Who Is Landmark Creations?
Landmark Creations was founded by Joellen Church in 1998, inspired by her love of travel and the magic of Christmastime. With an eye for detail and taste for the extra ordinary, Landmark Creations soon pioneered expertly blown corners, edifices, and other building details necessary for capturing a world landmark or icon in its true form. Each year Jo ventures half-way around the world to have our ornaments hand-crafted in workshops Germany and Poland, the birthplace of blown glass ornaments. It's a long journey, but it's worth it when you enjoy our ornaments as much as we do!
In an excerpt from her interview with Celebration 365, Joellen explains how Landmark Creations emerged from a thought to a business...
"...My family's favorite time of the year was Christmas: from decorating our Christmas tree with ornaments passed down from Grandparents and with ornaments we made in school, to laying the fireplace mantle with those silly wax deer and angel candles, to making fruitcakes and divinity, and going to midnight Christmas services. But one particular moment brought the magic of Christmas into our house…After the tree was decorated, my Mom would unpack an ornament that had been made just for her and hung it high on the tree - it was an eggshell which had been covered in velvet and tiny pearls, and inside, nestled on a bed of angel hair and pink glitter, was a little wooden angel holding a carol book. The delicacy and thoughtfulness this one little ornament brought to our Christmas never ceased to amaze me. I think this is when my fascination with Christmas Magic began.
The idea to start an ornament company specializing in landmarks and travel memories was born when I was decorating my own Christmas tree and realized that I had no Christmas ornaments from any of the places in the world to which I had traveled. Perhaps there was an opportunity to create my own Christmas Magic!
That emergence into the European folk art of glass blowing has since transformed my desire to not only create a business of blown glass landmarks, but to become an advocate of this art form and champion its livelihood. Born in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, European glass-blown ornaments are simply like no other: each is hand-blown and hand-decorated by women and men who have learned their skills from their parents and their parents' parents. There are no large machines producing mass quantities of ornaments that look exactly alike. I guess in the end it is all about quality instead of quantity. This is who I am and what Landmark Creations is."
