treehouses – at the church fete, in a daughter’s lounge room, in a photo on someone’s phone – asked the same question. Warwick 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 Warwick 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 10 cm tall and 9 cm wide – big enough to be the first thing visitors 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,” Warwick says. “You can tell from across the room. Light doesn’t go through paint. It goes through glass.”

Why he finally said yes

Warwick is 74. His eyes don’t follow a cutting line the way they used to, and by the arvo his hands start to shake on the fine work. His daughter has asked him to move down to Wangaratta, closer to the family. The house in Bright goes on the market in autumn. The shed closes on 30 November.

Last winter, Warwick 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 neighbours,” he says. “I made far too many. I reckon I just didn’t want to stop.”

That was when Kiara sat him down at the kitchen table. “Pop,” 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,” Warwick says. “What’s the point of keeping 400 treehouses in boxes in Wangaratta?” 418 ornaments from the final collection are left. Kiara 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,” Warwick says. “I want them on trees. I want some little girl to stare at one the way Kiara did.”

What sets Warwick’s treehouse ornaments apart:

What the first owners are saying

“The kind of present people keep for fifty years”

Most of Warwick’s ornaments never stay on one tree. They go to grandkids, 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 nan who reads by moonlight.

“That’s what they were always for,” Warwick says. “A nan or a pop and a kid in front of a tree. If one of mine ends up in that picture, I’m happy.”

Where can you get one?

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

After 30 November, the shed goes dark

Warwick will lock his shed at the end of November. Kiara will keep sending orders out from Wangaratta 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,” Warwick says, turning the little Moonlit Willow in his fingers. “Lorraine would have told me I waited too long.” He smiles. “She usually did.”

The verdict

Warwick’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, Warwick, for finally letting them go.

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