Erzgebirge Woodcraft

When the silver ran out in the Ore Mountains the miners turned to wood, and out of that came a village industry that still runs. Nutcrackers with hinged jaws and beards, incense smokers, turned angels and miners in facing pairs, candle arches for the window and Christmas pyramids driven round by the warm air off their own candles. The signature technique is Reifendrehen: a ring is turned on a lathe with the profile of an animal cut into its section, then split into dozens of identical figures, a way of making toys by the hundred from one skilled cut. Seiffen is the centre, with a toy museum, an open-air museum and workshops where the lathes can be watched.

What you actually see

• Reifendrehen - the turned ring split into identical carved animals, still demonstrated on the lathe.
• Candle arches - the Schwibbogen shape said to echo a mine entrance, lit in windows through Advent.
• Christmas pyramids - tiered carousels turned by the heat rising from their own candles.
• Seiffen's toy museum - the collection tracing the trade from mining to workshop.

When to go

Advent is the point: villages put lights in every window, workshops open up and the mountain towns hold their processions. It is also when parking, beds and the ridge roads are hardest, and snow is likely. The rest of the year is calm and workshops still run demonstrations, but the atmosphere the region is known for is a December thing.

Honest expectations

In December the villages jam solid and the small roads over the ridge can be icy; parking near Seiffen fills by mid-morning. Genuine hand-turned pieces are expensive, and cheap imitations sit beside them in the same shops. Outside Advent several workshops keep short hours and the region feels emptied out. Winter driving here needs proper tyres.

Nearby

The cathedral town of Freiberg, the mining landscape of the Ore Mountains and the ridge trails along the Czech border.