The Simpich Elves
The Simpich Elves
The Simpich Elves have been part of the Simpich story almost from the beginning.
They were born in the imagination of my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich in the mid-1950s, and they've stayed true to themselves ever since: little woodland people — sculpted to scale, mind you, no taller than a mouse — who have gotten the important things figured out. They fish the creek. They read thick books with ribbons in them. They cook a good hearty meal and pour something warm to go with it. And at the end of the day they go home to old stumps in the Colorado woods, fitted out inside as snug as any cabin ever built.
No two elves have the same job, the same face, or the same story — a chef, a baker, a chimney sweep, a fisherman, a sailor or two. Each was designed by my grandparents Bob and Jan Simpich, then cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop. Together they make up one of the most whimsical corners of the Simpich Character Doll world — and one of the most beloved.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Whatever was just said, Knapp thought it was very funny.
His eyes are shut, his head is tipped back, and his mouth is open in the middle of a laugh — not a grin held for a photograph, a laugh caught halfway. Sculpting a closed-eye face is a decision. You give up the eyes, which are how most figures hold your attention, and you make the whole expression live in the mouth and the creases. It works. Nobody looks at this face and wonders what he's feeling.
The rest of him is built around the walk. A knapsack of woven jute, stuffed full and bound with dark cord, rides high on his shoulder — coarse, tactile, and the exact opposite of everything else he's wearing. His name is the joke and the joke is good.
He's dressed in red: a felt tunic cut in deep points at the hem, with a line of white blanket stitch running down the front opening and around each cuff. That stitching is worth stopping on. It's decorative, it's on the outside where every stitch shows, and someone sat and worked it by hand around every edge. His hands are pale suede mitts, one raised and open, and his legs are the same pale suede running down into sculpted brown clogs with a curl at the toe.
Over it all is a proper tartan — red, green, navy and cream, fringed at the ends, wrapped once and left long.
His hat is black felt, cut in tall points across the front and falling long down the back, sitting well off the forehead so the sculpted white hair sweeps out over his ears in two wings.
Knapp was designed by my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich, and he is one of the oldest elves I've ever had to offer. Two things say so, and both are on the piece rather than in a story I'm telling you.
He still has his original paper tag — a small printed card reading Simpich Elves, pinned to his scarf with a straight pin. That's how the shop tagged pieces before the gold foil sole labels came in. Tags are the first thing to get thrown away, and on a figure this age it almost never survives.
And his mark is different. The shoe carries "Simpich" pressed in, without the copyright symbol and without a year — not the format used on the later pieces I handle. Between the tag and the mark, this reads as a pre-1980 elf, and elves that old very rarely come through in one piece with their paperwork attached.
Condition is honest for his age: the pale suede has warmed to a soft cream, which is what suede does over decades and not damage. The red felt is unfaded, the tartan is sharp, the stitching is unbroken, and the tag is intact and legible.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Old Moss has been living in the forest long enough for things to start growing on him.
That's the joke and the whole design. His coat is moss — a shaggy hanging mass of dark fiber, grey going to green-black, with long strands of colored yarn tied down through it in magenta, gold, copper, violet and green. It hangs off his shoulders and trails past his knees, front and back, exactly the way old man's beard lichen hangs off a spruce branch. Stand him under a lamp and the colored strands catch light the way wet moss does.
Nobody else in the elf woods dresses like this. Every other elf gets cloth — felt, suede, knitted wool, cut and sewn into clothes. Old Moss doesn't get clothes. He gets growth.
But look at the face. It's the most heavily worked sculpting in the group and it isn't close. The whole head is built from folds: ridges wrapping around the eye sockets, deep nested creases across the cheeks, a great lumpy nose, jowls stacked in soft rolls, and a long wedge of beard furrowed top to bottom like bark. His eyes have disappeared entirely into the folds — squeezed shut in a grin so committed it has closed his whole face. The wrinkles aren't a texture applied to a face. They are the face.
He leans on a real stick: a natural branch with the bark off, the bend left in, a knuckle of knot at the top where his mitten closes over it. The shop didn't turn a dowel. They found a stick the right shape and used it.
