Brothers Share an Ideal Place : Visitors Troop to See a Porcelain World Built for Holidays

Deny Cook and his brother Les Stone have created their own small world in the living room of their Santa Ana home, and every year hundreds of visitors come to marvel at their work.

This “world” of theirs contains hundreds of porcelain buildings, people and animals that make up six villages celebrating Christmas. A model railroad surrounds the communities, while miniature hot air balloons and 747 jetliners fly overhead.

The brothers estimate it takes them and their friends more than 1,000 hours to meticulously set up the display each year.

“When we’re working on the display, it looks like a hurricane came through here,” Cook said.

Five years ago, Cook decided he wanted a miniature winter village as part of the Christmas decorations. “I wanted something that reflected the stories about the old country that my grandmother told me as a boy,” said Cook, who was raised in a German-American community north of Denver.

He and Stone settled on a collection produced by a Minnesota company called Department 56. Each village is fashioned as a Christmas or winter scene, with such names as the Dickens, Alpine, New England and Sleepy Hollow, in addition to North Pole and Nativity in Bethlehem.

The day after purchasing the first seven buildings, Cook wanted more. Because the company makes only a limited number of each village, he and Stone launched a continuing nationwide search for all the available pieces. Their efforts include keeping in contact with other Department 56 collectors and vendors through the Prodigy computer network, which has resulted in visitors coming from as far as New York to see the display.

But aside from the intricate detail of the lifelike collectibles, the display is especially charming because of Cook and Stone’s special touches.

“We don’t have to buy everything,” said Stone, an accountant. On their travels they brought back small rocks from a lighthouse off the Maine coast that now surround their miniature lighthouse.

Cook snips flowers and branches off the neighborhood shrubs for the mini winter trees and gardens in the display. “I can just look at something and picture how it’s going to be,” said Cook, who was a floral designer before multiple sclerosis forced him to stop working.

The brothers use cake decorating figures for forest animals, tongue depressors for cemetery headstones, and 30 pounds of faux snow on the rooftops and ground.

They take such care with detail that the village trash cans are filled with Christmas wrapping paper and empty bottles. And the Amish neighborhood of the New England village is lighted by flickering bulbs, to look look like oil lamps “since they don’t use electricity,” Cook said.

Christmas carols emanate from hidden speakers, a metronome simulates the sound of wood chopping and water recirculates to create the mountain waterfalls and fill the town square fountain.

“People come here and say they wish they could shrink down and be a part of it,” Stone said.

The brothers open their home to the public from Thanksgiving day through Epiphany evening on Jan. 5.