Gathering Tree

Each winter, the tree returns: cut, carried indoors, and adorned. It is one of the few sculptural rituals that survives in almost every home — a form built collectively, by many hands, from small objects heavy with memory. The Gathering Tree takes this ritual as its site. Ruup & Form has invited artists to each create a limited-edition decoration — not an ornament in the conventional sense, but a small, collectible work that carries the language of their practice into the domestic sphere. Hand-etched brass garlands, mended textile moons, hollow stoneware doves, marbled paper baubles, coiled terracotta forms lit from within: each piece reimagines a festive archetype through contemporary making. Installed in the gallery, the tree becomes a single collective sculpture — a group exhibition condensed into one form, completed only in aggregate. To adorn, here, is not to embellish but to attend: to place something made with care into a shared ritual of gathering, light, and return. Acquired one Christmas and unpacked every Christmas after, each work is designed to accrue its own history — an accessible entry point into collecting, and a lasting connection between artist, gallery, and home.