Santa Clans Tycoon
By ADELAIDE KERR
(VP) Newsfeatures Writer
Big paper Christmas trees hung
with shining baubles and striped
candy canes. White papier mache
angels in gold-spangled tarleton1
robes. Paper panoramas of coun
try villages and skating ponds,
people with brightly clad figures.
Miniature beaverboard churches
and sleighs, heaps of gold and sil
ver bells, shining stars and balls.
That's what you see when you
look into the busy workrooms of
one of Santa Claus’ topflight
American assistants—Cecelia Sta
ples. Miss Staples, her husband.'
Ira Smith, and the firm’s are di-.
rector, Irving Sherman, are part-1
ners in a New York firm which
produces window and counter dis
plays for stores all over the coun
try. From May to December they
are busy on backgrounds for
Christmas gifts.
lhe three, all young, met in
their art school days at Pratt In
stitute. Brooklyn. Miss Staples—
blonde, slender, chic and a whirl
wind of energy — made some
drawings, cut classes for a week
and sold her work in Greenwich
Village. That gave her courage to
take her wares to department
store display sections. They used
her work and urged her to try her
hand at paper relief effects. Soon
she was working more with scis
sors than paint and her small
apartment overflowed with paper
pictures and figures.
Then the three students joined
forces, started producing display I
material in a cold water tenement1
and eventually built a business of J
paper whose production now fills
a four-story building.
Miss Staples originates ideas
and sells, working at a big three
sided desk amid a mass of paints
paper, beads, spangles and glitter
ing plastic “jewles.”
“The figures are made of papier
mache, worked over an armature,
and the ‘flesh’ is put on with
crushed folds of tissue .paper, dip
ped in paste, and smoothed on,”
she explained. “The clothes are
made of paper too. Then they are
painted and dressed up with ac
cents. The paper panoramas are
cut out a piece at a time and fas
tened to a flat wooden armature.”
When Christmas production is
at fever heat. Miss Staples races
around among the workers—many
of whom are art students—check
ing up on results, ordering more
fluff in an angel's robe, more jew
els in a crown. At her heels trails
Ruggles, her poodle, adding an oc-1
casional yip ot the jingle of her
bracelets.
At the peak season Miss Staples
finds it hard to get enough com
petent workers and drives pro
duction harder than ever, with no
time for idle talk. One morning
after she had advertised for help,
she looked up from her work to
find a man in an overcoat stand
ing at her elbow.
“Go take off your coat, give
your security number to the secre
tary and come back and staple
these garlands,” she said. “Here
is a staple gun. Hurry!”
The man tried to tell her some
thing, but "the boss" was too busy
to listen. When he finished that
job, she set him at another and
worked him hard for half a day.
Finally the stranger got a word in (
and told her who he was—display When he got a chance to talk he
manager of one of the largest de- placed a big order for Christmas
partment stores in the south, displays.
CECELIA STAPLES . . . Christmas is her business
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