Collecting NUTCRACKERS

Not just for Christmas, these nostalgic keepsakes come in an abundance of novelty shapes and styles, offering character and affordability for budding collectors

- EMMA LONGSTAFF

Over the centuries, designers have used boundless ingenuity to solve the problem of how to separate a nut from its shell, employing levers, pincers, hammers and screws.

As the saying goes, there's more than one way to crack a nut.

Arlene Wagner, founder of the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum, says: "There is no other tool or collectable that comes in as many designs or materials as that of the nutcracker. Amongst the museum's 9,000-strong collection are a prehistoric nutting stone, a Roman nutcracker made of brass, countless centuries-old examples in other types of metal or wood, as well as pieces made from unexpectedly fragile materials like ivory and porcelain.

It's the sheer variety of designs that appeals so strongly to collectors, thinks Sally Honey, a dealer who specialises in treen.

'Primarily they are functional objects, but it feels like there are an infinite number of artistic interpretations,' she adds. Wooden nutcrackers seem to take the wildest forms, mimicking humans, birds and animals of all kinds, often with humorous effect. Would you like a sharp-toothed crocodile to open your nut between its jaws? Or perhaps, after dinner, you'll pass around a saucy pair of lady's legs and invite your guests to crack a nut between her thighs?

James Lewis, CEO of the auction house Bamfords, finds nutcrackers appealing because they once spanned the whole of society: "We now tend to associate nutcrackers with Christmas, but in the same way that everyone used to take snuff - from poor working people to the grandest nobility everyone used to eat nuts.