“My father brought one home from Germany in his kitbag in 1946. I’ve turned one every winter for fifty years.” Why a 75-year-old woodturner in Northumberland is selling his last nutcrackers, cut from his father’s pines, at a special price

In the spring of 1947 Tom Ridley planted a row of Scots pines along the north edge of his hill farm above Rothbury, Northumberland, to keep the snow off the yard. On the mantelpiece inside stood the painted wooden soldier he had brought back from the army. Seventy-four years later Storm Arwen laid the whole row flat in a single night. The trunks have been seasoning in the hay barn ever since, and this winter his son Desmond is turning the last of them into nutcrackers. When this wood is gone, he is done.

Rothbury, late October. The workshop is a stone outbuilding beside the house, about four metres by five, with a wood burner in the corner and a lathe older than most of the people who will read this. It smells of pine shavings and tea that has been stewing in the pot since six. Above the bench hangs a black-and-white photograph of a young sapper in an army greatcoat, and on the shelf beside it stands a painted nutcracker with a hairline crack running straight down through its head.

“My dad swapped a tin of tea and twenty cigarettes for that soldier at a market in Celle,” Desmond says. “It came home in his kitbag and stood on our mantelpiece every Christmas I can remember.” In December 1976 it got knocked off the mantelpiece and split. Desmond was twenty-five, a fitter at the aluminium smelter at Lynemouth. He glued the old one back together, then went out to the workshop and turned his father a new one.

“I made a mess of the first three,” he says. “The fourth one my dad put on the mantelpiece next to the old one. He never said a word about it, which from him was high praise.” Desmond has turned at least one every winter since. Fifty years of them now, for his own mantelpiece, for neighbours, for the church Christmas fair, and for anyone who asked.

Two things wrong with a shop-bought nutcracker

“Pick one up in the shop and turn it over,” he says. “If it’s heavy and cold and there’s a seam down the side, it was never wood. And if the candle hole is a little dimple on top, that candle is going to lean.”

The first is that most of them aren’t turned at all. The ones stacked by the hundred in the big shops are poured into a mould out of resin, or glued together from thin parts, then spray-painted on a line. They look fine on the shelf. A year or two on the mantelpiece and the paint chips at the nose and the crown, and you can see the white plastic underneath.

The second is the candle. A nutcracker that’s meant to hold a candle has to hold it straight, because a candle that leans drips wax down the front of a soldier’s coat, and onto your tablecloth. On a lot of the cheap ones the hole is barely deep enough to stand a birthday candle in. Desmond bores the hat on his painted soldiers to take a standard 22 mm dinner candle, and his natural pine ones hold their candle in a brass cup.

He throws out about one head in six. Pine has knots and resin pockets, and when one opens up on the lathe, that head goes in the wood burner. “I’d rather burn it than post it to somebody,” he says.

Why a broken resin nutcracker can’t be mended

Every December somebody comes to his stall at the church Christmas fair with a shoebox. Inside is a nutcracker in pieces, never one of his. It’s a soldier from a department store, or one that came free with a Christmas catalogue, or a big one from an out-of-town shop that toppled over when the cat went for the tree. He keeps a crate under the bench of the ones he had to hand back: a king with his arm snapped off at a glued joint, a drummer whose face peeled off in one flake, a soldier that cracked straight across the middle like a dinner plate.

He can tell you what each one is made of before he gets the lid off. What he can’t do is mend them. “Resin doesn’t glue, it just breaks again somewhere else,” he says. “And there’s no wood under that paint to sand back to. When it’s broken, it’s broken.”

Most of the people with the shoebox go home with one of his instead. Solid pine, turned on his lathe, painted or stained by hand. If it ever does get knocked off the mantelpiece, it’s wood, and wood can be glued, the same way he mended his father’s in 1976.

Where the nutcracker on your mantelpiece came from

The nutcracker soldier everybody knows, the tall hat, the big jaw, the beard, the stiff little coat, was first turned on a lathe around 1870 by a woodturner named Wilhelm Füchtner in Seiffen, a village in Germany’s Ore Mountains. Whole villages there lived off turning wooden toys through the long winters.

For most of the next century hardly anyone in Britain had one. That changed after the war, when soldiers like Tom Ridley came home from Germany with them in their kitbags.

