DEARBORN, Mich. — Donna Braden, senior curator at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, loves Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments. She’s collected “at least a couple hundred of them,” and some are personalized family treasures while others represent favorite movies.

At work, Ms. Braden now has more than 7,000 of them organized, detailed, and displayed chronologically at Miniature Moments: A Journey Through Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments.

They’re in a 2,000-square-foot display room at this 12-acre history museum featuring everything from the blood-stained rocking chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when assassinated in 1865 to Henry Ford’s first engine-powered quadricycle from 1896 to the school bus Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala.

There’s plenty to ponder, and the ornaments are among the special sideshows visitors can sample.

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“People are going to find their own highlights when they come,” said Ms. Braden, an Ohio State graduate from the Cleveland area who has been at the museum for 45 years.

Peanuts and Dr. Seuss characters such as the Grinch are highly popular.

“But one of the most popular ones is a crazy one,” said Ms. Braden. “Are you ready for this? It’s Cousin Eddie’s RV from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”

Cousin Eddie was the screw-loose but lovable character played by Randy Quaid in that 1989 movie.

“And I don’t know why it’s so popular,” Ms. Braden continued. “It’s like a grimy mess. But he talks. Cousin Eddie talks. That was something that Hallmark introduced in its ornaments — the sound. It’s weird, funky Cousin Eddie, and there’s only one Cousin Eddie.”

There have been various Hallmark spinoffs of the RV since the original debuted in 2009 that are much cheaper, but the initial creation is going for $575 at ornamentmall.com.

“I’ve not seen an ornament selling for more than that,” Ms. Braden noted.

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The Henry Ford got Cousin Eddie’s RV in a package deal with over 7,000 other ornaments.

Ms. Braden was sent with Jeanine Miller, the museum’s curator of domestic life, to a Hallmark store in Warsaw, Ind., in March, 2019, to check out a large collection for the possibilities it presented. The owner had stopped collecting them in 2009 because he ran out of room.

“They asked me to go because I’m a Hallmark customer and curator,” Ms. Braden said. “This was a gigantic Hallmark store, the biggest one I’d ever seen. Part of it was the store and part of it was what they called the Hallmark Ornament Museum.

“Bus tours and Hallmark artists and people would come to visit it. But they were, sadly, closing it, and needed to sell the collection complete and in its boxes. I mean, you would never find that!”

They presented their findings to the museum’s collections committee. It was purchased for an undisclosed sum, and then it was decided “to display everything.”

“We built a gallery and figured out a way to build these kind of crazy cases which are floor to ceiling,” Ms. Braden said. “In every one of the 40 cases, there’s a little themed display of eight ornaments. It’s an exhibit within an exhibit, and I think those will be fun for people.”

It’s easy to spend one hour in this new display, craning your neck up and down the 12-foot high and 4-foot wide cases, and smiling at ornaments such as the four separates of the mop-top Beatles (Ringo’s includes his drum kit) while marveling at the great detail of the cut-away of Noah’s Ark and Cell-ebrate, a Christmas tree ornament constructed from 11 miniature cellphones.

The collection will have additions each year, and more than 150 new Hallmark ornaments are being added from 2022.

“No matter who you are, there’s an ornament that represents something you do or that you identify with or love,” said Melissa Foster, the museum’s senior manager for public relations.

Hallmark, founded by teenage entrepreneur J.C. Hall in 1910, built its business on greeting cards. It introduced the ornaments 63 years later after his son, Donald J. Hall, assumed running the company and also opened Hallmark stores.

“They started by making glass ball ornaments,” Ms. Braden said. “They made some yarn and wooden ornaments. They were [like] the ornaments other companies produced. The difference came in the sentiment they, as greeting card company, put on the glass balls. They were like Christmas cards on glass balls, with lots and lots of sentiment.

“Then the Grinch was popular from the [1966] TV special [How the Grinch Stole Christmas!]. Peanuts figures are also popular from the TV [specials and comic strip]. And there was a shift from the ball to the figural ornaments. Those were the ones that sold better, especially by the 1990s.”

Star Wars characters exemplify that popularity.

What are her personal favorites?

“The first Hallmark ornament I bought was for my husband [Curt Braden] on our 10th anniversary in 1988,” Ms. Braden said. “Then we bought my favorite ornament which we put right out front of the tree every year. It’s a Baby’s 1st Christmas ornament for my daughter in 1990 with a baby in a baby walker. It’s the cutest thing!

“Lady and the Tramp is my favorite, and the Superman Lunch Box because I used to collect Superman comic books. I have Bilbo from The Hobbit and Frodo from The Lord of the Rings. We gave Curt a Gordie Howe hockey player.”

There also are sports, video game, and beer stein ornaments.

“You can get these ornaments of any kind that meet your needs and interest and feed your identity,” Ms. Braden said. “I always felt comfortable finding Hallmark ornaments that fit us. They’re like bonding things for my daughter [Caroline Braden, who also works at the museum] and me.

“We have two Christmas trees now because we have so many ornaments. I turn into a zombie every year unwrapping and then re-wrapping them. Caroline hangs them. Yeah, it’s mental. It’s nuts.”

What about the Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments makes them so special to her and other long-time collectors?

“The memories of buying them,” Ms. Braden said. “They are memories of special years and the memories they evoke to us, the marking of milestones. It makes us feel warm as a family to share the liking of them.”

Contact Steve Kornacki at skornacki@theblade.com or on Twitter @SKORNACKI. 

First Published November 26, 2022, 12:00 p.m.