Under the moss he's plain rose suede with soft mitten hands and simple sculpted clay-brown shoes. His hat is black felt, slouched down low and cut in soft points. He needs nothing else. Everything the eye wants is in the face and the coat.
His sole still carries the gold foil label: Simpich Elf · Old Moss · Handmade.
Cast from the original design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Ultra Rare | Three Piece Set | Pristine Condition
Somewhere upstream, a maple leaf came down on the creek — and two old elves looked at it and saw a ship.
Skipper stands at the helm in his navy peacoat and knit cap, hands on his hips, eyes up the rigging. The rudder, the mast, the patched canvas sail — all his own work, added so he could run the creek in any season and any weather, and upstream when the day calls for it. He is taking stock of it now, the way a captain does, and finding it sound.
Out at the bow, hung over the water on his elbows, is his first mate. Weyhay has the glass to his eye and not a care in the world. You or I would be in the creek at the first stiff breeze. This weathered, jolly old sailor is more at home on the leaf than off it.
This one is my grandfather's two lives in a single object. Robert "Bob" Simpich loved boats and loved sailing — he sailed out east as a young man, and I can still hear his tales of it, some of them tall, in every line of this piece. Here it all is: the rigging, the weather-stained canvas, the red pennant snapping off the masthead — folded straight into the elf world he spent fifty years building. Nothing else in the Simpich line does that.
The set comes as three pieces: the leaf boat on its finished wood base, Skipper, and Weyhay.
Sculpted by Robert Simpich, then cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
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Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Livingston has decided there's something in that hill, and he is going to go find out.
He's kitted out for it. The pickaxe is under his arm — real metal, forged-looking, dark and pitted across the head, set on a wooden handle through a rivet that's gone honestly rusty with age. It has weight to it. Whatever else the shop was willing to suggest with paint, they were not willing to fake a tool.
His hat is the second thing you see: wide black felt with the brim swept up on one side, a tan suede band around the crown, and a small brass stud pinning two spotted guinea feathers upright. Real feathers, not sculpted ones. Most of the elves make do with a hat; Livingston has an outfit.
Then the glasses — round wire spectacles, bent from actual wire, perched on that nose in front of eyes that are wide open and looking straight up at you. His mouth is a small round O. He isn't laughing. He's just seen something.
His face is built around the mustache, which is the most theatrical piece of sculpting in the group: white, enormous, flaring out to both sides past his cheeks in curling lobes, with the beard breaking into more of the same underneath and his hair curling out from under the hat brim.
He wears a cream suede tunic, sleeves gathered full at the shoulder, hem cut in deep points, with a fine hand-stitched seam running up the side in matching thread — worked where almost nobody looks. Under it, navy suede leggings and navy mitts. Over it, a tartan in navy, green and red with a yellow overcheck, fringed and wrapped once at the throat.
And the boots. This is the detail I'd put money on nobody else telling you. Most of the elves share a shoe — the same sculpted clog turns up on figure after figure. Livingston doesn't get the standard shoe. He gets his own: tall, heavy, cuffed at the top with a soft fold, and finished with a curled point at the toe that turns up like something out of a storybook. Someone decided this character needed footwear for climbing rock, and then made it funny. That's Bob choosing to do the harder thing for one figure.
Livingston was designed by my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Zippidee has found the cider jug, and he isn't drinking from it.
He's sat down flat on the ground, legs out in front of him, head tipped all the way back, lips pursed at the mouth of the jug — and what he's doing is playing it. Blow across the open neck of a jug and it answers with a low woody note, somewhere below a tuba. That's a jug band, and it's real music made from a thing that was never meant to be an instrument. Bob gave this elf the one instrument you can only own by first emptying it.
The jug is a proper little piece of pottery: two-tone stoneware, dark brown glaze over the shoulder and neck, warm orange below, with a loop handle you can see daylight through and CIDER lettered on the side in plain black. It's the kind of jug that used to sit in the corner of every farm kitchen, rendered small enough for an elf to wrestle.
His face is doing something the other elves don't. The eyes have rolled up and sideways, the cheeks are round with the effort, and the mouth is a tight little O painted red inside — an expression that only makes sense if you understand what he's doing. It's a joke you have to look at twice, which is the best kind.
