Santa's Buddy in Mohnton

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That special friend is Buddy Styer, a professional photographer and self-professed hunter-gatherer.

Among his many collections – he counts at least 30, but we’ll revisit that later – is a gathering of Santa Clauses. How many, asks a visitor? 

“Oh, at least 100,” he says, smiling broadly.

And then, leading that visitor to the second floor of his family’s grand Victorian home, he points to the collection.

“A hundred?” she asks, incredulously. “Oh, Buddy, there are probably 100 just on this one shelf in this china cabinet.”

 “Oh, Buddy,” mirrors the comment Styer’s mom made back in 1976, a year after the Holy Name High School graduate completed his pre-med degree at the University of Pittsburgh and returned to Berks, changing the course of a previously planned career path.

Loading Up

Styer opted to take a job loading and unloading trucks for a local auction house. He eventually would write up sales and take photos of items for clients and for catalogues. He followed up by starting his own photography business and teaching communications at what was then Berks Vo-Tech West.  

He also bought the loopy and derelict fixer-upper home to house his business, which exploded with wedding work. He has since lovingly transformed the structure into a glorious Victorian showplace replete with gardens and outbuildings where he and his wife Jana raised their now adult daughters.

That early auction house experience reignited the collector’s spark that started when Styer was just a kid. On visits to the shore, he’d spend money on shells rather than ice cream or other treats.

“I would just buy the seashells – shiny conch shells and others I know didn’t come from the beach we were at, but I just loved them,” he says. “I’d have displays to show them off.”

While not displayed now, they are still carefully packed away in Styer's home.

“I still have them and I know where they are.”

After that, until the time he got his own place, Styer collected vintage hats and canes.

“When I moved out, I had a whole wall of hats,” he says.  Having an apartment and then the house made his collection avocation a bit more aggressive.

Ho, Ho, Ho – Again and Again and Again

There’s no guessing where the Santas are; they populate several rooms in the second floor of Styer’s home.

The first Santa he acquired – the one that incited his mother’s proclamation – seemingly remains his favorite.

That Santa is a 5-inch-tall, hand-carved whimsical wooden character created by S. Arthur (Art) Shoemaker, a Lancaster County woodcarver Styer has since come to consider a friend. In 1976, just starting out and living frugally in his first apartment, Styer coughed up $55 for the piece at the annual Franklin and Marshall Crafts Show. There, he ran into his mom and sister. When asked what was in his box, he produced the contents. His mom saw the price tag and gasped, “Oh, Buddy!”

Styer loves relating the story and he loves that, from the start way back in 1980, his wife has known the sentimental value that Santa holds for him.

In fact, Styer’s pretty good at relating the story behind many of his hundreds of Santas.

Like with his other accumulated treasures, collecting Santas was not a deliberate thing.

During a Christmas early on in their marriage, Jana presented Buddy with a Coca Cola Soda Pop Santa, one of a series of 12 limited edition (only 10,000 were produced of each) Santa styles created by Duncan Royale. Not content to see this one Soda Pop Santa made of what Styer characterizes as marble dust standing on its own, Styer went into his hunter-gatherer mode for its companion pieces.  

Forays to the former ArtWorks at Doneckers in Ephrata and Waterloo Gardens in Devon were successful in completing the inaugural series collection. Not satisfied with just that, Styer went on to collect the full second and third series.

As he notes, the 1980s were the heydays of collectibles. While there are a number of his Santas that have significant monetary value, Styer says the sentimental value of some is of bigger importance to him.

The Lancaster Influence

Remember that original Santa?  Shoemaker, a self-taught woodcarver, has gained much renown, including creating an ornament for the White House Blue Room Christmas tree 20 years ago. He’s been a major player and award recipient in the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen and has been among Early American Life magazine's 200 Best Traditional Craftsmen each year since 1994, with his carvings frequently chosen as cover subjects on the annual Christmas issues. His whimsical works are heavily detailed and boast an interesting finish combining oil stain over acrylic and paste wax. Among his best-known work: more than 25 carvings for the Lancaster Moravian Church "Putz," the nativity told in a dozen separate scenes.

Styer has since collected more than a score of Shoemaker’s works and has taken classes taught by him. An anomaly in the midst of the Santa collection is a wooden pig carved by Styer as part of a Shoemaker class assignment.

There appears to be little rhyme or reason to Styer’s extensive Santa collection.  

There are old and new Santas, including one with a sleigh and reindeer rendered in cast metal painted gold and white that may date to the 1880s and which holds a place of honor in the living room.

The largest, circa the 1960s, at 5 feet, 6 inches, is made of concrete and papier mache and was purchased in Adamstown. The smallest, about one-half-inch tall, was a find in Stone Harbor, NJ. And the Santas are made out of everything from stone to glass to fabric and yarn to porcelain to sand.

