2 days ago | Advertorial | Fiona Latimer

“My shoulder says this is my last Christmas in the workshop” – Norris (74) is selling his last Christmas sleighs at a special price.

For 40 years, Norris Fairbrass has carved little Christmas sleighs in his Northumberland workshop and engraved his wife Win’s handwriting into every one. Now his shoulder is giving out. These are his last 196.

Rothbury, November. The first frost is lying on the dry-stone wall outside the little workshop behind Norris’s cottage, above the River Coquet. Inside it smells of fresh wood dust, the wood burner and a pot of tea that has stewed far too long. Red sleigh runners hang from nails along the stone wall like ribbons. On the bench lie a carving gouge worn smooth by four decades, a jam jar of sharpened pencils and a stack of pale boards – some still blank, some already carrying Win’s looping “Merry Christmas” in soft pencil. Norris bends over one of them, the way he has every November since 1987. But this year is different. It is his last.

“I’m 74,” he says, and presses his left hand against his right shoulder. “Two years ago the doctor told me it’s worn through. Engraving is all shoulder. You lean in and you hold the line steady, for hours. Now I get twenty minutes, then the arm starts to shake and the letters go crooked.” He puts the tool down. “And a crooked Merry Christmas, I won’t send out. Not with Win’s name on it.”

There is a second reason. “Our daughter lives in Bristol. The grandchildren are there, and the winters are kinder. Win and I said: one more Christmas here, then we go.”

40 Christmases, almost 9,000 sleighs – and it all started with a plate of mince pies

Norris has done the sums. Since 1986 he has made almost 9,000 little sleighs, and every one of them has been through his hands. It began on Christmas Eve 1986. Win had baked three dozen mince pies, the plate was too small, and their daughter Joanne, six years old at the time, asked whether Father Christmas’s sleigh could bring them to the table. “So I went out to the workshop that night,” Norris says. “I carved a board, bent two runners and painted them red. Win took a pencil and wrote Merry Christmas across the top, the way she writes it in every card. I cut her writing in, so it would never wash off. Then I go over every letter with a hot pen, so it shows up dark.”

The next Christmas, half the village wanted one. Win still writes the words on every single board in pencil before Norris engraves them. “Her handwriting, my hands,” he says. “That’s the whole recipe.”

What makes Norris’s Christmas sleighs so special

It isn’t only Win’s handwriting across the top, with its three little stars. It’s the way every sleigh is made: a small piece of Christmas that actually gets used every year – not one more decoration that spends eleven months in the loft.

The board is solid bamboo, carved by hand into its soft, wavy shape, with edges rounded until they feel good in your hands. “Bamboo was Win’s idea,” Norris says. “Oak was too heavy to carry full of mince pies, and bamboo doesn’t warp in a steamy kitchen.” Her “Merry Christmas” is engraved by hand so deep that it never fades. Underneath sit two steel runners, bent by hand into the classic sleigh curl at the front and back, in Christmas red or warm gold. At 40 centimetres long, 17 centimetres wide and 8 centimetres high, the sleigh holds a dozen mince pies, a cheeseboard or a pile of shortbread, and it fits on any coffee table, kitchen worktop or sideboard.

The result is more than a tray. While the mince pies last, it is the most-visited spot in the house. When the plate is empty, it stays out with a candle and a few fir cones – a little sleigh that tells everyone who walks in that Christmas has arrived.

“Some families have brought out the same sleigh for 35 Christmases”

Norris points to the back wall of the workshop. It is covered in Christmas cards, pinned up year after year, some of them yellowed at the edges. “Those come back every December,” he says. He takes one down from 2008: “Dear Norris and Win, the sleigh we bought at the church Christmas fair in 1989 came out again this year. My children are grown up, so now my grandchildren put Father Christmas’s mince pie on it. The writing looks exactly like the day we bought it.”

There is a simple reason for that: care instead of speed. Factories are built to turn out thousands a day. Norris makes one sleigh at a time. Each one takes about eight hours – carving and sanding the board, Win’s pencil, the engraving, bending and painting the runners, a final rub of oil and one last look in the window light.

The end of an era – and one last chance

Just before Christmas, Norris will lock the workshop for good. In January the removal van comes. “There’s nobody to take it on,” he says. “Young people don’t want to stand at a bench for eight hours over one board. I understand that.” It took him the whole summer and autumn to finish one last batch, twenty minutes at a time. 196 sleighs are now stacked on his shelves. His life’s work. The last batch that will ever leave his hands.

To make sure they find good homes before he leaves, Norris has made an unusual decision: a clear special price on every sleigh. “It’s not about the money any more. At this price I barely cover the bamboo and the steel, and the eight hours are on me. I want them on kitchen tables on Christmas Eve, loaded with mince pies, with the children squabbling over who gets to carry them. Not in a removal van on the way to Bristol.” His granddaughter Kirsty (26) is helping him sell them online. “Win and I can write Merry Christmas nine thousand times,” Norris laughs, “but don’t ask either of us how the internet works.”

It was Kirsty who gave the sleighs their name. “When she was four, she called it the mince pie sleigh,” Win says. “Every Christmas Eve she was the one who carried it to the table, ever so slowly, with her tongue between her teeth.” The name stuck. And for many families, a simple tray has become a Christmas Eve ritual of their own: the children load the sleigh with a mince pie for Father Christmas and a carrot for Rudolph, and in the morning it is empty.

What sets Norris’s sleighs apart:

What real customers say about Norris’s sleighs

“The nicest present I have ever given my mum”

Customer Claire D. (47) from Durham agrees: “I gave my mum one of Norris’s sleighs at the start of Advent, so she’d have it for the whole season. She ran her finger along the letters for a long time and said: ‘That’s how my mother used to write.’ It hasn’t left her kitchen table since. You can’t put a price on that.”

Where can you get one of Norris’s sleighs?

Norris’s sleighs are only available through Cedar & Tin – an online shop that works with a small group of independent makers. Kirsty runs her grandparents’ little corner of the shop there. Only there will you find the original sleighs from Norris’s workshop. Lookalike trays from mass production have started to appear on Amazon and other big sites. At first glance they may look similar, but the lettering is printed, not engraved, and they have nothing to do with Norris’s work.

Only this Christmas – then it’s over

Norris plans to lock the workshop for good just before Christmas. “By then I’d like every sleigh to be on somebody’s table,” he says quietly. Then he smiles. “Forty Christmases. Win says that’s enough. She’s usually right.”

If you would like one of the original sleighs from Norris’s last batch, don’t wait too long. With the special price and this much interest, the remaining sleighs are not expected to last. Whatever is still on the shelves when the workshop closes, Kirsty will keep sending out – but only until the last sleigh is gone.

It is the last chance to bring a piece of real handwork to your Christmas table – before Norris’s sleighs are gone for good.

The verdict

Norris’s Christmas Sleigh is the kind of piece families bring out every December for decades. It is carved and engraved by hand in a small stone workshop in the Coquet Valley and turns any coffee table, kitchen worktop or sideboard into the place where Christmas happens – with Win’s “Merry Christmas” right in the middle.

A feel-good piece with real heart – lovingly made, built to be used, and every Christmas Eve a small moment of magic when the mince pies go on the sleigh. Thank you, Norris and Win!

Readers love Norris’s sleighs

Photos sent in by readers.