Going Nuts for Nutcrackers

 

QUESTION: My family comes from a German background. When my ancestors first arrived in the United States back in the 1880s, they brought with them many of the customs and traditions. This included how we celebrated Christmas. My favorite job as a young boy was setting up the display of nutcrackers. I continued to do this until I left to go to college. But in all that time, no one ever explained to me how the tradition of nutcrackers at Christmas came to be. Could you please give me some history on them? 

ANSWER: Nutcrackers have been a part of Christmas ever since the first one appeared in human form in the 17th century. For Volker Fuchtner, making nutcrackers has been a family business ever since his great-great grandfather, Wilhelm Friedrich Fuchtner, created the classic wooden nutcracker in Germany's Erzgebirge region.

The Erzgebirge is a range of low, forested hills that form the border between the Czech Republic and the German state of Saxony. The town of Seiffen, which somehow managed to keep the woodworking tradition alive during the days of communist occupation, has more than 100 small family workshops, in which townspeople produce the nutcrackers. There are also huge replicas of the nutcrackers and other wooden figures all over town, and a visit to Seiffen at Christmas is special.

Mining used to be the main industry in the Erzgebirge—the name translates as "Ore Mountains"—but the silver, iron, tin and nickel eventually ran out. Woodworking then became a logical occupation for the people, since the region had abundant wood and rushing mountain streams to power their lathes and saws.

At first, woodcarvers made simple spindles, plates, staffs and common household articles, but they gradually turned to toys, notably cylindrical dolls produced with a lathe. Around 1870, some of the woodcarvers adapted these toys to become classic nutcrackers.

A classic nutcracker usually stands 14 to 18 inches tall and takes the form of a brightly painted king, soldier or some other stern authority figure with huge painted teeth, an upward curling moustache, and a nut-cracking mouth that reaches to his waist when open.

The fierce-looking nutcrackers served a purpose. Though Germans looked up to authority figures, they were also a bit resentful of them. The nutcrackers enabled the townspeople to make fun of them. The soldiers weren't limited to the original Ruritanian uniforms. They also sported spiked helmets or dressed as Russian hussars or British grenadiers. And there could be other fierce characters, including kings and robbers. The figures later appeared as more benevolent types from the German culture, such as night watchmen, chimney sweeps, gnomes, foresters, monks, and even Rumpelstilzchen.

The Grimm brothers, who collected the famous fairy tales, said in their dictionary, that a nutcracker was "often in the form of a misshapen little man, in whose mouth the nut, by means of a lever or screw, is cracked open.

There are about 120 steps in the making of a nutcracker, which explains why even new ones sell for $150 to $250. Woodworkers cut pieces of beech, maple, birch, linden and pine are cut into proper sized blocks, then leave them to season for up to two years in the open air under a roof. They do the first step in the manufacturing process on a lathe. Craftsmen turn the body and head as one cylindrical piece, with beveled shoulders and chiseled out areas for the nutcracker and lever. Others turn the arms and legs separately, fastening them to the body along with the stand.

After forming the body, a hand carver gives the figure a nose, a hat and whatever special features the particular character gets. Next come several layers of priming, after each of which the piece must thoroughly dry. Then a painter uses a fine brush to give the figure its eyes, moustache, teeth, decorative tunic, sword and other special features. Again, each coat of paint must dry before the painter applies another. Then comes the final assembly, in which another craftsmen adds the lever and glues on rabbit fur for hair, a beard, and sometimes even a moustache.

At least that’s how the nutcracker makers of the Erzgebirge do it. Each firm marks their genuine nutcracker with a stamp showing a stylized soldier on a hobbyhorse and the slogan ECHT ERZGEBIRGE HOLZKINST MIT HERZ or “Genuine Erzgebirge wooden art with heart.”

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It May Not Be What It Seems

QUESTION: I’m a big fan of the Civil War. I’ve read a lot about it and go to re-enactments regularly during the summer. Recently, I started a collection of Confederate items. My most recent purchase was a cartridge belt plate with the letters “CSA” on the front. It looks real enough, but I’m not so sure. Can you tell me how to tell the fake from the authentic items?

ANSWER: As in all collecting, the more educated you are as a collector, the better off you’ll be. You must become an educated buyer. Purchasing on sight just because an items looks good and the price is right isn’t enough.

There’s a sucker born every minute. And when it comes to identifying Confederate militaria, there’s probably one born ever couple of seconds. In fact, someone once said that if the Confederates had everything that’s now believed to have belonged to them, the would have won the war and had a surplus.

