Fans looking to deck the halls Star Wars-style this year may want to hunt down a new pair of Fabriché (that's "fabic-maché") centerpieces from Kurt Adler, who continues the popular line which began with Artoo, Threepio, and Yoda in 2005.
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"It's just great fun to showcase everyone's favorite Star Wars characters with a whimsical holiday approach," he says. "When Kurt Adler began the line, we had some terrific vintage Ralph McQuarrie art to base the Fabriché items on, and the Yoda was extremely well-accepted. The challenge is in expanding the line to cover other key characters in the Star Wars universe without sacrificing their integrity. We feel like we've done a nice job keeping the characters faithful to their roles in the films while having a bit of fun with them at the same time."
The new Jawas display piece was initially proposed for last year's line. It continues the McQuarrie-themed look begun in 2005. "It seemed a natural with the existing McQuarrie art that showed the Jawas exchanging gifts," continues Spitale, referring to a classic holiday card the artist had done for Lucasfilm some years ago. "We thought it would be clever to focus on the small section that actually showed what the Jawas were re-gifting to each other -- stolen droid parts such as Artoo's domed head, C-3PO's misplaced arm, Vader's right glove, a stormtrooper helmet, etc. We had several ideas for presents, but we were naturally limited by room on the actual piece."
While some ideas needed to be pared back for space and to keep costs in check, the final result captures the whimsy of McQuarrie's original artwork quite nicely. Artoo's domed head was appropriately placed in a hat box, and a wind-up sandcrawler happily completes the scene.
Since there was no obvious choice of McQuarrie artwork to use for Boba Fett, a new sculpture for a bounty hunter Fabriché was designed from scratch. "Kurt Adler had wanted to do a Boba Fett piece because of his popularity," says Spitale, "so the challenge was figuring out how to make the character work in a holiday theme. The initial concept was of a snow-swept Boba on a snow bank -- I suggested instead he could be delivering the frozen Han in carbonite to Jabba as a holiday present, which would ground him a bit more in the holiday season.
"So from there we morphed the Wookiee braids into rope for his Santa bag, adopted the red gauntlets from Return of the Jedi to coordinate more closely with holiday colors, and added a few blasters for his fellow bounty hunters."
With two more great additions for the 2007 season, can we expect more from Kurt Adler's Star Wars Fabriché line in 2008?
"I hope so!" says Spitale. "It's really become one of my favorites, and I believe there's still a McQuarrie holiday Ewok piece of art or two floating around..."
Look for Kurt Adler's Jawas and Boba Fett Fabrichés in stores in November, where you can also still pick up the four previous editions from the line: Artoo, Threepio, Yoda, and Darth Vader.
