inkspired musings: A Nutcracker

‘🎶 🎵Chestnuts roasting on an open fire 🎵 🎶’

I just read an article where the woman was saying how her kids didn’t know that nuts came in a shell.

What?

We always had a bowl of mixed nuts in the shell, with picks and nutcrackers at the ready, every holiday season. I remember my grandfather cracking open the ‘acorns’ for me to eat. Okay, they were hazelnuts, but I thought they were acorns!

Other times Dad would crack a walnut open so carefully the shell remained in 2 perfect halves.

Those were treasures you could make into something special..tiny fairy baby beds; bowls for Barbie and Ken to eat from; or decorations on a sand castle.

Fairy Gardens

It got me to thinking.

Do modern kids even know what a nutcracker is for? Is a nutcracker just an ugly soldier with a big head that dances around in tights and imaginary sword fights with giant mice on a stage?

That’s assuming any of them have been to a ballet.

Maria Doval Ballet

Is The Nutcracker Ballet where nutcrackers came from?

Hmmm…sounds like an interesting blog to me!

Let’s get cracking and find out!

(Okay, enough puns.)

Nutcracker Ensemble, LEGO ideas

Nutcrackers are for, well, to crack nuts! Nuts have been a staple food for aeons. They are eaten raw, or ground into a nut flour to use. At some point in history someone became tired of picking out shell bits from a nut cracked open with a rock.

Courtesy Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum

The earliest nutcracker found is made from metal and dates back to the 4th century BCE.

Yeah, BCE (before 33 AD, which is when Jesus Christ died.) You can see this nutcracker in a museum in Tarant, Italy!

Courtesy Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum

This is a Roman bronze nutcracker from somewhere between 200 BCE and 200 AD. It was discovered in 1960.

Earlier nutcrackers did not survive the elements and time. A few nutcrackers have been found made from more fragile materials such as ivory and bone, but these are very rare. Nutcrackers were meant to be functional.

Victorian nutcrackers with plain handles; kentishcobnuts.com

Then German artisans began to be creative. In the 17th century woodcarvers began to make their nutcrackers more decorative. Carved wood animal and people nutcrackers were being produced, by hand.

German folklore taught that nutcrackers were symbols of good luck to your family and protection for your home.

Folk art Father Christmas; One Kings Lane

I’m guessing a Nutcracker artisan started that folklore! Good way to get more business.

LEGO Irish nutcracker

In 1816 E.T.A. Hoffman wrote a dark fairytale that had been passed around for some time. He was just the first to write and publish

“The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”.

The original fairytale has some pretty dark elements to it, like so many of the folktales were. (Ever read the Brothers’ Grimm ‘Cinderella’?) Until Alexandre Dumas.

For sale on Etsy

In 1844 Alexandre Dumas adapted the story of the Nutcracker, taking out some of the darker themes, and it was printed. It was received with mild attention. That is, until 1892 and musical composer P. Tchaikovsky enters the story. Tchaikovsky adapted the lighter version of The Nutcracker by Dumas, and turned it into a ballet.

Festival Ballet Company

The classical 2-act ballet premier was 1892 in St. Petersburg, Russia. It became popular - in Russia.

Twenty years earlier Wilhelm Fuchtner from Germany had begun mass producing nutcrackers with his lathe design. With higher production, nutcrackers became a favorite toy. The utilitarian was replaced with fanciful and decorative styles. This was much more appealing to the masses.

Decorative soldiers became all the rage. The first decorative soldier nutcrackers can actually be traced to the Ore Mountains (Erzebirge, Germany). After the ballet came out, international audiences became interested in these ‘soldier’ nutcrackers.

Mackenzie-Childs; Pinterest

A couple things happened next. In 1944 the San Francisco Ballet Company, USA, put on a production of The Nutcracker. It became wildly popular.

San Francisco Ballet Company production of The Nutcracker

Then soldiers started returning home from World War II, bringing souvenirs with them. Nutcrackers from German Christmas markets were very popular souvenirs and not really seen in the USA.