Houzz Workshop Tour: How the Wendt & Kühn Angels Get Their Wings
Take a look at what goes into creating these classic figurines, which are beloved in Germany and the world over
Grünhainichen is an idyllic village with half-timbered houses and cobblestone streets located in the Ore Mountains in Saxony, in the east of Germany. It would seem a little sleepy and off the beaten track, were it not for the traditional Wendt & Kühn workshop that has been producing lovely, world-famous wooden figurines and music boxes there for a hundred years. We were shown how the curly-haired angels, lively musicians and Santas are brought to life in the family-run workshop.
Photos by Uli Kaufmann
An angel perches cheekily on the sign in front of the Wendt & Kühn workshop, letting its legs dangle while playing a violin. With its childlike vitality, the “Grünhainichen Angel” has become a popular piece among collectors and woodcraft lovers the world over. The company’s entire collection is made up of 400 different wooden figurines and music boxes. “Each year, 350,000 angel-musicians leave the workshops, each an example of detailed handiwork,” says Cathleen Thiele, who works in marketing at Wendt & Kühn.
The wooden figurines’ success story began when Grete Wendt and Margarete Kühn, two graduates from the Royal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts, founded the workshop in 1915. After Kühn left the company in 1920, Wendt’s friend Olly Sommer came to her side. A few years later Sommer even married Wendt’s brother. The two women presented their figurines at exhibitions, and even won the gold medal at the Paris International Exhibition in 1937. Such success has continued to the present, while the company has grown from 35 employees in 1923 to about 195 today.
The workshop is still located in the half-timbered house that Grete Kühn owned long ago, and run by the third generation of Wendts, siblings Claudia Baer and Florian Wendt. The family business is forward-looking, yet always committed to traditional values.
Wood samples
These figurines have been the objects of great fascination for the last hundred years. So how are they made?
They begin their life in the woodyard. “Here we process logs that have been trimmed into boards. We purchase them from suppliers and have to wait a good two years for them to dry out before they can be cut into square, flat or rounded forms ready for further processing,” Thiele says. Drying the wood is almost an art in itself, and cannot be done later, after it has already been turned into figurines.
They begin their life in the woodyard. “Here we process logs that have been trimmed into boards. We purchase them from suppliers and have to wait a good two years for them to dry out before they can be cut into square, flat or rounded forms ready for further processing,” Thiele says. Drying the wood is almost an art in itself, and cannot be done later, after it has already been turned into figurines.
Four types of wood are used for these delicate works of art: linden, beech, maple and spruce. Linden and maple are fine-pored and medium-soft, so they are used for parts which are sawn or sanded by hand, such as the angels’ arms or the flower boys’ hats or pants. “Beech is a hardwood and is used mainly for the heads, so that there is a smooth surface for the detailed painting,” Thiele says. “Spruce makes sound well. You can hear this clearly when you knock on a dry piece of spruce. This is why the soundboards for our musical boxes are made of coniferous wood.”
A worker in the turning department
The dried wood first goes to the turning department. Curl by curl, the wood on the lathe is worked with various iron tools. “This is how the initial physical contours, ornamental elements and small components such as the curls of the angels’ hair, only a millimetre each, are created, by the turner’s hand,” Thiele says. This requires practice, know-how and a good eye for form.
The dried wood first goes to the turning department. Curl by curl, the wood on the lathe is worked with various iron tools. “This is how the initial physical contours, ornamental elements and small components such as the curls of the angels’ hair, only a millimetre each, are created, by the turner’s hand,” Thiele says. This requires practice, know-how and a good eye for form.
A turner at work
Everything started in 1917 with the hand-held lathe and continued with a newly developed semi-automatic machine in the thirties. Since then, several generations of technology have been used alongside one another in the workshop, right up to fully automatic machines. “Even with all the modern technology, the craftsmanship of the wood turners is still indispensable. The human being is irreplaceable in our factory,” Thiele says. “Subsequently, the small parts are cut, milled and polished into their final shapes.”
Everything started in 1917 with the hand-held lathe and continued with a newly developed semi-automatic machine in the thirties. Since then, several generations of technology have been used alongside one another in the workshop, right up to fully automatic machines. “Even with all the modern technology, the craftsmanship of the wood turners is still indispensable. The human being is irreplaceable in our factory,” Thiele says. “Subsequently, the small parts are cut, milled and polished into their final shapes.”
Especially small parts are picked out by hand, and damaged pieces are removed. Then, the pieces are brought to the gluing department in large baskets. Before these delicate parts can be combined into figurines, many more hours of meticulous handcrafting are necessary.
The tiny, still completely bare parts are then glued together. Here, the angels get wings and Santa gets his sack.
