Handmade in Germany
Erzgebirge Mountain Workshop
Consider, for a moment, the drummer. In Moscow's Bolshoi production, he marches at the front of the toy battalion with a gold-braided shako and a face painted for the back row. In Nuremberg, he is carved in the two-tone tradition — pale linden for the skin, dark walnut-stain for the uniform — and he stands on a shelf for fifty years without losing the rhythm in his wrists. This is the Nuremberg drummer, which is to say, this is the one I would take home.
Christian Ulbricht partners with the Seiffener Nussknackerhaus on this natural-finish miniature, and the partnership shows in the small things an international eye catches. The shako is black cylindrical, crowned with a white feather plume and ringed by a gold rope cord with fringed tassels falling on both sides. A gold star medallion marks the front. The jacket is dark reddish-brown stained rather than painted — a technique Seiffen's workshops use when they want the wood grain to read through the color — and the drum at his waist is two-tone: black body, natural rims. Dark boots with gold cross-lace. Twelve and a half inches. Every proportion earned.
Sugar Plum keeps him in the music room at the Castle, on a low shelf where the piano students can see him. She told me once that drummers make the best audience for pianists — they understand tempo without needing to speak. I think she was being generous. I think she just likes the way he looks in morning light, standing at parade rest, waiting for the downbeat that has not quite arrived.
— The Cavalier