Confederate items can be worth 10 times those that belonged to Union soldiers. So the market for Confederate fakes is ripe. Be wary of dealers that won’t tell you anything about an object, then offer it to you for what amounts to a bargain basement price. If the price is too low, the item most likely is a fake. Even selling it for a low amount, the dealer will make out on the deal.

To make objects look as if they’ve literally been in battle, some have minie balls hammered into them. A tell-tale gray ring will show that the ball had not been fired into the object.

Demand that a dealer authenticate a Confederate object. Ask if you can get the item appraised by a professional appraiser before agreeing to purchase it. Whether you plan on buying a $1 minie ball or a $10,000 Henry repeating rifle, it always pays to ask. If the dealer refuses to let you get it appraised, just walk out of the shop or away from his or her booth at a show. If the dealer is selling legitimate Civil War memorabilia, he’ll let you bring it back for a refund.

If you purchase what you think to be an authentic Confederate object for a relatively substantial price and it turns out to be fake, then you have the right to prosecute the dealer for fraud. Doing so will probably prove difficult, since fraud is difficult to prove, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

Confederate coins are a good case in point. Unscrupulous dealers have hundreds cast, and sell them for modest prices. Coins are minted, not cast, so they’re fakes. But, then again, how do you prove that the maker wasn’t making honest reproductions to sell to re-enactors?

Sometimes labels on objects will reveal their authenticity. First, paper labels didn’t come into common usage until the turn of the 20th century. If an item has a paper label on it, it would pay to have the paper tested. You might just discover that the process used to make the paper didn’t exist before the 1930s.

As for belt plates, two types exist, excavated—dug out of the ground—and unexcavated. Fakers will use acids and brass-black to pour over the buckle and create a dark color to make a patina. Look for signs of liquid in tiny pits, or smell the buckle. It will have a harsh foul smell, like something rotting.

A faker often makes a reproduction of an unexcavated buckle by making it look damaged. You should look for evidence that parts have been filed off. The belt plate also should have the same color throughout and "no spots where the brass is shining through. Above all, be suspicious of any buckle marked "CSA" or "CS." And if it has a date like 1862 on it, it’s not authentic.

Within militaria, the Civil War is a problem because there are more items from it around. One way in general to tell if a product is fake is to judge its quality. Very few can duplicate the quality of merchandise that they had back then.

Portable Portraits

QUESTION: I’ve noticed photographic portrait cards of Civil War soldiers at flea markets and antique shows. Are these good to collect or do people buy them just to add ambiance to their antique decorating?

ANSWER: The portrait cards you’ve been seeing at flea markets and antique shows, known as  carte de visites, are, indeed, highly collectible, especially if they’re photographs of someone special or famous.

Parisian photographer, André Adolphe Eugène Disderi, patented the first carte de visites, literally meaning “visiting cards,” in 1854. Each card, onto which the photographer pasted a small albumen print,  measured 2-1/2 x 4 inches. They became all the rage for several decades during and after the Civil War, both here and abroad. However,  Disderi's format didn’t become widely used until nearly five years after he patented it.

But once his format caught on, it became an international standard. For the first time, people could exchange portraits, which they could then place into matching slots in specially made carte de visite photo albums. It didn’t matter where the recipient lived since they could purchase these albums everywhere. Another advantage to carte de visites was that people could mail them to each other. Usually each print came with a special mailing envelope, making it easy for the sender to just address it and pop it into the mail. Earlier daguerreotype and ambrotype photographs, both done on glass plates, required the sender to package them in bulky boxes with sufficient packing to prevent breakage during shipment. And because of their small size, carte de visites were also somewhat inexpensive. 

Before the advent of carte de visites, people exchanged elaborate calling cards with their names engraved in decorative fonts. During the decade before the Civil War, it was the custom for a person to present his or her calling card whenever they visited someone. Life was very formal at the time, and no one received anyone they didn’t know without a calling card. Most people had a small basket or box in their parlor in which visitors could place their cards. A few photographers created and sold special photographic calling cards, but these weren’t standardized.

Using Disderi's method, a photographer could take eight negatives on a single 8 x 10-inch glass plate using a sliding plate holder and a camera with four lenses. That allowed him to make eight copies of the person’s portrait each time he printed the negative. This reduced production costs and allowed photographers to sell carte de visites at a reasonable price.

People were slow to purchase these new photo cards. However, legend says that after Disdéri published Emperor Napoleon III's photos in this format, the cartes gained widespread popularity.

