How Glad Can Limited Tidings Be?

Anybody who says “Nostalgia ain't what it used to be” probably doesn't remember the annual Official Bethlehem Christmas Plate.

If you were around in the 1970s, you remember the collector's plate phenomenon. Norman Rockwell art was king, and others flowed into the stream. From humble beginnings in Denmark, with the Bing & Gröndahl annual Christmas plate that started the whole business in 1895, small porcelain plates with pictures on them became an industry. That the entire concept of a commercially produced instant antique is ridiculous was (and is) of no consequence to plate collectors. Equally ridiculous to producers and equally significant to collectors was and still is the backstamp — information and validation on the back of the plate. Tens of thousands of collectors have cared far less about the art on the face than about the inscriptions on the back.

Plate collecting still exists, but in strange byways, with pictures of Dale Earnhardt and some “Star Wars” characters. How the mighty have fallen!

But back then, in the mid-to-late 1970s, plate collecting was booming. I was writing copy for Calhoun's Collector's Society and my wife Margo was Calhoun's director of development. We were rockin' and rollin' with the plate craze.

The word “official” always has had impact. So, sitting cynically around the conference table, we pondered: What could we create in a holiday plate that hadn't been worked to death before and might have an “official” claim? Aha! The Official Bethlehem Christmas Plate, actually fired in the Holy Land and bearing the imprimatur of a major cleric.

Art was no problem. Plate artists breed like rabbits. The plate itself was a different problem, because we did have to justify the “official” claim.

We turned that bit over to a fixer, Ari Merimsky, who lived near Tel Aviv. Sure enough, Ari found a porcelain manufacturing company in a town called Akko, near the Lebanese border. That's where we'd fire the plates. But whose name could we put on the plate backstamp and on the super-important Certificate of Authenticity?

One happy day we had a phone call from Ari Merimsky: For a set fee, the Archimandrite Gregorios of the Greek Church in Bethlehem would let us put his name on the backstamp and his photo on the sales literature.

Uhhh…seems impressive, but what's an archimandrite?

I just looked up the word on Google and saw 20,600 listings. But we didn't have Google then, and Webster's was mute on the point. We simply took Ari's word on two factors: The Archimandrite Gregorios was in fact associated with the church; and a more telling point — if we couldn't find out what an archimandrite was, neither could any plate collectors.

(A Google listing clarifies: “A cleric ranking below a bishop.” So we were legitimate after all.)

In due course came the archimandrite's signature for the backstamp, plus a photograph. Uh-oh. Our official clergyman was wearing sunglasses. Ari explained in an accompanying note: This is the man who greets the tour buses, and he felt sunglasses were as major a part of his image as was his bushy black beard.

No big deal. Bob Ahlcrona, Calhoun's staff artist, painted out the sunglasses. As a sign of appreciation, Bob inherited the “Master Artist” commission for the next year's Official Bethlehem Christmas Plate, using his middle name, Edgar.

The first year's plate, by a local artist named Gerald Miller, set the theme — “The First Christmas Eve” — and was considerably more artistic than most plates of that era. We set an “edition limit” of 10,000 plates to assure collectors of scarcity. (Some plate issuers were announcing edition limits of “120 firing days” — excellent duplicity, because over that period it would be easy to complete hundreds of thousands of plates.)

Adding to the sales value was that the Official Bethlehem Christmas Plate was fired on genuine Royal Cornwall china. Establishing Royal Cornwall had been the most difficult task of all, because we submitted 32 names to the trademark office before those picky bureaucrats accepted that 33rd name. Calhoun's owned the Royal Cornwall name, and most Royal Cornwall “blanks” were imported from Nagoya, Japan. But our innate sense of integrity demanded that the Bethlehem plate not only be fired in the Holy Land but be manufactured in the Holy Land.

No problem. Margo had set up the machinery by visiting Na'aman, the porcelain house at Akko. I followed up by dropping in on the mayor of Bethlehem, a Christian Arab named Elias Freij. In those kinder, gentler times, to see the mayor of Bethlehem all one did was open the door of his office and walk in. Elias Freij didn't have the slightest idea what I was talking about, but he saw no reason to object. The art was harmless, and he knew the Archimandrite Gregorios.

In ample time for Christmas 1977, the acclaimed first edition of the Official Bethlehem Christmas Plate appeared. It was an instant smash hit, so at once planning began for the second annual Official Bethlehem Christmas Plate, “Glad Tidings” (see photo at left). We no longer could attach the magical cachet “First Edition,” so we had to build excitement on the base the first year's edition had created. Bob Ahlcrona's art was superior, not that collectors truly cared about what was on the face of the plate.

Midway through preparations, potential disaster: The Archimandrite Gregorios, sunglasses and all, was recalled to Greece or somewhere. But then we looked at the agreement Ari had set up. It gave us the right to use his name for five years. So he wasn't still there? So what? Wherever he might be, he still had the title, didn't he? And if he didn't, who could ever track him down?

The Official Bethlehem Christmas Plate lasted through four Christmas seasons. And it still lives. Again checking with Google, there are the various issues of that plate, selling for four or five times the original issue price.

So why not head for GoAntiques.com or another online source and stake your claim? After all, these are the only plates carrying the rare and famous signature of the Archimandrite Gregorios.

HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS is the principal of Lewis Enterprises in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He consults with and writes direct response copy for clients worldwide. Among his 27 books are a just-published new edition of “On the Art of Writing Copy,” “Marketing Mayhem” and “Effective E-mail Marketing.”