Oberammergau Museum - Woodcarving at its finest

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While we were travelling through Bavaria in south-west Germany, we found ourselves close to Oberammeragau and decided to visit. I already had a tiny wooden nativity scene which a friend had brought back for me a year or two previously. I've made a video just of items in the wood-working museum. It lasts for 1½ minutes so I hope you have time to view it. In 1681, it was estimated that there were 39 woodcarvers in the town. Two hundred years later the number had risen to 120. This included both men and women. Other craftspeople also found employment making clothes for figures, or pedestals and crosses for figures. By the 19th century, over a third of the population earned their living in a business at least related to wood-carving. Their income depended on the quality of their work and the amount they could produce. The carvings of the figures of Christ on the Cross were entrusted to only a few of the best woodcarvers. Local woodcarvers continue to fashion all manner of objects, particularly those with religious and historical connotations. Immediately after the wars, their skills were called on to fashion prostheses for those who had lost limbs.