Colorful Soapstone Nativity – Kenya

Soapstone is a very common medium from Africa, especially Kenya, and we have many and varied soapstone nativity sets. Every once in a while, something unusual comes along, though, which is always rewarding to find. There are two distinctive things about this nativity set: it has a hut carved of soapstone and all of the figures are brightly colored.

Soapstone takes topical color well, and it is common to see carvers using marker to color the figures. The coloring of these pieces is more intricate than usual, however, with the weaving of the hut. The bold red, blue and purple of the Holy Family are also unusual. All around, this is a distinctive soapstone set.

One difficult thing about this set is that the roof of the hut tends to slide off. It is carved as a separate piece, and soapstone is very smooth. The interior of the roof is a simple angle with nothing to act as a brake when set on the round walls. So the roof must be set on very carefully, or it will slip to the side. My only regret here is that the artist didn’t have a little foresight to carve a ridge along the inside of the roof so it could sit flat on the walls. Oh, well; it just adds character.

The height of the hut is 7”.

Christine Coffman Nativity – Washington, USA

It’s a fun moment for a collector to stumble on a nativity set unexpected. Salmon Days is an annual arts festival in Issaquah, Washington, and Diane and I attended every year that we could. We were walking through in 1999 and discovered by a booth by Washington artist Christine Coffman where she was selling carved wooden nativity pieces. We loved the whimsical nature of her carving and the character she puts into her figures.

Biography from Christine Coffman’s Etsy shop:

Christine Coffman was first taught to carve by her father in 1963. Self-taught from that time, her style has become distinct and reflective of her North European heritage. The figures originate in pencil sketches, then develop during the carving process.

Linden wood is used due to the perfect pairing of it’s properties to her needs. Linden wood is light and strong. The grain is straight and allows fine knife strokes to create a smooth surface. Butternut wood is used for it’s interesting grain patterns. Both woods are native to eastern United States.

Each carving is signed and dated then finished with tung oil to seal and protect the wood.

Some of her carvings are whimsical. Some are serious. In each carving she attempts, she hopes that people will see reflected in her work the satisfaction she derives from carving.

Muninga Nativity – Tanzania

It is a joy to see the artwork of truly gifted carvers. This nativity set from Tanzania is one of those. Few of our sets have such delicate and graceful features. Every face is individual and expressive. Muninga wood (also known by the African name Kiaat) has a rich nut brown color with beautiful, even grain. In our Washington home, this set always had an honored place on our mantel at Christmas.

Origin	Tanzania
Material	Muninga Wood
Purchase date	2010
Purchase location	eBay
Height of tallest piece	10″
Number of pieces	12

Wildlife Nativity – New Mexico, USA

New Mexico artists Michael & Sandra Kadisak work together to produce their clay sculptures of native peoples and the wildlife that surrounds them in their Cochiti Lake home in foothills of the Jemez Mountains near Sante Fe. Michael Kadisak describes their work as “about our relationship with the natural world, the way that natural world touches us.” The animals in our set – a deer, a big horn sheep, a bear, a fox, and a beaver – were chosen by Diane and our daughter, Becky, from the Kadisaks’ exhibit at an art show in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Kadisaks met while studying art at Northern Illinois University. “We started collaborating as an experiment,” Michael said. “Her sensibilities and my sensibilities are so different, but we started meshing when we worked in clay. We’ve done that without even thinking about it.”

Sandra describes their ceramics work is a process of back and forth. “We decide we are going to do a sculpture of a new animal,” she said. “I look up the visuals. He does sketches. I rough out the image as a sculpture. He takes it and refines it. And then he passes it back to me and I mix the glazes. I do all the detail when it comes to the color and the (glazing).

“Michael and I work at clay every day. All the work we do is constantly being touched and moved forward. We are finding each work’s expression by just pushing the clay.”

Quotes are from the article “Captured in Clay: Artists on their own, couple comes together to create whimsical ceramics” in The Albuquerque Journal, November 17, 2019.

Origin	New Mexico, USA
Artists	Michael & Sandra Kadisak
Material	Ceramic
Height of tallest piece	5″
Number of pieces	10
Purchase date	2013
Purchase place	Albuquerque, NM

Bullet Casing Nativity – Liberia

This nativity set wins the prize for the most unusual and most symbolic in our collection. It is made from brass AK-47 bullet casings, collected from streets and villages throughout Liberia as a leftover remnant of the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars (1989–2003). This nativity is an example of turning the weapons of war into a celebration of the peace through Jesus Christ.

Each casing is cut open and pounded flat, designed, then cleaned with solvents and polished with sand. The Nativity was created by Calvin Fayiah, a young man in Monrovia, Liberia.

The second war between three rival groups caused the death of 150,000 Liberians and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more.  Click here to read more about the war on Wikipedia. Click here to see a photo of bullet casings littered on a Liberian bridge during the conflict; the sobering scene of bullet casings discharged everywhere was a common site throughout Liberia for many years after the war ended.  

We have displayed this set often at the Bellevue (Washington) Festival of Nativities. It always caused people to stop and ponder: ponder the consequences of war, and ponder the gift of peace available through our Savior.

Origin	Liberia
Artist	Calvin Fayiah
Material	Brass bullet casings
Purchase date	2011
Purchase location	http://www.worldnativity.com
Height of tallest piece	2″
Number of pieces	11

Lotte Sievers-Hahn Nativity – Germany

We have been collecting nativity sets for over 30 years, and this is the one that started it all. In 1990 we moved to Washington when I started a new job at Microsoft.  We found these wonderful carvings by German artist Lotte Sievers-Hahn at a shop in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.  We bought the Holy Family and a few other pieces and then added more pieces a few pieces at a time over the following years.  This set was a favorite of our children, who used to rearrange the people and animals throughout the Christmas season (usually with the animals clustered around Jesus).