He's dressed simply, because the jug is the event: a mustard suede tunic cut in points at the hem, black felt mitts wrapped around the jug's waist, a dark plaid scarf in navy and green with yellow and red threading through it, fringed and bunched at his neck, and a black felt hat cut in tall points, sitting back off a head of sculpted white curls. Sculpted terracotta shoes, oversized, planted where he dropped them.
Zippidee was designed by my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich.
And he's dated. The side of his boot is signed Simpich © 1982 — legible without even picking him up. The cider jug carries its own © Simpich mark as well: the shop signed the instrument separately from the musician.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Rare Design | Designed by Robert Simpich | Pristine Condition
Cat Fish would like you to know that he caught this himself, thank you, and no, it wasn't luck.
The pose says everything — fish hoisted high on the line, chin up, grin wide, the other hand tucked behind his back with practiced modesty. He's dressed for a long day on the bank: an enormous black felt hat, a tan coat, maroon mittens, and a fringed plaid wool scarf wound around his neck and hanging past his knees. The catch itself is its own little sculpture — a plump trout with green-washed scales, silvered fins, and a distinctly surprised expression, hooked and hanging from a real wire line.
He was designed by my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich — and if you've seen the Maple Leaf Boat set, you know the elves' creek. This is the fellow who fishes it.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Rare Design | Designed by Jan Simpich | Pristine Condition
Rosie is a rose, all the way through.
Her bonnet is a sculpted rose in full bloom — turn her around and you'll find the green stem and calyx on the back, a detail you'd only catch holding her in your hands. Her skirt is cut from rose-print fabric, and in her pink mittens she carries a fresh-picked red blossom on a leaf, offered up to whoever she's beaming at. And she is beaming.
Rosie was designed by my grandmother Jan Simpich, and she stands apart as one of the few women in the Simpich Elf line. She came in the final years of the doll shop, and few of this model were ever made. I'll be honest: production numbers on the elves were never really recorded, so rarity is partly guesswork — but in all my time in the secondary market, Rosie is one I almost never see. The gold "Simpich Elf · Rosie · Handmade" label is still on her foot.
Cast from Jan's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Very Rare Design by Jan Simpich
Hap has found his Christmas tree, and he'd like a hand decorating it.
That's what the wave means — one arm up, grin wide, absolutely certain you'll say yes. The tree itself is Hap's little secret: to you or me it's a small cutting off a small pine, but dragged home to an elf house built into an old stump, it's a proper Tannenbaum, floor to ceiling, the kind the whole burrow comes to admire.
He's dressed for the errand: a tan suede coat with a zigzag hem, a long plaid scarf against the December air, brown mittens, and a sculpted hat pulled down snug. One mitten grips the trunk. The other is busy inviting you in.
His name says the rest. Hap is short for happy, and the sculpt doesn't leave any doubt.
Cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Designed by Jan Simpich | Pristine Condition
Shawn has raised his mug, and he's waiting on you.
The toast is to your health, probably — or to the weather, or to nothing at all, because by the look on his face Shawn doesn't need much of a reason. His tankard is carved like a little section of log, bark and all, with a proper head of foam sculpted on top. In the elf woods, that's simply what a mug is.
He's dressed like a fellow who planned to be out all evening: a green tunic with a hand-stitched seam up the back, red mittens and leggings, a long tartan scarf thrown over one shoulder, and a fine sculpted hat with a buckled band, worn at exactly the angle you'd expect from an elf in this mood.
Shawn was designed by my grandmother Jan Simpich. Turn his hat over and you'll find the Simpich mark pressed into the back of the band — the shop signed him where only a collector would look.
Cast from Jan's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Mr. Dinwiddie has just told a joke, and nobody is laughing harder at it than Mr. Dinwiddie.
Look at him — mittens clasped to his chest, eyes squeezed shut, rocked back on his heels, the punchline still working through him. He's the wit of the village: the elf with a joke for every occasion and a few for no occasion at all, the one who can't make it through his own best material with a straight face. No gathering in the woods really starts until Mr. Dinwiddie arrives, and none of them ends without somebody's sides hurting.
