Folk art santas: Limited-edition figurines a Yule tradition

by LIZ ANDERSON
12/16/2002

When Vaillancourt Folk Art was founded, there were about 85 other workshops making Christmas ornaments and collectibles in America. Now, there are three.

SUTTON, Mass. — For the artists at Vaillancourt Folk Art, Christmas is in the details.

Tiny gingerbread cookies and oranges peek from the sacks of cheerful Santas. Delicate black brush strokes mark folds of a peppermint-striped waistcoat on a dimunitive mouse. Whisper-thin script declares “Peace on Earth” on an angel’s swooping banner.

Each figurine is hand-crafted on the second-floor of a coffee-colored farmhouse in this Blackstone Valley town, a short drive north on Rout 146 from Rhode Island.

The figures are made from liquid chalk — a material similar to plaster — poured into the company’s collection of more than 3,000 antique candy and ice cream molds.

Many of the designs are more than a century old. Santas predominate, but there are also snowmen, shepherds, angels and bears in this Christmas cornucopia.

Gary Vaillancourt got the whole thing started back in 1984 when he gave his wife, Judi, three candy molds as a gift. Soon, she was using them to make ornamental, not edible, mementos. A year later, he quit his job as a computer consultant to help her launch the business.

When the company first started, Gary Vaillancourt said last week, there were about 85 different workshops making Christmas ornaments and collectibles in America. Now, they are one of three. Most of their onetime cohorts have shifted overseas.

“The only way I can compete with China is our painting detail,” he said. “Our niche is quality”.

Christmas figures amount to about 90 percent of their business. Most pieces sell for between $60 and $100, though some can run as much as $3,000.

“It’s a challenge, because most people consider Christmas (decor) inexpensive,” Vaillancourt said.

Still, the “chalkware” has an avid following. When the company rolls out its new products in February, a handful of die-hards sleep overnight in their cars in the driveway to get the first pieces made in the series.

The workshop and a related gift shop have 35 employees, most full-time. They turn out about 15,000 pieces a year, including “limited edition” figures of no more than 300 pieces each. Among those is an annual “Starlight Santa” to benefit the Starlight Foundation, which grants wishes to seriously ill children.

The majority of the molds the company uses were made in Germany and reflect European Christmas traditions.

There’s not just Father Christmas, but “Belsnickel”, judging who is naughty or nice armed with a switch and sweets. There’s “La Bafana”, a grandmother-like figure who delivers Christmas-season presents to Italian children. And there’s a Santa with a pickle in his sack, harkening back to a German tradition of giving an extra gift to the child who found a pickle ornament hidden deep in the family’s tree.

Creating each figurine takes time and patience. An average piece is handled by 16 workers, from start to finish, over a three-week span, Vaillancourt said.

The process starts with the molds, which are filled again and again with the quick-drying material. Workers Vaillancourt jokingly calls “plaster surgeons” hand-trim the rough edges off the still-wet casts and fix major imperfections. Then the figures are stacked in a super-heated room to dry.

Next, two rooms of painters work their way through small armies of holiday characters, carefully referring to a completed sample before them to make sure they get the details of Judi Vaillancourt’s designs right.

The final touches come in a room where the figurines are “antiqued”; toasted under a heat lamp to crackle the paint, rubbed with raw umber to darken them and coated with varnish.

Bethany Sobodacha, of Central Falls, was finishing painting of a 3 1/4-inch Christmas mice last Thursday afternoon, daubing in black paint to delineate the four claws on each paw and the delicate whiskers on each snout. A former human services specialist at a residential treatment center, Sobodacha said she finds her job a welcome change of pace — as well as a chance to put to use a college minor in art.

“It’s such a relaxed, fun atmosphere, and it gives me a chance to be creative,” she said.

One room over, Tim Daly, of Providence, an illustrator trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, was working on a row of stooped Santas. A nine-year Vaillancourt employee, he said he like the detail work the best.

The collectibles are sold at Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue department stores, as well as about 3,000 gift and specialty shops across the country. They are also avialable in the gift shop on the premises and on the Internet.

In addition to figurines, the Vaillancourts offer delicate glass ornaments manufactured in Germany to their own patterns, and creamware dishes, also of Judi’s design.

Although the Christmas season is in full swing in the real world, the artists at the farmhouse are about to make a brief transition into the Easter season. Bunnies and chicks stand ready to be primed and primped.

By March, it will be back to Yule: Vaillancourt said the entire month will be dedicated to producing a special order for Colonial Williamsburg.

Vaillancourt Folk Art can be found on the internet at www.vaillancourtfolkart.com, by telephone at 877-665-2244, or in person at 145 Armsby Rd., Sutton Mass. In Rhode Island, their figurines are sold at Nordstrom in Providence, Nuance in Barrington, and American Rare Coin in East Providence.