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"Can angels be sexy?" Sylva-Michèle Sternkopf and her sister asked themselves one day, as they sat around the kitchen table in their family home, wondering about creating their own collection to celebrate the 110th anniversary of their father's company. For over 60 years, Paul Sternkopf had been head of the woodcrafts company Erzgebirgische Holzkunst Gahlenz GmbH.
The idea of erotic angels occurred to them over a glass of wine. "We wanted to create figures that reflect the image of modern-day women, not prim housewives in aprons waiting for their husbands, virtuously holding a candle to light the way home from the mine. We wanted to design something that modern young women can identify with," says Sylva-Michèle Sternkopf.
With their asymmetric, minimalistic forms and slightly sensual look, these angels are something new and yet timeless. What's more, by simply detaching their wings, they look good the whole year round, not just at Christmas. The idea was a huge success. The first collection launched in 2006 was followed last year by a new range of sitting angels.
For the 36-year old designer with a doctoral degree in linguistics, the project was a labour of love. She wanted to restore the Sternkopf brand to its former glory. Wood design is only her hobby: In her professional life, she runs an advertising agency. But there, too, her work revolves around wood art: Since 2007, Sylva-Michèle Sternkopf has managed an advertising campaign for the Association of Craftsmen and Toy Manufacturers from the Ore Mountains (Verband Erzgebirgischer Kunsthandwerker und Spielzeughersteller e. V.) under the slogan "Art for Living". In their image brochure, she describes how the tradition of wood art evolved in the Ore Mountains. This range of peaks owes its name to the large deposits of ore found there in the 16th century, bestowing great wealth on the princes and kings who reigned over the region. Cobalt, tin, iron and lead, but mainly silver transformed many hamlets from Seiffen to Schwarzenberg, and from Oberwiesenthal to Freiberg, into mining towns with magnificent churches and historic town centres. The miners worked hard to create this wealth: In deep dark pits, they dug for treasures, hardly ever seeing the light of day, especially in winter. However, as the natural resources slowly dwindled towards the end of the 18th century, the objects they once carved out of the wood from their densely forested homeland to supplement their income became an economic necessity. Today, wood art is the livelihood of the entire region, and synonymous with folk art.

Tradition in a New Form
Björn Köhler has been working much longer on developing his own style of wood art than the Sternkopf sisters. A qualified master woodturner, he started up his own workshop shortly before German Reunification. His goal was to create a collection blending traditional craftsmanship with modern design. The first years were not easy and established companies with their traditional figures and designs had a clear competitive edge. Today, Björn Köhler has 26 employees and recently celebrated his company's 20th anniversary. "I make things I like and try not to let myself be constrained by tradition," says the 44-year-old. His credo is to focus on the essence of a subject. He started of with Mary and Joseph and ended up with an entire manger scene with stylized, minimalistic figures that are quite unlike conventional ones. He has just completed a limited edition of chess figures, a tribute to the former chess factory that used to be next door. His customers are between 20 and 40 years old, much younger than those of other wood craftsmen. They appreciate good design and distinct, graceful form. Köhler's work is sold by some 350 dealers. He hasn't felt the financial crunch yet, but nonetheless rules out expansion. He places great value on making the individual figures by hand to preserve their individuality. They are still produced in small batches of 20 to 250 pieces.
Björn Köhler creations have been awarded the "Tradition and Form" design prize four times by the Association of Craftsmen and Toy Manufacturers from the Ore Mountains. Since 1995, this prize has been presented to designs that set an example of innovation in woodcrafts from the Ore Mountains.
The more traditional designs reflect the times in which they evolved. The nutcracker, for example, symbolized strict and arbitrary authority. With their special sense of folkloric humour, the craftsmen at the time gave their soldiers, gendarmes and princes tough nuts to crack. The traditional "Räuchermann", a little carved man with a long pipe for "smoking" incense, stands in stark contrast to the nutcracker: He represents the "man on the street", amiable and a passionate smoker. Most figures go back to the mining tradition, such as the miner, with his wife, the angel, holding up candles to light his way home. Or the pyramid based on a horsegin, a rotating mechanism driven by horses, used to hoist the ore to the surface. The "Schwibbogen", a candle arch, represents the arched entrance to the pit, which was decorated with miners’ lamps on the last shift before Christmas.

Tradition with Added Value
Ringo Müller has also been awarded the "Tradition und Form" design prize, as has Gerhard Feldevert. When he was a child, Müller spent hours playing in the attic with his model railway. Today, the 39-year-old manages Kleinkunst aus dem Erzgebirge Müller GmbH, a company in its fourth generation, and draws on his childhood hobby for new business ideas. It is less the designs that set his work apart from that of more traditional craftsmen than their ingenious technology. Back in 1996, his father incorporated his son's first fully illuminated candle arch in his range of products. In 2004, "Alt-Dresden", the only candle arch in the world with electronic sounds, hit the shops. The first electronics module was taken from a model railway set. And last year, to celebrate the company's 110th anniversary, Müller presented his latest highlight: a battery-driven electronic music box with a Bluetooth sound module developed in cooperation with the Technical University of Chemnitz. Up to 15 music files can be wirelessly downloaded from a cell phone or computer to five playlists. But it also plays own recordings, such as spoken love poems, and can even be programmed as an alarm clock. Furthermore, the scenes on the music box are magnetic and can be changed. "We are driven by our customers' wishes and the search for new challenges," says Ringo Müller of his team of 35 employees. "We bridge the gap between tradition and the modern world. Our aim is to inspire new clients with our innovations." The products are marketed abroad by distributors in the USA, Japan, and Great Britain.
Before Gerhard Feldevert and his wife, Uta, moved to the Ore Mountains following German Reunification, he worked in the car business in the Münsterland region. For the last 18 years, the couple has run the Arts and Crafts Workshop in Olbernhau (Kunstgewerbe-Werkstätten Olbernhau, KWO), which was originally established in 1949 as a small woodturning business. Today, KWO has a staff of 85 and is one of the largest producers of woodcrafts in the Ore Mountains. But Gerhard Feldevert finds the growth opportunities in traditional wood art to be limited and has started looking for new products. "I'm never satisfied with what I have. I always have to do something new," says the 63-yearold businessman. Back in the days when he worked in the car industry, he was one of the first to incorporate a catalytic converter, he tells us: "Most people didn't even know what that was." His latest creation is a desktop set designed in leather with a burl wood or cherry wood finish. The mouse, keyboard and monitor frame match perfectly, and are rounded off with an Ayurvedic incense cone to create an atmosphere of well-being at the workplace. This is just one of Feldevert's attempts at entering the life-style market. Another is closer to traditional folk art in terms of form and material, but it takes just one look at the price tag to realize that this figure is not intended for everyday collectors of woodcrafts from the Ore Mountains: The Gold Edition Nutcracker is adorned with 24-carat gold leaf applied by hand and a solid gold belt buckle with a one-carat diamond and is priced at 20,000 euros. It takes six weeks to make just one figure. The Gold Edition Nutcracker is particularly popular in the USA, Russia, and the Emirates, Feldevert says, as he shows us around the production facilities, shaking his employees' hands as he goes. He still has plenty of ideas, even though he is soon due for well-earned retirement.
"Whenever something stops functioning, something new turns up," says Björn Köhler. That's how it was when mining came to an end, that’s how it was after Reunification. Today, the time seems to be rife for reviving old traditions and taking them a step further. Much like the wind in spring blows the fog out of the valleys in the Ore Mountains after a long winter, a wind of change is blowing through the artisans' workshops. Both the younger generation and established craftsmen are doing what they can to preserve the century-old tradition of wood art from the Ore Mountains.