He's dressed in high village style: a blue coat over navy mittens and leggings, a blackwatch tartan scarf, and a grand floppy black hat that bounces when he laughs — which is to say, it bounces most of the day.
Cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Very Rare Design by Robert Simpich
Teedlewomp is the scribe of the forest floor village, and business is good.
Every trade needs its paperwork, even among the elves — and when there's something worth setting down, it comes to him. He's equipped like he means it: a real feather quill longer than he is tall, wire-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, and a parchment in his other hand bearing a message in his own looping script. The big black hat and red coat give him the air of a village official; the smile under the spectacles gives him away as a soft touch.
And here's the part collectors will love: Teedlewomp is the helper who writes out each Simpich Certificate of Authenticity. If a certificate has ever come with one of your Simpich pieces, you've already held his handwriting. Now you can meet the fellow behind the quill.
Cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Designed by Robert Simpich | Pristine Condition
Walter is off on another adventure, and by the look of him, he'd love some company.
Everything the day requires is slung over his shoulder — a red bandana bundle knotted to a real twig, carried the way wanderers have carried their worldly goods forever. Knowing Walter, it's a picnic. His free hand is up in a jolly wave, his eyes are crinkled shut with the grin, and his white muttonchops are practically bristling with the pleasure of setting out.
He's dressed for whatever the forest may throw at him: a vibrant red coat with a zigzag hem, a plaid wool scarf knotted at the neck, blue mittens and leggings, a soft black cap, and the big brown elf shoes made for a full day's walking.
Walter is one of the harder elves to come by — not the rarest of the line, but a face you won't often find waiting for you.
Cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Designed by Robert Simpich | Pristine Condition
Go ahead — shake his hand. It's tradition.
In the old stories, a handshake from a chimney sweep brings a year of good luck, and Smudge is holding his hand out to you like he knows it. Fresh off a job, by the look of him: there's soot smudged across his cheeks and nose, dusted into his white hair and eyebrows, and his boots are blacked to the toe. He hasn't bothered to clean up, and that's the charm — the grin under the soot says the work suits him fine. He's got his tall black top hat, a red buffalo-plaid scarf against the cold, red mittens, and his chimney brush standing at his side like a soldier's pike.
The soot is the detail to look at closely. It isn't grime — it's painted, deliberately, cheek by cheek and brow by brow, so that Smudge is permanently, cheerfully mid-shift. His name was earned.
Smudge was designed by my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich. He's one of the rarer elves I've had come through — a character collectors mention often and see seldom.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Nobody has ever enjoyed a chore this much.
Wisp is sweeping his own doorstep, and the face he's making about it is the face most people save for good news. Eyes squeezed shut into deep crow's feet, cheeks up, mouth wide open in a laugh you can almost hear — the whole head is creased with it. Turn him around and there's a thick sculpted ruff of white curls at the back of his neck, worked as carefully as the front, on a spot that faces the wall.
The broom is not a prop. It's a real besom in miniature: a thick bundle of broomcorn bristles, bound tight with green twine, mounted on a length of split cane still showing its grain and its splits. It's the working shape — the same one people have been tying together for a few hundred years — just made small.
He's dressed for cold work at an early hour. A red knitted cap, ribbed at the brim and rolled up once, with a long soft tail that flops over on itself. A black tunic cut in points at the hem. Red mittens closed around the handle, one high and one low, in the grip you'd actually use. Red leggings, sculpted brown clogs, and a heavy plaid scarf in brown, black and cream — the softest, woolliest scarf in the group — wound twice around his neck and left long down his back.
The knitted cap is worth a second look. Every other elf in this batch wears cut and stitched felt. Wisp's hat is knitted, ribbed, and finished like real hosiery. It's a different craft answer to the same problem, and it gives him a silhouette nobody else has.
His sole still carries the gold foil label: Simpich Elf · Wisp · Handmade — the shop's own name for him, right there on the piece, which is why there's no guesswork about what to call him. There's an impressed mark on the sole as well, running alongside the label.
Cast from the original design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Jan Simpich
He's found them, and he wants you to see.