Most of the ones that came over were painted soldiers and kings, turned from soft local wood by families who had done it for generations. Desmond still turns his the same basic way: head, body, legs and hat as separate pieces, each one turned round from a block of pine and fitted together.

What makes Desmond’s nutcrackers different

• Turned and carved, not cast: Head, body, legs and hat are each turned from solid pine on the lathe, then the crown points, the jaw and the joints are carved by hand with a knife and gouge before everything is fitted together. No resin, no mould, no seam down the side.
• From his father’s shelterbelt: Scots pine, Britain’s only native pine, from the row Tom Ridley planted in 1947 and Storm Arwen brought down in 2021. No tree was felled to make them.
• Two honest sizes: The painted soldier stands 25.5 cm (10 in), about as tall as a dinner plate is wide. The natural pine king stands 38 cm (15 in), a little taller than a wine bottle.
• Made to hold a real candle: The painted soldier carries a standard 22 mm dinner candle in his hat, the natural one holds it in a brass cup in his hand. Candle not included. As with any candle, never leave it burning unattended.
• Finished by hand: The soldier is painted red, green, black and gold the way the 1946 one was, with a soft white beard. The natural one is stained a deep walnut brown so the pine grain shows through.
• No two alike: Every piece comes out of a different stretch of a different trunk, so the grain, the knots and the brush strokes are never the same twice.

Two nutcrackers, one pair of hands

Desmond turns two kinds, and he’ll tell you straight which one he prefers. The painted soldier is the one his father brought home: red coat, green trousers, black boots, a gold crown with little red jewels, and a JOY sign in his hand. “That’s the one the grandchildren pick,” he says. The natural pine king is his own: the same turning, no paint, just a dark walnut stain so you can see the grain, and a brass cup for the candle in his hand. “That one’s for people who like to see what it’s made of. That’s me.”

What his customers say

• ★★★★★

  “I bought the painted one for my mother, who has had the same chipped shop nutcracker since 1990. She picked it up, felt how light it was and said ‘Oh, this is wood.’ It was on her mantelpiece with a candle in it by teatime. The chipped one went up in the loft.”

  – Gillian H., 62, Hexham
• ★★★★★

  “I got the natural pine one because I’m not keen on a lot of paint. You can see the grain right through the stain. It doesn’t come with a candle, which they tell you up front, but an ordinary dinner candle from the supermarket drops right into the brass cup and stands dead straight.”

  – Keith R., 68, Durham
• ★★★★★

  “Our old resin one broke in three pieces when the tree came down on it. I tried two kinds of glue. This one is the real thing, heavier in the base and lighter everywhere else, and the grandchildren are allowed to touch it.”

  – Pauline W., 64, Harrogate

One man, one lathe

Desmond is 75 and he works alone. There’s one lathe in the workshop and one stool in front of it. His son keeps sheep further up the valley at Alwinton and has no patience for it, and his daughter moved to Leeds. “It takes about ten winters before you can turn a head without thinking about it,” he says. “Nobody has ten winters to give to a nutcracker any more.”

A good week is what one man can turn, fit, paint or stain by himself, minus the heads that crack and go in the wood burner. That’s the whole supply. There’s no factory and no second batch, and there is no more of his father’s pine coming. When the last trunk in the hay barn is used up, Desmond says, the lathe gets a cover over it.

His granddaughter Holly (27), who works at a building society in Morpeth, set up the little shop online for him over a weekend in October. “I don’t know the first thing about any of that,” Desmond says. “She said there were people in Cornwall and Kent who would want one and would never set foot in Rothbury. I said fine, as long as I don’t have to talk to the computer.”

Where can you buy Desmond’s nutcrackers?

The nutcrackers are sold only through Cedar & Tin, where Holly looks after his orders. Not on Amazon, not in the shops, not at the big Christmas markets. Most of them go out as presents, and Holly says more than half are posted to somebody other than the person who paid. Each one leaves Rothbury wrapped in tissue, ready to give.

One word of warning: a resin nutcracker and a turned wooden one look almost the same in a listing photo. The difference shows the minute you pick one up.

Put it on the mantelpiece, light a candle in it on Christmas Eve, keep it out until Twelfth Night. If it isn’t right, the size, the style or no reason at all, send it back within 90 days for your money back. No restocking fee, no questions. If you want it there before Christmas, order by 15 December.