By Jennifer Anthony
Walking into J. Cruse Abilene Gallery and Gifts is a bit like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia. A six-foot wintery white Santa silently welcomes visitors, a polar bear cub tucked under his arm, merriment twinkling in clear and lifelike eyes.
It isn’t the North Pole or even your living room on Christmas Eve, but the magic is the same. Customers describe it as breathtaking.
Each room of the renovated house at 1246 N. 6th St. used for the gallery and gift shop sparkles with the wreaths, trees, garland and illumination of Christmas. The cornerstone features of the store are the J. Cruse Santas and elves, each designed and hand made by artist, chef and sculptor Jackie Cruse of Post, Texas.
The Abilene store and Jackie Cruse’s own store in Post are the only places where these Christmas creations are available.
In the past, Cruse’s Santas, which are available in either a 36-inch size or a life-size six feet, have been featured in the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog and found their way into Christmas celebrations at locations ranging from the White House to the Dallas Cowboys organization.
One visit to the store explains why. Each Santa or elf is a unique work of art. Custom-designed and sculpted by Cruse, the figures are delightfully realistic and imaginative, from details like eyelashes to stunning white beards made from Tibetan lamb wool. Cruse orders the eyes for each figure from a special-effects artist in California to achieve maximum realism and expression.
Only a limited number are available each season. Cruse’s store in Post is open from September through the end of February, after which he begins production again, filling custom orders and designing original figures for the two stores to display and sell. The Santas range in value, beginning at $1,000, and are insurable for up to $10,000 depending on their size and the extravagance of their materials.
A smorgasbord of festivity
Besides the traditional Christmas fare, J. Cruse Abilene also carries several specialty items – including such products and gifts as FarmHouse Fresh, a line of whimsical, natural, gluten-free body care products made in Texas; chocolates from The Sweet Shop of Fort Worth, known for its Grand Truffles and Famous Brags; and Lenny and Eva, an interchangeable jewelry collection.
The store also carries Cavallini & Co. vintage stationery, featuring a variety of authentic vintage images including historical maps, antique botanical plates, mid-century travel guides and advertisements.
Watercolor works by Austin artist Joy Harris hang throughout the gallery, including a vivid, light-filled painting in the front room depicting Johnson City’s annual Lights Spectacular.
The experience of shopping at the Abilene J. Cruse store can be as simple as selecting a single piece of chocolate or as involved as choosing a completely decorated, custom-crafted tree to be wrapped, delivered, reassembled by a designer personally trained by Jackie Cruse, and – after the holidays have ended – packed away and stored until next year’s holiday season begins.
Each of the trees and wreaths is designed by Cruse according to the year’s theme. This year, several items feature a rustic, burlap-and-pheasant-feather motif that still manages to tie in some sparkle and pizzazz. Cruse’s designs are implemented by Kathye Gardner – who owns the store along with her husband, Cliff – and daughters Tara Wood and Tonya Kitchens. 
“We’ve been in training with Jackie since last November,” Gardner said. “Everything has to look the same at our gallery as the ones that he does. There is a certain look to it, and we had to learn that. We continue to be in training all the time.”
Trees range in price from $700 to $3,000 fully decorated. Customers have the option of selecting specific elements a la carte and helping design their own look. The store also sells large decorative sleighs for lawn décor.
“The store just kind of gives lots of ideas,” Gardner said.
After the Christmas season ends, inventory shifts to a greater emphasis on home décor until September of the following year, she said. All of the seasons and holidays are represented to some extent as the year progresses.
Linda Ingram, co-owner of Ingram Cleaners and friend of the Gardners, watched the store come together over the past several months.
“She just poured her heart and soul into it, and it’s wonderful to have a business like that,” Ingram said. Her prized J. Cruse item is a spring wreath for her front door, decked with big burlap ribbon, daisies, bees, and metal art with letters that spell out “Bloom.”
“It’s just a show stopper, as far as when people come over or we have a party or something like that,” she said. Ingram said she is looking forward to doing some Christmas shopping this season at the gallery.
In a nod to mothers of young children, the gallery includes a chalk room with toys, coloring books, a small flat-screen TV for movies, and beanbag chairs.
“We put that playroom in the back just so that moms can come in and look, and if their kids are with them, they can go in and play,” Kitchens said.
The business has also offered its space for local groups and birthday parties. Guests at such events receive a 10 percent discount on the day of the meeting, and the store also offers catering. Pricing for events depends on the number of participants and whether wine will be served. Jackie Cruse’s signature secret-recipe cupcakes and finger foods are also options.
