Werkstatt alter Volkskunst Volker Füchtner
The story of Ore Mountain folk art is also the story of the family Füchtner from Seiffen. The Füchtners have made a living from working with wood for many generations. Being carpenters they used the winter months to carve and turn various wooden figurines and lived upon the selling during the cold season.
In the year 1809 Gotthelf Friedrich Füchtner sold his self made toys on the Striezel market in Dresden for the first time. His descendant Wilhelm Friedrich Füchtner was the first one to create nutcrackers of the type that have become so well known. The inspiration for this nutcracker prototype came from the storybook “King Nutcracker and poor Reinhold” by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman. Under the name of “Werkstatt alter Volkskunst (workshop of old folk art) Volker Füchtner” the family of the nutcracker’s “father” is producing nutcrackers and other traditional handcrafts like smokers and angels in the sixth generation now. Like in the old days all products are manufactured in Seiffen in the Ore Mountains mostly using local wood like spruce, beech, alder and lime.