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ARTS & CULTURE / ANTIQUES
CRACKING! GET
This year, why not accessorise your Christmas table with antique nutcrackers? You’ll be amazed at how many ingenious ways there are to crack nuts
Words Jennie Buist Brown T
here are more ways than one to crack a nut, as any collector of antique and vintage nutcrackers will happily tell you. Tools to crack
nuts have been around for a long time – in fact as long as there have been nuts and people wanting to eat them, tools of one sort or another have been used to crack the hard outer shells. Nowadays nutcrackers are associated with Christmas – a popular nut-eating time – and can often be found in the shape of wooden soldiers (think Nutcracker ballet) which are usually more decorative than functional.
Although the earliest nutcrackers were
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
most probably stones, there are metal nutcrackers dating back as early as the third or fourth century BC. Porcelain, ivory, iron and wooden nutcrackers came along later and luckily for us can still be found today in all shapes and sizes. On a recent visit to Rouen’s excellent Musee Le Secq des Tournelles I saw, among the many ironwork exhibits, some stunning iron nutcrackers dating from the second to the 18th centuries. Some of the very earliest ones are beautiful and detailed works of art even though the metal being hand-forged must have been red hot. And that’s the nice thing about nutcrackers – they can be either fi guratively ornate or plainly functional. Most collectors decide on an area of nutcracker collecting – treen, brass or iron – although some prefer to collect more risque types such as those shaped as ladies’ legs, nicknamed Naughty Nellie’s! Personally, I like animal-shaped nutcrackers and have
a particular fondness for both squirrel and dog-shaped models. Most of these are made from brass and date from the 18th and 19th centuries. As with all nutcrackers, some are plain and some are ornately decorated. As well as squirrels and dogs, look out
for lions, crocodiles, alligators, eagles, bears and even human skeletons. Dating from the same period, and also made from brass, you can also fi nd human character nutcrackers – I’ve seen a Shakespeare model as well as fi ctional characters such as Fagin, Sikes and Mr Pickwick. Carved fi gural nutcrackers are possibly the most collected and make a very interesting collection. The early 16th, 17th and 18th century specimens are extremely rare and expensive, but you can still fi nd those made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many antique wooden nutcrackers were made in the UK and other parts of Europe such as the Black Forest region of Germany and in both France and Switzerland. They were mainly of the lever type – usually a pair of nutcrackers – the screw-based nutcracker probably fi rst appeared in the 17th century. The Anri wood carvers in the Italian Alps also produced a large number of nutcrackers in the early part of the 20th century, which are now collectable. Turn of the 20th century nutcrackers
made from brass can still be picked up for around £30 to £50, wooden carved European examples from the mid-19th century will set you back more than £100 and rare fi gural examples dating back to the 18th century or earlier will cost you well over £1,000.
The INDEX magazine
www.indexmagazine.co.uk 101
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
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