We had an 11-piece Native American–style nativity set come through the shop. The pieces are tall and beautifully proportioned — the kind of nativity that has presence in a room rather than just sitting on a side table. We listed it as a Nova-5 piece from Albuquerque, 1990s, because that’s what the box and the older man we bought it from had told us. A few hours after the listing went live, a stranger from south of Austin sent us a message that, in the gentlest way possible, told us we’d gotten the artist wrong.
The correction
“I would like to correct you about this nativity set,” she wrote. “It is made by Fred Evangel in Albuquerque, NM. You can look up his website. It is not from Mexico. I have this set and love it.”
This is the kind of message every dealer hopes for and quietly dreads. Hopes for, because someone clearly knows more than we do and is willing to share it. Quietly dreads, because we have to update the listing in public and admit we were off. The right response is the easy one: thank her, fix it, ask the next obvious questions. Did Fred ever work for Nova-5? Was Nova-5 a distributor, a studio, a reproduction outfit? She didn’t know either. Her set was a Christmas gift from her kids about eight years ago — they paid roughly $1,000 for it new — and she’d treasured it ever since. Her stables were different from ours, she noticed, which is part of why she’d reached out. She wanted to make sure Fred got the credit if it really was his.
Going down the Nova-5 rabbit hole
We did the research she asked for. Fred Evangel is real, has a website, and has been making nativity figures in this style for decades. Searching old newspaper archives for “Nova-5,” we found help-wanted ads from a long-defunct Albuquerque business — they existed, but the connection between Fred’s hand and Nova-5’s distribution never fully resolved. Our best guess: at some point Fred sold a design, or licensed it, or a reproduction outfit cast versions of his figures and sold them through Nova-5. Both versions exist. Hers looked hand-carved; ours looked hand-cast and hand-painted. Different production methods, possibly the same originating artist.
The Tlingit influence in the figures’ faces and proportions also kept tugging at us. The original owner had said the set came from Alaska. Fred, working in Albuquerque, was clearly modeling his figures on Pacific Northwest indigenous art traditions — which made sense given how widely his work was admired and collected. Sets like this have shown up at large institutional crèche exhibitions, including the International Crèche Exhibit Pilgrimage at Notre Dame, where pieces of his style have been quietly featured in the broader collection.
What ended up in the listing
We added Fred’s name and his attribution. We described our set honestly as appearing hand-cast and painted, possibly distributed under the Nova-5 name during a busier period of his career — but we noted clearly that we couldn’t confirm the chain. The set sold for almost $1,000, to someone who appreciated the proportions and the presence the figures carry. We never did find a definitive paper trail tying Fred to Nova-5. Maybe a reader of this knows. We’d genuinely like to.
Why this kind of correction matters
The thing the woman from Austin did is the thing every working dealer wishes happened more often. She didn’t lecture, she didn’t shame, she didn’t post about us anywhere. She sent a private message because she wanted Fred’s work protected. The whole exchange ended with us thanking each other, swapping a few notes about both being in Texas, and her saying, “I just wanted to protect Fred’s work if it is his. I could be wrong.” Both of us could have been. That’s the actual texture of provenance research — two strangers comparing notes in good faith and ending up with a slightly better-grounded listing than either of them would have written alone.
We rotate nativity sets through the shop regularly — Avon, Hudson, Italian Fontanini, hand-cast Mexican ceramic, the occasional Pacific Northwest piece like Fred’s. If you’ve inherited a set and aren’t sure what you have, send us a few photos. We’ll tell you what we know, what we don’t, and who else might. Sometimes the best part of this work is the part where someone writes back and says you got it slightly wrong.