The Abilene Philharmonic Holiday Home Tour on Nov. 9 includes at least one home decorated by J. Cruse Abilene this year, and the store is also participating in the Junior League of Abilene’s Christmas Carousel Nov. 1-4 at the Abilene Civic Center.
A Christmas wish
As a girl, Tonya Kitchens remembers that her dad knew how to deck the halls.
“Christmas has always been a special time where Dad would basically cover our house in Christmas lights,” she said.
Now, Christmas is the family business. Between the Gardners, their son Ty, their two daughters and sons-in-law Matt Kitchens and Coby Wood, the family managed to complete a major seven-month remodel of the building on North 6th Street, which had previously housed a resale shop.
Even the Kitchens’ son, Coston, 4, spends time in rooms filled with shimmering ornaments, garland, exquisite wreaths and towering six-foot Santas.
“He knows this store inside and out,” Kitchens said. “He can sell everything in this store. He’ll be up here, and I’ll hear him just taking a group of ladies around the room, talking about each thing.”
Ty Gardner and his girlfriend, Nicki Sterling, originally spotted the available building, Kitchens said.
“I stopped in, and I was like, ‘I could see this working,’” she said, “You know – with a lot of work.”
The members of the family pulled up old blue carpeting, repainted the entire interior and exterior, and remodeled to shape the house to their needs. One necessary change was the addition of French doors in the back, Gardner said, to allow clearance for the large-scale items the store carries.
Originally the house had been so filled with miscellaneous resale items that the Gardners weren’t aware of the fireplace.
“Once we got it and started taking everything out, we realized it’s exactly what we wanted,” Kitchens said. “It had the look and feel that we wanted. …With a house like this, people can see what it will look like in their home.”
Another pleasant surprise was the hardwood floor beneath the carpet and linoleum. Once refurbished, the floors added another layer to the homelike warmth of the gallery.
Kitchens said she and her mother and sister had always wanted to own a store. When her father and brother decided to launch a financial business in Abilene, the family migrated to Abilene from Big Spring and Blanco.
“Last Christmas, mom and dad went into Jackie’s store in Post, which we do every year,” Kitchens said. “It’s the store we’ve always gone to. And dad asked him if he would be willing to ever think about branching out and starting another store somewhere.”
Cruse told them he had already begun paperwork with his lawyer for expansion after a couple in Dallas had a similar inquiry. With the assistance of Gayla Fullerton, senior business counselor at Texas Tech University Small Business Development Center, the couple got the business up and running in less than a year.
“She continues to advise us and help us out,” Gardner said.
For her part, Fullerton said she anticipates that the business will benefit from its Abilene location, being centrally located in Texas and able to draw traffic from people passing through.
“She didn’t give up,” she said of Gardner. “She just kept trying for that ideal. That perseverance was her key to getting what she wanted.”
And that perseverance is paying off.
“We just love the store. It’s such a happy place,” Gardner said. “We will always have Christmas in here.”
Works of Art With a Hint of Magic
When sculptor Jackie Cruse begins with a new piece of German cernit clay, he doesn’t know who will come alive in his hands. By the time he has finished the face of the next J. Cruse Santa, said the celebrated chef and artist from Post, Texas, “I know.”
Cruse owns the J. Cruse Christmas Gallery in Post, which operates as an artisanal factory several months out of the year and a destination Christmas store beginning each September.
At the beginning of this year, Cruse partnered with Cliff and Kathye Gardner of Abilene to launch J. Cruse Abilene Gallery and Gifts, the Gardners’ dealership of his Santas, elves, wreaths, trees and Christmas interior decoration items. The year-round Christmas store opened in August.
Cruse began making Santas in limited editions for Neiman Marcus in 1996, as well as filling custom orders. Now his Santas – which are available as 36-inch tabletop pieces or in a life-size six feet – are one-of-a-kind creations that can be custom-ordered and are available only in Post and Abilene. This year, Cruse designed and built 100 Santas.
“It’s just fun to see what it’s going to develop into,” Cruse said of the creative process in choosing his Santas’ expressions, personalities, clothing and accessories.
After sculpting the face from clay, the master mold-maker casts a silicone mold of the face and pours it out of a resin-and-porcelain combination for durability. The skin pigment is mixed into the resin to keep it from fading, cracking or peeling.
After the face has come alive and Cruse’s design for the Santa is complete, he travels to Dallas to enlist the help of his small sewing team there.
“I select my fabric, right alongside the seamstress, cut out the design of what I want to go together. Then I leave all the sewing there for them,” Cruse said.
