Bill and Diane- California collectors story

Shortly before Christmas of 1985, Diane said to Bill, “I saw these darling little porcelain houses in Macy’s and I would love to receive two or three of them as a Christmas present.”  For Christmas, Bill complied and gifted her more than two or three.  They became avid fans and were then able to hunt down the 1984 original set of seven houses.  From then on, they collected almost all of the new pieces put out each year.

When Dept. 56 began producing Christmas in the City, and then the North Pole villages, Bill and Diane began collecting those villages as well. As their collection grew, it would take 3 months each year to set up before Christmas and nearly as many to take down their displays.  Bill normally laid out the houses, then Diane tweaked the layout and positioned the people and accessories, always making sure that the correct people were with their associated house.  Diane positioned the trees, streetlights, fences, ponds, skating rinks, and roads, then generated a grand snowstorm over the display using Dept 56 “Real Plastic Snow”.

Due to the sizes of the different villages, Diane & Bill’s Christmas village display alternated between Dickens throughout their house, to the next year Christmas in the City in their large, enclosed porch and North Pole in other living spaces in their home.

Diane and Bill enjoyed creating their own elevations for parts of their displays out of Styrofoam covered in cotton batting, so that the displays were not uniformly flat. The villages did not use Dept. 56 roads since large portions of their villages were not on grids and had varying elevations. Their daughter Susan cut custom roads from asphalt and cobblestone appearing wool and tweed fabric for the twisting and turning roads in the Dickens village.  Bill was an avid model train fan, and he designed custom circuits that allowed period HO trains and trolleys to run on the flat portions of the displays, synchronized with switches so they could come and go continuously but never run into each other. Bill constructed tunnels and interesting track routes to enhance the displays. Christmas in the City was arranged like a city with HO street cars and trolleys running back and forth along the blocks.

With their house beautifully decorated for Christmas and with that year’s Dept. 56 village scene set up and running, Diane and Bill enjoyed sharing their hobby with friends by having them for a Christmas party and to see their villages each year.  Their friends still marvel at how wonderful their villages were, and how much they appreciated them.

Over the years, in his mid-80s by then, it became too much for Bill to do the work of moving boxes in and out of storage and setting up the villages anymore, and he and Diane reduced their displays to just a few areas in their house each Christmas.  Then, at almost 90, all of it became too much for Bill and they were no longer able to display much of their collection at all.  Diane has continued to set up their very small display of Dept. 56 Halloween.  We carry the memory of those great displays with fondness, and wish we had more photos than we do.  It seems it all ended too soon.

It's been a pleasure to work with Allison at Hooked on Villages to re-home our collection.  She is a great communicator, sensitive to this transition for me, and very fair in her offer.