Lotte Sievers-Hahn grew up in the state of Lower Saxonia in Northern Germany. She was trained traditionally as a toy maker in Erzgebirge, a region with idyllic landscapes, charming villages and a legacy of artisanship. The School of Gruenhainichen, in Erzgebirge, was famous for its carving style which set its figures apart from the roundness of more typical lathe-turned figures. It was there that Lotte Sievers-Hahn developed her characteristic carving style and chose to make the nativity her personal signature. Although her figures have their roots in Erzgebirge, the designs are quite unique within the German folk art tradition. The extensive collection of people and animals depict her native farming environment with barns typical of the region. Each figure created is an original, carved and painted entirely by hand. All are crafted of limewood, a superior medium for carving. Often used by Renaissance sculptors, this wood’s fine, dense grain provides heft to the figures and takes up oil paint exceptionally well. The Lotte Sievers-Hahn Workshop, still family-run in the town of Brockel, celebrated its 90th year in 2019.

The Workshop follows a process when creating their figures. These are the steps to create a red king:

1. Plane the limewood to the proper thickness.
2. Trace the outlines of the king on the wood using a stencil.
3. Cut out the blank with a scroll saw.

4. Shape the blank with precise cuts with a carving knife.

5. Paint the king with non-toxic oil paints and let dry for 3 days.

Origin	Germany
Artist	Lotte Sievers-Hahn Workshop
Height of tallest piece	7″
Number of pieces	37
Purchase location	The Wood Shop in Seattle
Purchase date	Starting in 1989

Note that I wrote about this nativity set in the very first post to this blog in 2012. I thought it was time to update the photos and present it to my readers again.

Tree of Life Nativity – Mexico

The Tree of Life (Arboles de la Vida) is an Mexican folk art form of a ceramic pottery sculpture featuring colorful and intricately decorations with flowers, leaves and animals on their branches. The individual flowers and figures are connected to the whole structure by wire. This piece is handcrafted in Metepec, a city near Mexico City.

The Mexican Tree of Life format was originally used to represent the biblical Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Traditionally the tree sculpture would include Adam and Eve with the tempting Serpent and and the Archangel Gabriel, but the themes have evolved and today is common to find trees about a variety of subjects such as Day of the Dead, the Nativity, and other Biblical scenes. Certain communities in the early 20th century had a custom of giving a Tree of Life as a wedding present to the newlyweds as a symbol of prosperity and God’s blessings.

Origin	Mexico
Material	Ceramic
Height	10″
Purchase location	eBay
Purchase date	2012

Soapstone Nativity on an Africa-Shaped Base – Kenya

Soapstone carving is a big business in Kenya. Soapstone is plentiful, soft (making it easy to carve) and comes in a variety of colors, including white, pink, and yellow. Any tourist market or souvenir shop will have an unlimited supply of soapstone figures, plates, hearts, animals, and anything else you can imagine. Soapstone is also known as Kisii Stone, named for the region where much of the stone is mined. We have a good collection of soapstone carvings from our trips to Kenya.

Soapstone nativities are also very common, and we have many. An artistic format that is unusual, however, is a nativity set with the figures positioned on a shaped plate. The plate has cut outs where the pieces fit. We have two like this – one plate shaped like Africa and one plate shaped like Kenya.

Kenya-shaped plate:

Origin	Kenya
Material	Soapstone (Kisii Stone)
Height of tallest piece	9″
Number of pieces	14
Purchase location	Carvers’ Market, Malindi, Kenya
Purchase date	2010

Nativity on Africa-shaped plate:

Origin	Kenya
Material	Soapstone (Kisii Stone)
Height of tallest piece	7″
Number of pieces	13
Purchase location	eBay
Purchase date	2014

Folk Art Forest Nativity – Poland

We never know what to expect when we find a piece of folk art from Poland, except it is always unusual and painted in bright colors. This piece turned up on eBay, and is such an unusual work that we had to add it to our collection.

There are some unusual features to this set. The trees, of course, are an abstract wonder. Because these are hand made, each trunk is a different size. It was a challenge to figure out which hole in the platform fits it. The gifts that the wise men are carrying are also labeled with the Polish words for gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This is definitely one of a kind.

Origin	Poland
Material	Carved and painted wood
Height of Tallest piece	18″
Number of pieces	24
Purchased from	eBay
Purchase date	2020

Nativities from Gourds – Peru

Creating nativities is a big industry in Peru. Artists works in clay, wood, fabrics, and all manner of materials. Some of the most intriguing artwork uses gourds. Typically, the outside of the gourd is etched or wood-burned and colored, and that may be the only decoration. More often, a side of the gourd is cut open, and figures are placed inside the hollow gourd.

Gourds are grown everywhere, so gourds are used in artwork from many countries other than Peru. We also have gourds in our collection from Kenya and Ghana.

This is a description from the WorldNativity.com of how some gourds in Peru are prepared: “Gourds are available in a variety of sizes, so artisans usually contract with growers for a certain approximate size in the sowing season, October. After harvesting, the gourds are sun-dried for about six months so they are ready to be worked the following June. A pipe, made from hollow eucalyptus branches, is put in a fire. The artesano then blows air through the hot pipe to scorch the gourd, creating beautiful patinas on the outer surface. Later, the gourd is intricately carved using typical woodworking tools.”