Huckleberry has one mitten up in a wave and a basket of red berries swinging from his shoulder, and his whole face is doing the same thing at once — grin wide enough to show his teeth, eyes creased, freckles across the bridge of his nose. He is the young one. Every other elf in this group has a white beard and a lifetime behind him. Huckleberry has neither, and that's the first thing you notice standing him next to the others.
The basket is the piece to look at. It's an acorn cap — the real shape, with the cross-hatched scaling of the cup rendered tight and clean around the bottom — turned into a berry basket and slung on a thin suede strap. Inside, a mound of sculpted berries in deep red, each one rounded and individually catching light, tucked among green leaves. The woods gave him the container and the woods filled it. That idea, an elf small enough to use an acorn as luggage, is the whole scale argument for these figures in one object.
His cap is sculpted and painted a deep green, the brim breaking into a row of curling lobes like leaves turned up all the way around, with his red-orange hair curling out from under it in painted waves. Below that: a camel suede tunic cut in sharp points at the hem and cuff, teal wool mittens and leggings, and a soft blue plaid scarf — blues going to green with rust threads through it — wound high at the neck with the fringe hanging loose. The scarf carries down his back as cleanly as it does the front.
His boots are sculpted, cuffed at the ankle and curled at the toe, painted the same warm clay brown the shop used across the elves.
Huckleberry was designed by my grandmother Jan Simpich, and he came late — one of the last elves added to the line rather than one of the originals. That's part of why he's hard to find. Fewer years in production, fewer made, fewer still surviving in a condition worth listing.
And this one is worth listing. The paint on his face is crisp — the freckles, the lash lines, the individual teeth all still sharp — the teal hasn't gone gray, and the berries have kept their depth of color.
Cast from Jan's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Zippidee has found the cider jug, and he isn't drinking from it.
He's sat down flat on the ground, legs out in front of him, head tipped all the way back, lips pursed at the mouth of the jug — and what he's doing is playing it. Blow across the open neck of a jug and it answers with a low woody note, somewhere below a tuba. That's a jug band, and it's real music made from a thing that was never meant to be an instrument. Bob gave this elf the one instrument you can only own by first emptying it.
The jug is a proper little piece of pottery: two-tone stoneware, dark brown glaze over the shoulder and neck, warm orange below, with a loop handle you can see daylight through and CIDER lettered on the side in plain black. It's the kind of jug that used to sit in the corner of every farm kitchen, rendered small enough for an elf to wrestle.
His face is doing something the other elves don't. The eyes have rolled up and sideways, the cheeks are round with the effort, and the mouth is a tight little O painted red inside — an expression that only makes sense if you understand what he's doing. It's a joke you have to look at twice, which is the best kind.
He's dressed simply, because the jug is the event: a mustard suede tunic cut in points at the hem, black felt mitts wrapped around the jug's waist, a dark plaid scarf in navy and green with yellow and red threading through it, fringed and bunched at his neck, and a black felt hat cut in tall points, sitting back off a head of sculpted white curls. Sculpted terracotta shoes, oversized, planted where he dropped them.
Zippidee was designed by my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich.
And he's dated. The side of his boot is signed Simpich © 1982 — legible without even picking him up. The cider jug carries its own © Simpich mark as well: the shop signed the instrument separately from the musician.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Designed by Robert Simpich | Pristine Condition
Rupert has decided that this year, he is a reindeer.
He's got the antlers tied on with a red satin bow, a brass jingle bell at his collar, and the proud, chin-up posture of somebody who believes the costume completely. Never mind that he's a mouse. It's Christmas, and in the elf world, a mouse with enough conviction can pull a sleigh.
Rupert the Rain Mouse also carries a secret about the whole Simpich Elf line. Like the maple leaf boat, he's sculpted to scale — and the scale tells you something. These elves aren't fairy-tale dwarves or garden gnomes. They stand just a few inches tall, mouse-high, small enough to live unnoticed in the woods and mountains of Colorado. Set Rupert next to any elf and the world snaps into proportion.
Cast, hand-painted, and finished with his ribbon, bow, and bell in the Simpich Doll Shop.
