If you admire the unique charm of Erzgebirge figures, you should know a little bit about their background. The mountain tradition of honesty has stamped life here for hundreds of years in this beautiful landscape. It explains how the people from the Erzgebirge region live charming and simple lives. It leads to the creation of nutcrackers with their tails and such lifelike smoking men.
"From the miners here come the universe," says an Erzgebirge tradition. There were rich deposits of silver, tin, copper, lead and other mineral resources, mined from the 12th century. It brought wealth to the area which was used to build splendid castles, such as at Augustusburg, for the elite classes from Saxony to use for pleasure and hunting lodges. There were an endless diversity of occupations beyond mining, such as artists who sold their wares to the miners at closing time. The minerals were mined to exhaustion by the middle of the 17th century. So the miners began turning to wood-carving to earn their living.
Unique and technically complex objects emerged, for example the hooped wood form which was used to make many different animals. Or the wood chip spindles which required much skill to construct. The figures from Erzgebirge were unmistakable in the costly and skillful handwork given. It's no surprise that they are so popular everywhere and could transcend short-lived fads over the years.
Erzgebirge is a region in Eastern Germany. Some of the hot spots are Seiffen, Olbernhau, Gruenheinichen, Marienberg and Spielzeugdoerfer. If you write to the Chamber of Commerce, they promise to send literature about the region:
Verband Erzgebirgischer Kunsthandwerker u. Spielzeughersteller
Bahnhofstrasse 3
O-9330 Olbernhau
Comments to Steve and Barbara Hall
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