A piece on a popular product, with an interesting Catholic-business-related tidbit.
O’Toole’s decision to enter artisanship followed two years of caring for a cancer-stricken friend. When he died, she thought: "If I could change just one life, I would be grateful."
She and her creative partner, Celeste Galanger, who lives in Oregon, decided that goal could best be achieved from the inside of their business out. The pair employ only stay-at-home moms to do any extra embroidery, sewing and assembly. O’Toole, a single mother who raised four boys, said she always wished she could have been home with her children.
She’d never sculpted anything before sitting at her kitchen table one day with a wooden spoon and a wad of clay to mold her first head – St. Jerome, the cantankerous monk who translated parts of the Bible. Before she begins, O’Toole looks to history for inspiration and information, studying the saint’s life along with any images she can find, real or rendered. When she crafted St. Patrick, an abbot lent her his miter and staff. When working on St. Veronica, she met with a retired nun who had lived in Galilee.
Recently, O’Toole set to work on the head of a Baby Jesus doll, which she planned to give away at Santa Ana’s St. Francis Home, the assisted living facility where her grandmother lives. She’d always noticed the nuns’ kindness toward Trotechaud, but when her grandmother fell ill a few months ago and her need for attention became greater, O’Toole’s appreciation grew.
And the tidbit?
Plush religious toys are "definitely a trend, a very successful one," said Alan Napleton, founder of the Catholic Marketing Network, which promotes Catholic items such as statues, rosaries and, now, holy figures in miniature. New Catholic shops are cropping up each month, he said, and for the first time since the 1940s and ’50s, they’re gaining momentum in a business long led by evangelical Christians.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say I find that very hard to believe, unless the shops are in parish church vestibules or online….
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