Recollections of the State Street of Christmases past are tinged by a sense of loss after an auction of automated figures that once appeared in Marshall Field’s display windows.
Thirty of them were snapped up by bidders at the Potter & Potter Gallery on Belmont Avenue on Sept. 12. About 3 feet tall, they included “a standing Victorian gentleman” and “a boy with his begging dog.”
“These things are synonymous with all those warm and fuzzy feelings that we have at that time of year, and those kinds of expeditions to the Loop and its department stores,” Gabe Fajuri, the auction house’s president, told a reporter before the auction.
“Nostalgia, combined with commerce combined with happiness,” is the common denominator of the collection, Fajuri said.
One high bidder at the September auction took home a Snow White whose arms moved. Another left with a Wicked Witch of the West. Her caldron seemed to boil over, thanks to a tiny light bulb. They had illustrated windows echoing classic fairy tales.