Earlier this week, Hallmark Master Designer, Edythe Kegrize served as the guest artist for the first of two Hallmark Keepsake Ornament live chats. One of the topics she chatted about was her popular “The Beauty of Birds” series. This week’s Throwback Thursday takes you back to a story that was written in 2007 (just a couple of years after the series was hatched), which talks about the inspiration behind and creation of these fine-feathered friends.

Beauty of Birds
Inspired by Nature’s Charm and Elegance

Designer Edythe Kegrize loves birds, so it’s only natural she’d bring this passion to the Keepsake Ornament series, The Beauty of Birds.

Northern Cardinal
The Beauty of Birds
1st in the series.

The series began in 2005 with the handsome Northern Cardinal ornament and followed up in 2006 with Black-Capped Chickadee. In both ornaments, Edythe goes beyond a naturalistic rendering to stylize the birds’ most dramatic and elegant features.

“I fancied them up,” she explains. She notes that her birds are decorated with gemstones and design stylings inspired by the cloisonné enameling technique. Each bird bears a small holiday gift of nature. The cardinal holds a sprig of mistletoe, while the chickadee carries holly.

Before joining Keepsake in 2003, Edythe was a Hallmark illustrator known for her decorative mastery. If someone needed a design with elegant sophistication and beauty, Edythe often got drafted. She brings to the Keepsake studio a fascination for surface design and an encyclopedic knowledge of handcrafts.

As a Keepsake designer, she thoroughly researches and illustrates her ornaments in two dimensions, leaving the actual sculpting to others. The first two ornaments in The Beauty of Birds were sculpted by LaDene Votruba, who has since retired.

Edythe says she plans to choose birds with dramatic markings and plumage for the series as well as widely recognizable birds with large North American ranges.

Though every bird has its charms, Edythe is especially fond of her chickadee ornament—a subtly ornate little bird perched on a small holly branch. “He’s a very stylish and dapper little fella, with his black cap and throat and white cheeks,” she says. “It’s just the kind of ornament I’d hang on my Christmas tree.”

With The Beauty of Birds, Edythe can now celebrate her feathered friends both indoors and out.

Reprint of: “Beauty of Birds, Inspired by Nature’s Charm and Elegance.” Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments, The Inside Stories From the Artists Who Create Them by John Peterson.