Crackers are nut just for Christmas
captive nut, or else cracking it by way of pivoting handles fastened by a leather strap or metal hinge and the law of levers. Decoration was minimal but before long, the crackers were made more desirable by modelling them as bears and other creatures, or carved with the profile portraits of known and imaginary people. Soon they became as profitable to produce as the range of toys made more traditionally by the carvers and before long, German nutcrackers were popular tourist souvenirs and exported worldwide. Modelling the nutcrackers as standing figures resembling the soldier in the children’s story gave German carvers an entirely new cast of characters, ranging from intricately carved and painted kings, tyrannical or otherwise, to commoners of every size and occupation imaginable.
Tchaikovsky’s ballet was all that was needed to introduce them to the United States, helped in no small measure by the thousands of nutcrackers that must have been taken home by GIs in the decades following the fall of Nazi Germany.
They’re everywhere in today’s US department stores, the crazier the better. The most bizarre we saw on a recent visit was one modelled as a red-coated soldier standing a good four feet tall and another as Darth Vader from the Star Wars movies. Sadly, many had “Made in China stickers” on the base.
Purist collectors will be relieved to learn that nutcrackers have a much longer history. Indeed, the first probably consisted of two stones, when our hunter-gatherer cavemen ancestors realised there was something tasty inside that hard exterior.
Arlene Wagner told me the oldest known metal object designed specifically to crack nuts dates from the third or fourth century BC, while her oldest exhibit was made from bronze and dates from between 200 BC and 200AD. It was excavated in 1960.
One of the earliest written references to nutcrackers is in Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th century Canterbury Tales and King Henry VIII is said to have given a pair to his second wife, Anne Boleyn, while the Georgians added Regency elegance.
Examples, now rare, were made from silver, ivory and even porcelain, which would be included in cased sets separate from canteens of cutlery. Silver crackers were usually of the simple hinged design, often accompanied by grape scissors and a pair of fruit spoons with embossed bowls to be placed alongside bowls of fruit and nuts to be enjoyed as a course of their own.
Ivory nutcrackers are generally designed to operate with a captive nut and screw-down press action, but rarities include those modelled as heads or figures with opening jaws. Ivory was also used to enhance the handles of silver examples.
The German Meissen porcelain factory made a number of nutcrackers modelled as a miniature book press. A central weighted handle forces a threaded steel pressure plate to tighten on the captive nut until it cracks. They date from around 1800.
Naturally enough it was the inventive Victorians, followed by the Edwardians, who let imagination run wild. Look out for novelty cast iron nutcrackers modelled as crocodiles, dogs, squirrels, parrots, and nursery rhyme characters, all of which complete their intended task by pressing on their tails, smashing the nut held in their respective mouths.
You have at least 12 months to find a solution to that sad and neglected bowl of nuts, but permit me to make one further suggestion: however good your nutcrackers are, there always seems to be bits of nuts stuck inexorably inside the awkward crevices of broken shells.
Winkle them out with an antique nut pick, a small pointed tool designed specially for the job. The best come in cased sets of six for you and your guests and like nutcrackers, they also come in useful when eating lobster. A charming late 19th century German carved table top nutcracker modelled as a bearded man, his hat as the handle, sold for £170.