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2 days ago | Advertorial | Maureen Calloway

“In daylight it’s a plain white dome. Light a candle, and the whole village comes back.” – Leola (76) is selling the last porcelain lanterns she will ever make

For nine Christmases, Leola Lauver has cast thin porcelain lanterns in the converted garage behind her house in Marcellus, New York, and sold them only at her church’s Christmas fair. But her hands have grown slower, and at 76 she has decided this will be her last Christmas at the kiln. On December 12, Leola switches it off for good. Her final 386 lanterns are being offered online for the first time.

Marcellus, December. For eight years, the same little moment has played out at the Christmas fair in the basement of the Presbyterian church on Main Street. A child picks up one of the plain white domes on Leola’s table, turns it over, finds nothing special and puts it back. Then Leola slides a lit tealight underneath it – and the child goes completely quiet.

Out of the blank porcelain, a whole picture appears: a snowy village with a church steeple, Santa’s sleigh over the rooftops, a robin on a holly branch. Glowing warm and gold, as if somebody had painted it with light.

“Where did the picture come from?” the children always ask. And Leola always answers the same way: “It was there all along. It just needed a little light.”

A grandmother’s night-light and 34 years of molds

The story begins with a night-light. Leola’s grandmother had come over from Germany with one small treasure: a porcelain lamp shade that looked like nothing at all in the daytime. At night, with the lamp on, a little scene of a mill by a stream appeared in it. “I would lie in her spare bed and stare at that mill until I fell asleep,” Leola says. “I thought it was magic.”

It wasn’t magic. It was a lithophane – a very old craft in which a picture is pressed into thin, unglazed porcelain. Where the porcelain is thin, the light shines through brightly. Where it is thick, it stays dark. The picture only exists when there is a light behind it.

At 25, Leola got a job in the mold shop of a big china factory in Syracuse. For 34 years she carved and cast the plaster molds that the factory’s plates, cups and gravy boats were made in – until the plant closed for good in 2009. “I made molds longer than I’ve done anything else in my life,” she laughs. “I can read a piece of porcelain like a newspaper.”

The first lantern, Christmas 2017

The first lantern was never meant to be sold. It was the winter of 2017, and Leola wanted to make her husband Orville something special for Christmas: the view from their front window, the snowy roofs of Marcellus and the white church steeple across the street.

Leola remembered her grandmother’s lamp. Over two weeks in the garage, she carved their own little village in reverse into a plaster mold: the church, the neighbors’ houses, the fir trees, the stars. She cast it in porcelain so thin you could see your fingers through it, fired it, and on Christmas Eve she set it on the side table next to Orville’s chair with a tealight inside.

“He sat down in front of it and didn’t say a word for a long time,” Leola says. “Then he said: ‘There’s the church. There’s our street.’ That was the moment I knew I’d make more.”

From one lantern to more than 2,600

The women from church saw it at Leola’s house and wanted one. Then their daughters wanted one. Then people started driving in from Skaneateles and Auburn. Over nine Christmases, Leola has cast more than 2,600 lanterns in eight designs, each with its own story: the Winter Village that started it all, Santa's Sleigh for her grandson, the Snowmen, the Angels, the Nativity for the church, the Robin from Orville’s bird feeder, the Cats for the two old tabbies that sleep on her workbench – and the Lavender Meadow, for everyone who wanted one to keep out all year round.

Not one was ever sold in a store or online. Only at the church fair and from Leola’s front porch – which is why, outside of central New York, almost nobody has ever seen one.

What makes Leola’s lanterns so special

In daylight they look almost too simple: a small matte white dome on a matching saucer, with a fine relief you only notice up close. Then the candle goes in.

Each lantern is a dome of unglazed bisque porcelain, 4.5 inches across and 3.1 inches tall, sitting on its own porcelain saucer. You lift the dome off, set a tealight on the saucer, put the dome back – and the scene lights up from inside in soft gold, with real depth: the snow on the roofs glows brighter than the walls, Santa’s sleigh stands out against the night sky, every feather of the robin shows. A battery LED tealight works just as well, for a bedside table, a child’s room or a whole evening without a flame.

“People always ask what it’s like the first time they light it,” she says. “The room goes quiet. Somebody switches off the overhead light. And then everybody just looks at it.” No cables, no tangle of string lights: one small candle, and a whole snowy village glows on the windowsill while the evening gets dark outside. It is the kind of light that makes a living room feel like Christmas Eve.

“Every year one more for the windowsill”

Leola keeps a shoebox on the shelf above her workbench. It is full of Christmas cards from customers. One family in Camillus has bought a new design every December since 2018 – all eight now stand on their windowsill, and the grandchildren argue every year about who gets to light them. Another card simply says: “Mom passed in October. Her Angels lantern was the first thing I lit in my own house.”

“That’s the part I’ll miss,” Leola says. “Not the casting. Knowing whose window they’re glowing in.”

“I’d rather stop while they still come out right”

One evening in late August, after a long day at the worktable, Leola noticed her hands were aching more than usual. She sat with a cup of tea for a long while, rubbing her fingers, and then called her granddaughter Paisley. “I’m 76, and my hands just don’t want to keep up anymore,” she says quietly. “I’d rather stop while every lantern still comes out the way it should.” So in September she planned one last big firing – and then that’s it.

She doesn’t make a fuss about it. But when she talks about this year’s church fair – the first in eight years without her table – she goes quiet for a moment and looks out of the window.

386 lanterns – then it’s over

On the pine shelves of the garage, wrapped in tissue paper in old apple crates, sit the last lanterns Leola will ever make: 386 of them – this fall’s firing, plus every lantern she had kept back for this year’s fair. Around 48 of each design.

It was Paisley, 27, who persuaded her to offer them online for the first time. “She said: Grandma, there are people in Texas and Oregon who would love these and will never come to Marcellus,” Leola says. She agreed on one condition: until her last day at the kiln, the price stays what it has always been at the church fair – thirty-nine dollars.

“I’ve asked thirty-nine dollars since the very first fair,” she says. “Nobody does this for the money. And I’m not going to get greedy on my way out.” The special price applies until December 12. After that, the remaining lanterns will keep shipping at the shop’s regular price – but only until the last one is gone.

What sets Leola’s lanterns apart:

What owners say

“The gift that comes out every December for the next 30 years”

Many of Leola’s lanterns were never meant for the buyer’s own windowsill. “Most people buy two,” Leola says. “One for themselves and one for their mother, their daughter, a neighbor who’s alone this year.” A lantern for a first home. It needs no outlet, no batteries if you use a real candle, it arrives wrapped in tissue paper, and it comes out of its box every December for decades.

Where can you get Leola’s lanterns?

Leola’s lanterns are only available through Backroad Goods, a small online shop for Christmas gifts from independent makers. Only there will you get the original lanterns from Leola’s garage in Marcellus. Look-alike porcelain lanterns from mass production have started to appear on big marketplaces. At first glance they may look similar, but they have nothing to do with Leola’s work.

December 12 – then it’s over

On December 12, Leola will switch off her kiln for the last time. “Nine Christmases,” she says, and looks at the apple crates on the shelves. “That’s a good run. I’d just like every one of these to be glowing in somebody’s window this year.”

If you would like one of the original lanterns from Leola’s final firing, don’t wait too long. The special price ends on December 12, and with the first-ever online sale, the 386 lanterns are not expected to last long after that.

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