Lester Raymer was the ultimate upcycler.
The central Kansas artist used discarded pitchforks to create a Swedish folk candelabra, he painted intricate scenes on small jewelry boxes, and he turned tin cans into elaborate star-shaped ornaments.
“If Lester saw anything in a magazine or book or a catalog that he wanted, he could just make it,” said Marsha Howe, curator of the museum in Lindsborg that celebrates Raymer’s work. “Forget that ‘buying’ business — that costs money. If he could make something, why not?”
Raymer’s prolific recycling of material transformed the abandoned barn where he worked for 40 years into an evolving artwork itself. The artist painted doors, tucked wood carvings into corners, and added elaborate ironwork to farm sale furniture. His paintings, sculptures and ceramic work decorate every wall.
In 1997, the Red Barn Studio opened as a free museum that preserves Raymer’s workspace just as he left it, and the winter holidays are a special time to visit.
That’s when staff unwrap and show off the 52 mechanical clowns, toy soldiers, and carousels in its collection that Raymer carefully handcrafted as special gifts for his wife.
“Christmas is pretty big around here,” said Emily Howe, director of the museum. “If you come to Lindsborg during the Christmas season, you'll see the toys and more of Lester’s tin star ornaments.”
Over three decades, Raymer created a diverse range of toys for his wife, including a carved Noah's Ark full of animals that would nod their heads whenever the wooden craft was rocked.
Another year, he constructed an elaborate, Russian-themed nativity scene. The onion-domed manger is complete with Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, flanked by a trio of wise men.
“Almost all the toys have some kind of a mechanical mechanism to them,” curator Marsha Howe said. “In some letters that he had written to friends, he talks about struggling with the mechanisms, to get them to work properly.”
Marsha Howe, who served as director of the museum for 23 years, and her daughter Emily Howe, the current director, work together often, giving tours to visitors.
They also host an artist-in-residence program that brings artists from around the country to small-town Lindsborg, about 200 miles west of Kansas City, known as “Little Sweden” thanks to the immigrants who settled there in the 1860s.
“The Swedes always celebrated Christmas in a huge way and we continue that tradition here,” Marsha Howe said. “Obviously, Lester was excited about Christmas because you can see all the nativities he made.”
Discarded objects become decoration
Raymer met his wife, Ramona Weddle, while studying at the Chicago Art Institute in the 1930s. They married in 1945.
As Ramona Raymer told the story to The Wichita Eagle newspaper in 1977, she told her husband one year she wanted to collect antique toys, but “I told Lester they were just too expensive.”
“So the next Christmas, he gave me one he made himself,” she told the newspaper.
That first gift began a holiday tradition. Each year the inventive artist would come up with an ambitious new design and, over the next three decades, Raymer made 56 toys in all.
Emily Howe noted Raymer’s was a generation that came of age during the Great Depression, and Raymer himself never let anything go to waste. The artist was adept at transforming ordinary items cast off by friends and neighbors. The gold embellishments on many of the toys he made, for example, are from sardine tins and cans of corn.
“Nothing was too lowly for him or to use in his work, especially the toys and things that he was creating for the Red Barn Studio,” Marsha Howe said.
Raymer turned an old gray, flannel bag into a waddling walrus with a carved wooden face and ivory-white tusks. He dressed the creature in a festive, red and gold embroidered jacket.
Raymer’s playful circus-themed gifts included a wagon filled with animals that would move when it was rolled across the floor.
According to The Wichita Eagle, Raymer’s toys attracted a lot of local attention. As early as the 1970s, Lindsborg residents were eager to see his latest Christmas gift.
Before his studio became a museum, the toys were displayed just a few blocks away at the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery. For 50 cents, Ramona Raymer offered special, guided tours through the exhibit to show off the mechanical movements of each toy and share memories of her husband.
By the time The Wichita Eagle caught up with her, Ramona Raymer wasn’t sure which Christmas gift was his first. She said it might have been an acrobat designed to flip over a set of bars, or perhaps a puppet that tossed a ball from one hand to the other.
Raymer created art until the very end, and was working on four paintings when he died in 1991 at the age of 84.
His wife wanted the toys he made for her to remain together as a collection, and not be broken up, so they could be enjoyed by visitors for years to come.
That’s why Raymer's work table remains just how he left it, said Emily Howe.
“You can see a little tin can lid that is beginning to look like a star,” she said.
This article was reported during a week-long artist-in-residence program hosted by the Raymer Society, which preserves the Red Barn Studio as a museum and provides cultural programming.
The Red Barn Studio Museum, 212 S. Main St., Lindsborg, Kansas 67456, will display Lester Raymer’s Christmas toys as part of the Lindsborg, Kansas, Christmas Artists' Studio Open House from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 7.
