New collectible villages gallery at Graceland has everything from Elvis to Harry Potter

Can a thousand tiny houses compete with one great big mansion?

Graceland officials will learn the answer this week, when a strip mall-sized gallery devoted to the collectible "villages" of the Department 56 company — the "Snow Village," the "Dickens Village," the Harry Potter village, the Peanuts village, and dozens of miniature burgs, boroughs, hamlets, whistle-stops, city blocks, Whovilles and other toy-sized precincts — opens Thursday night, across the street from the Elvis Presley home, as a permanent addition to the Graceland campus.

"Compete" isn't really the right word. The quaint, Christmas-associated village displays — which include a 2023 Graceland collection, complete with a miniature version of the airplane that Elvis named "Lisa Marie" — are intended instead to complement the full-sized Graceland experience by offering tourists another visiting (and shopping) opportunity showcasing "another storied American brand that's loved by millions," in the words of Joel Weinshanker, majority owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises.

Not coincidentally, Weinshanker's Ad Populum company also is the owner of Illinois-based Enesco, the company that acquired the Department 56 brand in 2009; the new Graceland-based village gallery/museum is officially known as the "Enesco Gift Shop & Gallery Featuring Department 56."

But if the new gallery is an example of corporate as well as cultural synergy — "Nothing says Christmas like Graceland, but also nothing says Christmas like Department 56," says Weinshanker — it's also a feast for the eyes that is likely to astonish and even delight casual visitors as well as the Department 56 collectors from all over the country who are in Memphis this week for the gallery's opening.

Founded in 1976 in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, the Department 56 company designs and manufactures holiday collectibles and ornaments, but is best known for its miniature themed and lighted porcelain and resin "villages," which collectors generally arrange and display during the Christmas season.

Intended to be definitive, the Graceland gallery will showcase more than 1,500 houses and other buildings, plus various accessories, according to Angie Marchese, Graceland vice president of archives and exhibits, who is working alongside a small army of Enesco/Department 56 representatives to install the gallery.

"Like we say, it takes a village to make a village," Marchese said.

"How this company has been able to continue its legacy and attract fans is amazing," she added. "It's kind of similar to the Elvis legacy."

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Weinshanker said Department 56 products are examples of "Americana," much like the memorabilia inspired by Elvis over the decades. In this way, the gallery, with its historic items from decades past, should appeal even to visitors who aren't village collectors, just as people don't have to be soda pop aficionados to appreciate a Coca-Cola museum.

"We want to bring the best of all things American to Memphis and Graceland," said Weinshanker. (To that end, the Graceland Exhibition Center has hosted shows devoted to Disney, Muhammad Ali and the space program.)

The Enesco Gift Shop & Gallery occupies the strip mall on the west side of Elvis Presley Boulevard, just north of the mansion, known as Graceland Crossing. Formerly home to a loose affiliation of random gift shops devoted to sometimes unauthorized Elvis memorabilia, the walls that separated the former shops have been knocked down so the mall is essentially a single long narrow L-shaped structure, with about 11,000 square feet devoted to museum-style exhibits devoted to the history, manufacture and display of Department 56 villages. The gallery is the only one of its kind in the U.S., with the building's renovation costing "a few million dollars," Weinshanker said.

Many of the items on display are discontinued pieces, highly sought by collectors. (According to Marchese, when Department 56 officials decide to discontinue an item, they literally break the mold.)

"We'd had all these pieces stored in boxes for years," said Lisa Johnson, regional account executive with Department 56, and a 41-year veteran of the company. "It was a real treasure chest, to open them up and see what we'd collected."

A visitor to the gallery first encounters examples of the first six Department 56 houses, which have a loose, almost Dr. Seussian insouciance somewhat absent from the more realistic later village pieces; it's as if the houses were about to start bouncing up and down, like living domiciles in an animated cartoon.

Nearby, the pieces that belong to the "Snow Village" collection, which has been growing since 1976, are arrayed on the layers of a massive wedding cake-shaped display in the center of a room.

Proceeding from there through the galleries like a giant descended from a beanstalk, the visitor encounters miniature churches, pueblos, log cabins, castles, "branded" structures (a Krispy Kreme, a McDonald's), commercially themed locations (Hogwarts, Whoville, Graceland), cities (a Chrysler Building, an Empire State Building) and on and on. "The Dickens Village is where the Rock 'N' Roll Cafe used to be," said Marchese, referring to the strip mall's former diner.

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Speaking of Christmas cheer, where's the miniature village saloon?

"There is a beer garden," Marchese confirmed. "There's a wine bar."

Michael Griffith, president of Department 56, said the collectibles company experienced a downturn in the wake of the bust of the Beanie Babies fad in about 1999. But after "collectors" who actually were speculators exited the market, Department 56 was able to recover and rebound. He said the brand's popularity rose after the emergence of COVID, when families began to spend more time together.

"It's something that has become a family tradition, passed down from one generation to another," Griffith said. "Everybody likes to say that it invokes really happy memories for them."

Expect those families to be here in full force in 2026: That's when, according to Johnson, Graceland will host a Department 56 convention celebrating the company's 50th anniversary. With more than 100 Department 56 collectors' clubs active in the U.S., thousands of people could come to Memphis for the event, she said.

The Enesco Gift Shop & Gallery officially opens Thursday, Nov. 16, after the 6 p.m. "Holiday Lighting Ceremony" that is a Graceland tradition. Starting the next day, the gallery will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week. Admission is free.

The gallery opens earlier, in a sort of preview, at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, when Department 56 artist Jim Shore, who has designed many of the company's most popular figurines, will be on hand to meet visitors and autograph merchandise. Shore and "village" artists Tom Bates and Scott Enter will participate in additional signing events on Friday and Saturday.

For a full scheduled of Graceland holiday events, visit graceland.com/holiday-lighting-weekend.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Graceland adds Enesco, Department 56 gallery. Take a first look.