There are Ned Foltz redware Santas, Christopher Radko Santa ornaments, Eldreth Pottery Santas from Lancaster County, and Marx Tin Toy Santas.

An early Pez dispenser boasts a full-figure Santa, and a later model shows the traditional stick Pez holder with the Santa character head.

Santas of Many Moods

In one corner, an unsettling circa 1952 cloth Santa has startling goat-like eyes that glow gold thanks to two C7 light bulbs. A dozen or so Belsnickels, the Pennsylvania German version of creepy Santas, are interspersed throughout the second-floor hallway, study and living room. Nearby, a jolly, more benevolent illuminated 1950s-era Santa lightens the atmosphere.

Another unique piece was once a common giveaway more than six decades ago in Greater Reading: a detailed and colorful cast iron bank with the image of Santa on a sleigh with his bag of goodies. The children’s bank bears a small nameplate: The Pennsylvania Trust Company, Reading, Pennsylvania.

And beyond the Santa figurines, there are Santa promotional pins in the fashion of political buttons in large and small sizes filling several photo albums. These styles of buttons were souvenirs of visits to the sixth-floor Toyland in the former Pomeroy’s Building at Sixth and Penn streets in Reading or to the former McCurdy Store in the city. There are also Red Cross commemorative holiday buttons from early in the 20th century.

A vintage 1930s Arnold windup Santa goes the distance for Styer even though the character’s ability to walk is all wound down.

Styer’s Santa collection has been on display year-round in the study, living room, and upstairs hallway for more than three decades now.

“In 1983, after Christmas, we packed up the Santas,” he says. “For Christmas 1984, we got them out, and they’ve stayed out since then.”

Collecting Ever More

Interspersed with the Santas, and throughout the house for that matter, are specimens from his more than 30 – yes, 30 – collections.

What are those collections? Here’s a partial list: walking canes, tin model Cadillacs, Berks County postcards, highchairs, coat racks, taxidermy pieces, skulls (yes, skulls), marble and stone doorsteps, cast-iron paperweights, tall and short needlepoint stools, umbrellas, glass banks (one of those, a glass bear, was his grandmother’s), clocks, and French faience plates.

A pair of Lee and Grant smokers are part of his Civil War artifacts and collectibles. And, when it comes to that collection, he practices what he gathers: Styer is a Civil War re-enactor. He proudly notes he spent nine days at Gettysburg in 2013 for the 150th anniversary of the epic battle.

Local history and things associated with it are also showcased in the house, including several works of legendary local artists carefully displayed throughout the house.

Illuminating some of those paintings is a vintage brass parking meter repurposed into a table lamp. The plate on the base reads: “The First Reading Parking Meter. 1947-1971.”

And Styer’s collection isn’t just limited to the inanimate. His well-tended gardens boast more than 100 varieties of hostas.

Styer also collects for his better half. Jana Styer enjoys vintage African-American items and cookie jars.

“I go into the hunter-gatherer mode for her as well,” he says, acknowledging that her passion for her own personal collections falls far shy of his.

One Fortunate Fellow

“I’m lucky,” says Styer. “She loves me and she respects my collections.”

The collecting bug has not captured the fancy of his grown daughters, Charlotte, a forensic architect living in Washington, DC, and Claire, a music educator in Howard County, MD. When the day comes to make decisions about his collections, Styer is hopeful the value will factor into their ultimate disposition.  To that end, he actually has some prices attached to the bottom of certain pieces.

Styer and his wife have worked hard over the years to make their Mohnton home not only tastefully reflect its circa-1880s style, but to also make sense of some very inconvenient and puzzling early additions. One of those actually required inhabitants to use two stairways to access adjacent second-floor rooms.  

Buddy Styer gets a kick out of explaining those dynamics, standing in the narrow second-floor hallway, arms extended, to show the placement of a now long-gone staircase, a welcoming landing, and a great period bathroom reconfigured into the space.

Along with Jana, Styer now shares his lovely home with two second-generation Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, 7-year-old siblings Wilbur and Daphne. The scions of a May-December coupling between parents Sophie and Henry, the pups, like everything in the house, have their own story. Suffice it to say their arrival was a surprise and tiny Wilbur, with a dire prognosis by the vet, defied odds and survived with Styer’s full-on 24/7 attention. To say Wilbur is now Buddy’s constant companion would be an understatement.

One great advantage of the Santa collection is this: the Styer house is always ready for Christmas, a clear advantage for the busy couple who loves to entertain and share their home with family and friends.

“I just love the feeling of everything here,” Styer says. “It fills my heart, not just my house, and every day pretty much feels like a holiday.”