Historians believe C. D. Fredericks introduced the carte de visite to the U.S. in New York late in the summer of 1859.  After carte de visites of Abraham Lincoln went on sale, they caught on like wildfire as soldiers and their families posed for them before war or death separated them. Carte de visites of famous people, like Ulysses S. Grant, became an instant hit, as people began collecting celebrity portraits of the time.

Civil War photographs are extremely collectible and have crossover appeal to collectors of both military and early photographs. From 1861 to 1865, the most method of portraiture was the tin-type and the carte de visite.

John L. Gihon of Chestnut St. in Philadelphia, was a portrait photographer who captured images of soldiers and prisoners at Fort Delaware off the shore of Delaware City, Delaware. His carte de visites eventually led to the production of early baseball cards for the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1870s. He died of an illness at only 39. Gihon charged his customers $2.50 for a sitting and six cards.

These little portraits were very important to Civil War soldiers. Since those, especially the Confederate prisoners, at Fort Delaware had to make do with what they had, they, usually officers, often borrowed pieces of uniforms, especially hats, and props, including swords, belts, sashes, from others confined with them so that they would appear as finely dressed as possible.

Prices of collectible carte de visites vary on condition, pose and subject. A carte de visite of surgeon Robert Hubbard, 17th Connecticut Infantry Volunteers, sold at auction for $374. Hubbard enlisted as surgeon of the regiment in August 1862 and became the acting medical director during the Battle of Gettysburg. He resigned in Dec. 1863.

A carte-de-visite of Dr. Mary Walker, taken by noted London photographer Elliott & Fry sold at auction for $1,380. She graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1855 and was an author and early feminist who gained distinction during the Civil War as a humanitarian, surgeon, and spy. Congress awarded her  the Congressional Medal of Honor in January 1866 on the personal recommendation of General Sherman. She refused to part with it when Congress revoked it for “unusual circumstance” in 1917. Dr. Walker died in 1919, but it wasn’t until 1977 when President Carter officially reinstated the award.

Collectors can find a variety of carte de visites both at flea markets and antique shows and in some antique shops and online. Prices vary from a few dollars to several thousand. They’re great items to collect, especially if a collector can find the special albums to hold them, often sold with their carte de visites removed.

Chew, Chew...Spit

QUESTION: I found what looks like a small, shallow, porcelain vase at a fleamarket near my home. It’s almost too short to hold anything but flowers with very short stems and has a delicate floral design on the outside. Do you have any idea what this might be?

ANSWER: What you have is a ladies spit cup or spittoon. Chewing is one of the oldest ways of consuming tobacco. Native Americans chewed its leaves, often mixing it with lime. It became a popular pastime in the last decade of the 18th century and continued to be so until 1920. Today, the most visible evidence of tobacco chewing appears in baseball, but even that’s dying out as users succumb to throat cancer.

Though mostly men indulged in the habit of chewing tobacco, women, especially those in Victorian times, used it as well. In 1865, a traveler down South noted that seven-tenths of all people, both male and female,  over the age of 12 used tobacco in some form. Even children of 8 or 9 smoked. The habit increased in popularity after the Civil War as soldiers, who chewed tobacco to ease frazzled nerves on the battlefield, continued to do so after they came home.

Victorian women could chew and spit as well as men. These ladies usually abused tobacco and alcohol behind closed doors. And while they snuck outside and drank and smoked in the outhouse to avoid being caught by their husbands, they often chewed tobacco quietly around the house while doing their chores and needed something in which to deposit their spit.

After the Civil War, spittoons became a fixture in many places, including hotels, saloons, stores, and any other place where men chewing tobacco might congregate. These were large vessels made of brass or pottery with a broad rim into which the chewer tried to aim his spit, often with little success.

Woman, on the other hand, used a dainty spit cup—also called a lady’s cuspidor, toilette cup, or boudoir dish—to gracefully discard their sputum. Some looked like regular coffee or tea cups while others had fanciful shapes with fluted rims. Since ladies didn’t need to spit across the room, these cups often had decorative gold rims and base, and delicate, lady-like designs. Some came in the shape of little baskets or drawstring purses. English and French manufacturers, especially Limoges, made these lovely spit receptacles out of fine porcelain, and for plainer, everyday use, ironstone with flowered transferware patterns on both the inside and outside.

As chewing tobacco's popularity declined throughout the years, the spittoon became a relic. However, women found other uses for these cups. Pregnant women, who tended to salivate more, especially when they had nausea or heartburn, also used these cups. Even today, it’s common for Haitian women to carry around a spit cup while pregnant.