Pieces being glued in the glueing department
It takes skilled fingers and a good eye to glue the pieces together. “The arms and legs of the angel figurines always consist of several parts, just as Grete Wendt originally instructed. This is how life is breathed into the figurines,” Thiele says.
It takes skilled fingers and a good eye to glue the pieces together. “The arms and legs of the angel figurines always consist of several parts, just as Grete Wendt originally instructed. This is how life is breathed into the figurines,” Thiele says.
After the glued figurines have dried for several days, they are taken to the dipping department, where they receive their base primers. “This creates a uniformly bright first coat, which makes the subsequent colors radiant. In order to prevent the layer of color from being too thick, the figurines are placed onto needle-like rods and twirled. This spins off any excess paint, and the resulting uniform coat is then allowed to harden,” Thiele says.
The pieces are left to dry for ten days before they are taken to the painting department to get their faces and other details.
A painter adding details to a Santa Claus figurine
Almost all of the workers in the painting department are women. They sit together at long work tables. With steady hands and delicate brushstrokes, the 70 employees now add the musicians’ red cheeks, Santa Claus’ cap and the eleven polka dots on the angels’ wings that are so characteristic of Wendt & Kühn.
Thiel points out that the colors and designs come from the original patterns chosen by the founders, which still serve as guidelines for the expert painters. Over 400 shades bring the characters to life. “Nature served Grete and Olly Wendt as a model for the coloring of the figurines,” Thiele says. Forget-me-not-blue, ice blue and rainy sky-blue – no shade of blue, she notes, can stand in for any other, and this is the case for all of the colors used.
Thiel points out that the colors and designs come from the original patterns chosen by the founders, which still serve as guidelines for the expert painters. Over 400 shades bring the characters to life. “Nature served Grete and Olly Wendt as a model for the coloring of the figurines,” Thiele says. Forget-me-not-blue, ice blue and rainy sky-blue – no shade of blue, she notes, can stand in for any other, and this is the case for all of the colors used.
A painter at her work
Before the paints, which are mixed by hand, can be applied to the figurines, they have to be checked by the sharp eyes of Kerstin Lorenz. She is the head of one of their two paint shops, and checks all the paints. “Colour mixing is a matter of feeling. It comes from the gut,” Lorenz says. Is it something you can learn? “Yes, I learned colour mixing from the very basics. I’ve experimented a lot: how to get a certain tone and what happens when you mix this or that. And then it was practice, practice, practice.”
“The most famous figurines are our little angels with eleven evenly spaced dots on their wings,” Thiele says. The makeup of the green on the wings of the chubby little angels is a well-kept secret – or, Lorenz jokes, all of the angels in heaven would want it.
The faces are the last thing to be painted: Only a handful of trained painters handle that crucial step. They are the only ones who are able to apply the curved eyes, whimsical mouths and cute little noses. They are true masters of their craft.
Before the painted figurines are ready to go, each one gets the initials “W.u.K.” stamped on the bottom in the packaging department.
By this point, the figurines have passed through many hands. “It takes around six weeks from the gluing of the individual parts to the production of a finished painted figurine,” Thiele says.
By this point, the figurines have passed through many hands. “It takes around six weeks from the gluing of the individual parts to the production of a finished painted figurine,” Thiele says.
The demand for these traditional wooden figurines from Saxony is still very high today, one hundred years after the founding of the company. They are true collectors’ items. Some people associate them with childhood memories or Christmas stories. For many others, the childlike angels, cheerful musicians and Santas with fully loaded sacks represent an idyllic world.
This is the case all around the globe: These figurines have long been known far beyond the borders of Germany. The workshop supplies about 25 Japanese department stores, and figurines can be found in the residence of the Japanese emperor. Queen Silvia of Sweden distributes sweets to her grandchildren in wooden boxes made at the workshop, and even Hollywood has knocked at Wendt and Kühn’s door.
This is the case all around the globe: These figurines have long been known far beyond the borders of Germany. The workshop supplies about 25 Japanese department stores, and figurines can be found in the residence of the Japanese emperor. Queen Silvia of Sweden distributes sweets to her grandchildren in wooden boxes made at the workshop, and even Hollywood has knocked at Wendt and Kühn’s door.
“In October 2012, the factory received a request from Walt Disney Studios, which was planning a film about the company founder, Walt Disney. There is evidence that Walt Disney was a big fan of Wendt & Kühn. Some of the wooden figurines that adorned his study needed to be reconstructed as faithfully as possible for the movie,” Thiele says. That’s why the movie Saving Mr. Banks (released in 2013) counts not only Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson among its stars, but also figurines from Wendt & Kühn.