Nativity Scenes

Our friends left yesterday back to Madrid. We spent the day scheduling the work for the week and cleaning the house, and the night already working at the studio, something we really were hungry for!

For the first time since we are together, we are going to have a Nativity scene on our living room this year – we purchased the Nativity figures and our friends gave us the Three Wizard Kings as a goodbye gift. They’re regular resin figures, on the size that’s closer to 1:12 scale so we can make use of the dollhouse supplies we have for the scene. Each one will be repainted and/or altered as needed, as we have done before with other Catholic images we have sold in the shop.

Every year, we will add more figures and accessories during the month of December (our Christmas season goes until Jan. 6, the Three Wizard Kings’ Day) as time and money allow. I don’t think we will buy more figures this year, although I would like to find some camels for the kings, the camel being our horse and such a totemic animal for us. I am not sure right now if we’ll have time to create structures for it this year as I’m really busy, but it’ll be enough with having them all painted.

Of course, we will be documenting the process here! As you can see in the pics, the Holy Family has already been painted, and the cow and donkey are almost finished – both of them are painted in the colours of the Canarian type of each animal. Even though we don’t want to make it 100% Canarian, we are in a very similar environment than the place where it all happened, and while looking for certain aunthenticity and level of craftsmanship, we’ll add a Canarian touch here and there.

We don’t celebrate Christmas much more than taking a day off as our customers are with their families and there’s less work on those days, and we don’t particularly enjoy Christmas decor/activities, so we were lacking a tradition that was fully ours during this time of the year. In the past months, that has been a topic that’s been on my mind often – creating traditions that would come back yearly, and that were truly related to our cultural+personal+spiritual legacy.

I think this one fits us perfectly; while none of us is a Catholic, we are in love with this project as Crafters, and crafting the devotional is our life mission. All the miniature work that we’ve made in the past years will be a tremendous advantage when facing this project, and it’s something we will be able to do on and off during the year to provide items for the scene, specially in what comes to building structures and scenery.

Something I’d like to add is that us Canarians, and actually all Spanish people, take Nativity scene making seriously! There are hundreds of room-size scenes starting every December on every Canarian town, that people visit year after year to see the new improvements. Here’s a very beautiful video of a Canarian-themed scene from the island of Gran Canaria, where you can see the astounding craftsmanship of the work, and also see a bit of how the islanders were merely 100 years ago. Please note that the music in the video is played with a timple, a very small four-string guitar that’s traditional to the islands, and that at 1:10 you can see a Canarian Witch!