An Early Christmas For Vicki Richardson

 

By Shannon Hicks

When Vicki Richardson received an envelope in the mail back in July with a return address that read simply The White House, Washington, her first thought was “What? What have I done?”

The Newtown resident laughed this week as she recalled receiving that letter from First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s social secretary, Capricia Panavic Marshall. The letter, it turned out, was an invitation from the White House for Mrs Richardson to join a group of craftsmen from across the country who were being asked by President and Mrs Clinton to participate in creating original ornaments for the White House this holiday season. Last weekend she and her husband Todd were welcomed, along with the artists from across the country, into the White House for a Holiday Tour for the artists of the 1999 holiday decorations.

Mrs Richardson is the owner of a cottage business she calls An Aura of Age. With her business, she creates reproduction antique dolls from scratch. The White House, she believes, heard or read about her work in Early American Homes, a magazine in which  she advertises her dolls.

“I thought ‘Geez, this is amazing. I just make cloth dolls,’” Mrs Richardson said this week. Sitting in the dining room of the house Mrs Richardson and her family live in at 1 Academy Lane, she kept looking at the four examples of her dolls that were resting on the dining room table.

For years, Mrs Richardson has been making traditional crafts both for her home and to sell. She receives customers who are interested in seeing her dolls at her home and participates in shows such as the crafts show at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass. this past September. Mrs Richardson’s dolls sell for anywhere between $25 and $50 apiece.

A few years back she was invited by Newtown Historical Society to demonstrate the beeswax ornaments she was making at the time. Painted boxes line the stairways of her home, and hand-dipped candles hang from the exposed beams in the family living room. The Richardson home is adorned with dozens of the gorgeous country-style items Mrs Richardson has made over the years.

“I never got around to asking, but I think Early American Homes must have been where they found my name,” Mrs Richardson said Tuesday afternoon. The letter from Washington, D.C. explained that this year’s celebration at the White House would pay “tribute to past generations through a theme focusing on our nation’s rich heritage.”

In concert with a program of Mrs Clinton’s called “Save America’s Treasures,” the letter went on to say, the holiday decorations this year honor our founding fathers, national landmarks and significant events that defined and shaped America. The tradition of a thematic tree at the White House began in the early 1960s.

With the letter from Washington was an attached list of requirements for each ornament maker, as well as restrictions and instructions including size maximums and minimums for each ornament, including how to label the ornament before shipping. Each craftsman was requested to reply to the social secretary’s office by August 15, and to have the ornament shipped to the White House no later than October 15.

Those invited were also asked to keep the theme of this year’s holiday decorations at the White House to themselves for a little while. “The general theme and decorations are to be treated as confidential until revealed to the press by the First Lady in a press conference the first week of December,” the attachment said. The ornaments and decorations coming in this year — as in years past — have all become part of the ongoing White House collection of Christmas ornaments.

The doll Mrs Richardson donated to the White House was one she had made last spring while her daughter was reading the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder’s family was in Minnesota, where a number of Swedish immigrants settled, Mrs Richardson explained, and something about that nationality stuck in the artisan’s head when she began working on a new doll last year.

“I’ve been very inspired by the books my daughter has been reading,” she continued. Recent inspiration has come from the series of Dear America books, which Mrs Richardson describes as “a historic fiction series.”

Mrs Richardson had created a Swedish doll last spring. The doll had spun flax hair and was stuffed with lamb’s wool she purchased from a friend of hers in Maine. The doll wore a red blouse with white stars and a navy blue skirt with lace around its hem.

“I try to make things that have a feeling of 150 years ago or so,” Mrs Richardson explained. She uses fabric with old-fashioned looking prints, and purchases quite a bit of reproduction fabric for her dolls from the Shelburne Village Museum.

Mrs Richardson was one of six fine crafters from Connecticut who presented the Clintons with ornaments for a 20-foot tall tree in the White House’s Blue Room. The Blue Room is the location of the official White House Christmas tree. This year the grand tree is a concolor fir that came in from Elma, Washington.

A White House Holiday Tour was held Friday, December 17, and Mrs Richardson and her husband were among those who attended the ceremonial event. The Richardsons made a quick trip to Washington for the holiday tour, leaving Newtown on Friday morning around 6 am and returning from the Capitol by Saturday evening.

“Everything was huge, colossally big,” the artist laughed, recalling the size of some of the wreaths and other decorations that have been hung on the walls and in doorways of the building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Blue Room is on the second floor of the White House, and is one of three parlors First Families have tailored to accommodate groups of family, friends and dignitaries for entertaining, especially during the holiday season.

“The tree had about 400 ornaments on it,” Mrs Richardson said. “It was dazzling.”

“It was nice, it was a lot of fun,” she continued. “This was the first time I’d ever been there. Just to see everything — the plates Lincoln ate off of, the portraits, everything... It was just amazing.

“We never did see the President or Mrs Clinton, though. We kept looking for them, so that was a little bit of a disappointment, but the whole thing really was so much fun.”

For additional information or to make an appointment to see her dolls, Vicki Richardson can be reached at 426-6511.