In the meantime, he returns to Post, where he builds the base and body. He adds airbrush color and a beard from Tibetan lamb wool. Particularly striking are the eyes, shipped from a Hollywood special-effects artist who has worked with Jim Henson’s Muppets. The eyes cost about $100 a pair and – together with the sculpted facial expression and the lifelike eyelashes – create a gleam worthy of the jolly old elf.
The process seems as magical as Christmas itself, but Cruse’s success is grounded in hard work and vision. As a boy growing up in a single-family home in Post, his family functioned as a unit, he said, with everyone pitching in to help care for him and his sister. He credits his aunt, his grandmother and his mother, Henry Etta Cruse, with helping form his confidence and vision, as well as his passion for cooking and art.
“They instilled values in every one of us, as far as nothing in life comes easy, but if you work at it, there’s always someone who will believe in you,” he said. “And if you try, it’s not hard to get people into your vision.”
His mother still assists him with the store in Post, and he credits his family with always supporting his artistic and culinary pursuits.
As a high-schooler, Cruse entered a gingerbread-house decorating contest sponsored by Brach’s Confections and placed third out of 150,000 entries. He was accepted into the New England Culinary Institute while still in high school. Cruse completed the four-year degree in two years and finished in 1993.
He spent time working on wedding cakes with gum paste, a pliable and slow-drying edible medium, which translated into his taking up wedding planning. One day in Hobby Lobby, inspiration struck when he realized that if he could sculpt out of sugar, he could sculpt out of clay.
“I saw people fighting over little salt-dough ornaments and thought, ‘We used to make those in grade school.’ I did some research.”
He dug into the Christmas industry financials and discovered what a major market was opening up there. “There’s got to be a piece for me,” he remembered thinking, “And I like making stuff.”
The decision to pursue the Christmas dream, although it proved a sound financial decision, was also fueled by a love for the holiday season. Cruse said he remembers his grandmother driving them in her station wagon to look at Christmas lights, sometimes going as far as Lubbock for the best and brightest.
His first venture into sculpting began with the co-founding of J&T Designs and Imagination. Cruse and his business partner designed, created and marketed Christmas figures sold by Christian bookstores in Lubbock and Midland. With the help of a mutual friend at a Christmas trade show, a representative of Neiman Marcus approached Cruse.
“She was like, ‘I want some of these, some of these and some of these.’” Cruse said. “I said, ‘We’re just trying to figure this out.’”
Figure it out they did, and Cruse’s first order for a Santa came from Neiman Marcus, and his first Santa ended up in its Christmas book. He produced limited editions of his 36-inch Santas that retailed in about 60 design shops around the United States.
To meet the demand, he opened a factory in Post with about 50 employees to fill hundreds of orders for the handmade heirlooms. In 2000, Neiman Marcus asked him to design a life-size Santa commemorating the millennium, after which he continued producing the six-foot versions of his pieces.
Cruse and his business partner sold J&T Designs and Imagination in 2001 to Boyds, makers of collectibles and toys, most notably Boyds Bears. Cruse worked for Boyds for three years then decided to change direction. He opened the J. Cruse Christmas Gallery in Post to test a store in that market.
“I thought, ‘If it will work in Post, it will work anywhere,’” he said.
In addition to the Post gallery and the new Abilene dealership, Cruse has a hand in his nonprofit organization, Post City Festivals, which is actively working toward its mission to “increase community involvement and interaction” for the economic and cultural enhancement of Post, according to its mission statement.
Work is underway on a $500,000 gated Christmas village of 17 buildings, including a grocery store, ice cream parlor, toy shop, church/schoolhouse combo, Victorian mini-mansion, courthouse and post office – each covering roughly 250 square feet. The Christmas village is scheduled to kick off in the summer of 2014 with a spring fling, followed by a Mad Hatter Holiday, a Charles Dickens Stroll and a Post version of The Polar Express with the addition of a $150,000 custom-built trackless train.
“I like what I’m doing,” Cruse said with a chuckle. “You can probably tell.”
Cruse said visits to his store in Post have become a yearly tradition for people in the area. He would like the same to happen for the Abilene store.
“We want to be a family-oriented business, as far as people being able to bring their kids and look forward to it every year,” he said.
The reception Abilene has given the new store has been gratifying, Cruse said. “I’m really impressed with how Abilene has really wrapped their arms around the Gardners and the concept,” he said.
As Cruse works toward branching into other cities with additional dealerships, he said he wants to keep his expansion limited to maximize the unique flair and fun in each store.
“We pride ourselves in doing something different,” he said.
Cruse credits his success in part to his multifaceted expertise, encompassing the artistic, culinary and fashion worlds.
“You should never define yourself by one thing,” he said. “God may have more than one thing for you, if you’re open.”
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