Would you like a little piece of Marshall Fields Christmas window magic?

Beneath the Salvation Army bonnet, the woman's cheeks are too red – as if she had to come in from the cold of State Street. And her blue eyes express the pleading weariness of someone whose work of helping the poor is never finished.

“Think about how many people have examined these things – literally looked through the glass. … They are scrutinized by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people over the course of the season,” explains Gabe Fajuri, owner of the Potter & Potter auction house on the Northwest Side.

Fajuri talks about the remarkable attention to detail in some of the three dozen or so animatronic figures taken from Marshall Fields' Christmas windows in the early 1980s, all of which will go under the hammer on September 12.

There is a woman in a fancy flapper outfit, whose stiff, upright posture and haughty expression suggest that she is used to getting what she wants, when she wants it. There is a man in a heavy tweed suit reading a newspaper (unfortunately not the Chicago Sun-Times) in the famous Walnut Room.

The figures – about half the size of a human – were on display at Field's from 1982 to 1984. The theme during those years was “Christmas at Marshall Field's,” with each window representing a different era in the store's Christmas history.

Amy Meadows was a window cleaner in her early 20s and was part of the team that installed these figures in 1982 and 1983.

“It was challenging because you were working in a very small space,” says Meadows, now 65. “You had to work with the carpenters to put together the sets, backdrops, walls and raised platforms.”

Part of her job, Meadows says, was to keep the windows well-filled with “snow,” or more specifically, kosher salt.

Meadows' job often meant she was on her hands and knees, working more than 10 hours a day. But even she succumbed to the magic of Christmas.

“When you came (to Marshall Field's) at Christmas, you had chicken pot pie under the big Christmas tree, you visited Santa at the Cozy Cloud Cottage, you went to the Salvation Army,” Meadows recalls. “People found so much emotion, pride and joy.”

Keith Hale/Sun-Times, file

It was not unusual, she says, for a young man to want to propose to his girlfriend in front of the Christmas windows, so Field staff arranged for a model train to emerge from a tunnel, belching smoke and with a sign on the roof that read: “Will you marry me?”

Although there is no train among the auction items, there is a horse-drawn delivery truck from Marshall Field & Company, whose glass-enclosed carriage is filled with gifts.

And what will probably attract a lot of attention: a model of the store's famous outdoor clock, which is about a meter high. It is not waterproof, so it would have to be installed indoors.

“It's something that everyone can identify with, whether it's part of the Christmas window or not. People still see it every day when they go downtown on State Street. … If I were to bet, I'd say that's the piece that's going to fetch the highest price,” Fajuri says.

According to Fajuri, the motors on about half of the figures for sale work; the others are relatively easy to repair.

But walking through the wonderfully crowded Potter & Potter warehouse at 5001 W. Belmont, you might wonder what anyone would want with a bunch of three-foot-tall, old-fashioned Christmas figurines.

“Maybe you'll set up your own Christmas display. How many houses have you been to where people have really embraced the Christmas season and set up their own display?” asks Fajuri.

The auction items did not come from the basement of a Marshall Fields – or rather a Macy's department store. They were most recently housed in the warehouse of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. For a time in the 1990s, they were part of the museum's annual Christmas exhibition.

“Having a collection is a bit like having a garden: you change it out regularly and make new things,” says Kathleen McCarthy, the museum's collections manager and chief curator, explaining why the figurines are being sold.

For more information about the upcoming auction, visit www.potterauctions.com.