I’ve been hankering to look for a replacement one, but I can’t search for it 'cause I don’t know what to call it. Maybe it was one-of-a-kind, but I have the feeling it was mass-produced; probably not as ubiquitous as those bunches of oversize glass grapes used to be, but… anyway.
Description: Black metal tree-like thing about 18" tall or so. Rigid central trunk with spray of maybe two dozen springy wire “branches” all the same length, all erupting from the very top tip of the trunk, each tipped with a black metal sphere bigger than a pea but smaller than a marble. If jostled, the spheres would hit each other and make a faint tinkly noise. The trunk was anchored in a flat black circle for a base. The whole thing was too symmetrical to really be a tree – more an abstraction of a tree.
I got mine at some thrift store in the mid-80s (and left it behind when I went to college; my stupid sister bent it all up! can you believe the gall on her?) but it seems like a very 70s sort of item. Or possibly atomic-style 50s.
Anyone? Anyone?