STUDIO CITY : Collector Has Mini Christmas on Display

The items Ruth Oldham of Studio City has on display for Christmas this year are small, and that’s the way she likes it.

Oldham is a collector of Christmas miniatures, but she does not think small. On display are the more than 1,000 pieces she has collected over 30 years. They fill shelves that take up an entire wall in her apartment, depicting Santa’s workshop, Santa’s living room, Mrs. Claus’ kitchen, a sleigh room and a candy factory.

In the miniature sewing room, for example, elves use minuscule scissors, spools of thread and a tape measure to knit a scarf, cap and mittens. Neatly stowed in a tiny dressmaker’s cabinet are tufts of orange, green and blue yarn and stamp-sized dress patterns.

In the shipping room, an elf clerk keeps track of the piles of colorfully wrapped packages. Another elf works at a desk complete with a shiny red phone and an account book. A few steps away is a dainty pencil sharpener decorated with a sprig of holly.

Oldham, 55, keeps her Venetian blinds open in the evenings so that her neighbors can view her creation from a courtyard that her living room window faces.

“People walking by go, ‘Oh my God!’ ” said Anne Stromberg, one of Oldham’s neighbors. “They press their noses against the glass.”

Oldham, a bookkeeper, said one of her friends, after seeing her collection, told her, “I’ve been grumbling about Christmas and I was getting out of the spirit, but now I’m back in the spirit.”

A Santa, an elf and a glass reindeer made up the first Christmas scene that Oldham arranged on an end table in 1964. Four years later, the figures--many of which are Christmas tree ornaments--filled an entire shelf, and then in 1971, two shelves. The collection continued to expand, more or less reaching its present size by 1987, Oldham said.

The entire display, which spills over into two additional bookshelves, includes five levels and 20 scenes, including one devoted to Disney characters and another containing characters from movies, nursery rhymes and cartoons.

When her now grown-up sons, Rory and Ron, were 9 and 10, they built tables for Mrs. Claus’ kitchen, which Oldham says she thinks of as her own mother’s kitchen. The sewing room was created to remind her of herself and her sisters, who all loved working with fabrics.

Usually, when she buys something for her collection, she gets two of each kind.

“I always thought that someday, Ron and Rory would each take half,” Oldham said.