Elf Collection | Rare Design | Designed by Jan Simpich | Pristine Condition
Honey Doo is the elf collectors ask me about by name.
Here she is in full: gold spectacles perched on her nose, a lace collar over her red blouse, navy mittens, and a crisp white pinafore over a calico skirt printed — look closely — with strawberries and bluebells. The jam-maker wears her orchard. In one hand she's got her rolling pin, and in the other, a tiny glass jar of her famous honey jam, the one that shares her name. The jar carries the real gold Simpich shop label, reading "Simpich Elf · Honey Doo · Handmade" — her own preserves, labeled like the treasure they are.
She was designed by my grandmother Jan Simpich, and she's one of the best-loved women in the elf line — the kind of piece that gets requested, waited for, and rarely given up once found.
Cast from Jan's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Designed by Robert Simpich | Pristine Condition
Jeremiah has read the book under his arm more than once, and he's about to tell you what's in it.
One hand is raised — making the point, or blessing the road, or waving you over to hear the good part. The other keeps a thick volume tucked tight against his coat: black-bound, its page edges worn to gold, with a red ribbon bookmark trailing out the bottom. A book with a ribbon in it belongs to a reader, not a decorator.
Everything else about him says a life spent walking and thinking: the great black hat gone soft and shapeless with age, brim drooping until only one bright eye peers out; a beard that pours down past his belt like the ones the prophets wore; a fringed homespun tunic under a rough travel coat. His name suits him. Jeremiah is the wise one — the elf the others go find when the question is too big for the kitchen.
He was designed by my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Very Rare Design by Robert Simpich
Sweet William is named after a flower, so nobody in the village was surprised when he took up picking them.
Here he is on a fine summer morning with the day's first armful — two sunflowers, each bloom as big as his own face, held up to his nose with both mittens while he takes them in, eyes closed, completely gone. At his size, smelling a sunflower isn't a passing pleasure. It's a full engagement.
He's dressed in soft country layers: a cream suede coat with a zigzag hem, a brown-and-white tweed scarf, dark mittens and leggings, and a black cap sliding back off his white curls. The flowers are bound for home — an elf's house can always use something growing in it.
Cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Heirloom Condition | Extremely Rare Signed Design by Robert Simpich
HoHum is ready for a nap. Or maybe two.
He's mid-yawn — eyes shut, mouth wide, one grey mitten come up too late to cover it — after a long day out in the forest doing whatever it is that tuckers an elf out so thoroughly. His soft black cap is already sliding toward sleeping position, his navy coat and plaid scarf are still on, and the strong impression is that he may not get all the way to bed before sleep finds him. His name is the sound he's making.
He's a rare design in his own right. But turn this one over and he becomes something more: one boot sole carries the gold Simpich shop label with his name, and the other carries the ink signature of my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich. Bob very rarely signed the elves — he did it only when a collector asked him to, which means someone once cared enough about this particular sleepy fellow to put him in the sculptor's hands and request it. Signed examples of any elf almost never come to market.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
Thunker has got it. Don't help him. He's got it.
The tongue poking out the corner of his mouth says this log is precisely as heavy as an elf can carry, and the look in his eyes says he's carrying it the whole way home anyway. To you and me it's a twig. Chopped and split down at his scale, it's a full night's roaring fire in the hearth — and the night ahead is a crisp one, so the effort is worth it.
He's bundled for the errand in a teal coat, black mittens, and a great tartan scarf in red and purple wound twice around his neck with both ends flying. White curls, big ears, no hat — a fellow this warm-blooded from the work doesn't need one.
Thunker is one of the earliest and most classic elf designs. And that early date is exactly why he's hard to find like this: the older the elf, the more years of sun, dust, and handling it has survived. Most Thunkers wear those decades. This one doesn't.
Cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Rare Design | Designed by Jan Simpich | Pristine Condition
Rosie is a rose, all the way through.
Her bonnet is a sculpted rose in full bloom — turn her around and you'll find the green stem and calyx on the back, a detail you'd only catch holding her in your hands. Her skirt is cut from rose-print fabric, and in her pink mittens she carries a fresh-picked red blossom on a leaf, offered up to whoever she's beaming at. And she is beaming.
