it's all about the face

I am a picky Santa collector, and I imagine that most other collectors would agree they are as well. An otherwise stunningly made Santa can very easily be discounted because of one thing: the face.

For me, the face is 50% of the entire equation. If I hate the face, I'll never buy the jolly old elf.

One of my personal pet peeves is handcrafted clay faces. I know these are a popular item with a lot of collectors, but I find a lot of the resulting faces are scary or wrinkly or old-apple-pie-like, and it creeps me out the same way that wax figurines do.

For me, the penultimate Santa face is Haddon Sundblom's Santa. (Non-Santa fanatics know this as "the Coca Cola Santa".) And yes, I know it's traditionalist and mainstream but for better or worse, that's the Santa Claus I picture in my head.

It's one of the reasons I love Tom Browning's work. He captures the warmth and the spirit so perfectly. If I had an enormous home, I'd fill every room with his paintings.

Other Santa faces I enjoy are the ones by Dennis Brown, the faces that Fitz & Floyd use in their Santas and the longer faces of Bill Evans.

I have very few or no elf-like faces, apple pie faces, mean faces, wizard faces or grizzled faces, since to me they're all just wrong.

A critical component of the face is the beard. For cloth dolls, I don't care if the beard is fabric or of the same material (clay or ceramic) as the face, but please please please make it look like a real beard and not like Santa cut off a little girl's hair and stuck it to his face, all blond ringlets. It should look clean and not unkempt, of decent length rather than flowing to his waist (if I wanted to buy old man winter or a wizard I wouldn't buy one in a Santa suit, thank you).

As in life, we respond to the faces we're attracted to. When I walk past my Santa collection every day from November 15th to the New Year, I want to be able to smile and get a little lift from all the faces beaming back at me.

Like I said, it's all about the face.

Posted: October 09, 2004 at 07:37 PM