Antoinette Stockenberg's 2005 Christmas Displays

Antique Christmas cardboard houses (690K)



Here's my 2005 Christmas card to you. For a closer look, click on each of the houses in this nighttime view. Antique Christmas cardboard house putz (village) on fireplace mantel at night (50K)

The Christmas season is filled with many emotions, and chief among them is the sense of magic. We want and need sweetness and charm and excitement and mystery. We want -- we need -- to feel like kids again. Collecting antique cardboard houses made in pre-War Japan and arranging them in a world of their own brings it all back for me. I know that I'm not alone in my yearning. There really was a time, wasn't there, that we asked for nothing more than to while away a few hours lying flat on our stomachs and setting up a tiny, quite magical village beneath the tree. Well, I'm older now. My eyes are not as sharp, my bones not as limber as when I was ten, and a mantel-height village suits me just fine; the joy and pleasure are as intense as ever.
May your own holidays be filled with joy and good will!

For a closer look, just click on each of the houses in this daytime view. Antique Christmas cardboard house putz (village) on fireplace mantel in the daytime (50K)

Most of my collection are vintage "coconuts," a quaintly descriptive word for the pastry-look, shredded-cellophane walls and roofs of these tiny, mica-dusted structures. The houses and churches are almost exclusively from the early 1930's, the Golden Age of the Christmas "putz". The tiny lead figures, also from the '30's, are German lead "flats." There's a lovely write-up with charming photographs in the December 2005 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine, but if you want to learn all there is to know of the wonderful world of Japanese cardboard Christmas houses, grab your laptop and find a comfortable chair (or lie on your belly again) and spend a truly magical time at papatedsplace.com


Christmas cardboard Putz with 
German lead flats including Santa at the North Pole(58K) As wrens do with their nests, you can tuck a putz just about anywhere. Take a handful of Christmas cardboard houses, throw in a set of German lead flats (Zinnfiguren is the fancy term), and you have -- well, I call this the "kids' table" of Christmas villages. Colorful, little, and lively! Just click on each house for a closeup.

2015 Christmas Putz

2014 Christmas Putz

2013 Christmas Putz

2012 Christmas Putz

2011 Christmas Putz

2010 Christmas Putz

2009 Christmas Putz

2008 Christmas Putz

2007 Christmas Putz

2006 Christmas Putz

2004 Christmas Putz

Antoinette's Main Christmas Page

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