Rosie was designed by my grandmother Jan Simpich, and she stands apart as one of the few women in the Simpich Elf line. She came in the final years of the doll shop, and few of this model were ever made. I'll be honest: production numbers on the elves were never really recorded, so rarity is partly guesswork — but in all my time in the secondary market, Rosie is one I almost never see. The gold "Simpich Elf · Rosie · Handmade" label is still on her foot.
Cast from Jan's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Rare Design | Designed by Robert Simpich | Pristine Condition
Kuchen is tasting the stew, and by the look of him, it needs one more pinch of something.
He's the chef elf — eyes closed, wooden spoon to his lips, giving the batch his full professional attention. He's dressed for the work: a real cloth chef's hat, a leather apron with a hand-stitched pocket, and red oven mitts on both hands, because a serious cook respects a hot pot. His name is the German word for cake, and he has clearly earned it.
He's listed today with a rare Simpich elf table — a miniature butcher block, complete with a carved cleaver buried in the work surface and a corked jug of what Kuchen insists is cooking sherry, though the shape of that jug tells a different story.
The set comes as two pieces: Kuchen, and the butcher-block table with its fittings.
Cast, hand-painted, and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Designed by Robert Simpich | Pristine Condition
Pierre has just pulled this one from the oven, and he knows it's good.
Look at that face — eyes crinkled shut, grin barely contained in the beard. He's the elf baker, and he's cradling a golden baguette nearly as long as his arm, still warm, held the way you'd hold something you're proud of. He's dressed head to toe for the trade: the tall white baker's hat, red oven mitts, and a proper working apron over his green jacket — turn him around and you'll find the straps crossed neatly at the back and the ties knotted at the ends, the kind of detail the sewing room never skipped, even where almost no one would look.
Pierre was designed by my grandfather Robert "Bob" Simpich, and everything about him is baked-in warmth: a small French baker at the end of a good morning's work, bread in hand, somewhere in the elf woods of Colorado.
This piece is in pristine condition.
Cast from Bob's design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Elf Collection | Pristine Condition | Designed by Robert Simpich
The present can wait. Smoke is having his pipe.
Look closely at the bowl: there's a wisp of white curling up out of it. Not painted — actual fiber, placed there and left to drift, so the pipe reads as lit and the whole figure reads as paused. That is a very small idea, very well executed. It's the difference between an elf holding a pipe and an elf enjoying one, and it's the reason he's named for the smoke and not for the pipe.
The pipe itself is a sculpted corncob, painted in reds and rusts with the kernel rows still legible on the bowl, clamped in his teeth at a comfortable angle. Above it his eyes have gone up and off to the side — the look of a man thinking about nothing in particular and in no hurry to stop. His beard and mustache are sculpted in deep white waves that fan out well past his jaw, and his ears stick out from under a hat brim wide enough to keep the weather off both of them.
That hat is the silhouette. Black wool felt, soft-crowned, brim floppy and generous — a farmer's hat, not a Christmas hat, and it makes him unmistakable from across a shelf.
The rest of him is dressed for a cold walk: a light blue suede tunic with the hem cut in points, deep wine mittens and leggings, and a long fringed plaid scarf in reds, rusts and charcoal wrapped once at the neck and hanging nearly to the hem. Turn him around and the scarf hangs as neatly down the back as it does the front — the shop dressed the side no one photographs. His boots are sculpted and painted a warm clay brown, curled at the toe, and the left sole carries the pressed © SIMPICH mark.
Under his right arm, tucked in and held with a mitten, is a small gold-wrapped package tied with a green ribbon bow. He's on his way to give it to someone. He simply stopped first.
Smoke is a later rendition of an earlier elf design — the character came first, and this example was made further down the line, which is worth saying plainly rather than implying an age the piece doesn't have.
Condition is strong: the blue suede hasn't gone gray, the plaid still shows its full range of color, the mittens are unworn at the tips, and the smoke wisp is intact — which is not a given, since it's the most fragile thing on him.
Cast from the original design, then hand-painted and dressed in hand-sewn clothing in the Simpich doll shop.
Get in touch with Toby Simpich
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