Nativity scene Ján Chvalník

In his workshop he restores old valuable cribs, but also makes brand new ones. Ján Chvalník has kept the tradition of crib-making alive in the Příbram region for over thirty years - and this is the story that brought him to it.

I was born in Prague, but grew up in Štiavnik. It's a village below the Javorníky Mountains in Slovakia. Then I went to Karviná to a vocational school, where I became a miner. The war took me back to Prague, I served in Klecany and one day I noticed a recruitment leaflet from the uranium mines there. So I thought I would go to Pribram - since I was already a trained miner. I joined in the 70s and I was already stuck here.

I worked as a chimney sweep, it was very physical work. I enjoyed everything, but I especially enjoyed the mining. You can see the work behind you. They were tough, but they were very friendly. In the pubs, we'd get into a row, a few slaps, but downstairs we had to stick together. We never knew when we'd need each other. Occasionally something would fall and you'd just be relieved you weren't in that place. Not everyone was so lucky.

The hardest thing is the baby goat.

When I got out of that llama school, they put me in the ammunition depot for lighter work. I was almost bored here, in the morning you issue ammunition and you have to wait to see if someone will return it to you. Because I had a long time there, I started fixing my friends' drills and playing with wood. Almost every family in Slovakia used to carve things like a wooden spoon, some kind of cooking pot or bowl, so we were quite skilled with wood. But this is where I really got into it. The Staggers could always tell who was in the warehouse by the wood scraps.

One friend was leaving the shaft and owed me about five hundred crowns. Since he didn't have it, he gave me an old crib instead. It was missing a palm tree. I figured I wasn't so stupid that I couldn't finish it. Well, that's how it started.

First I copied other people's cribs, then I invented my own figures. But even with the copying I never managed to make an exact copy, I left something of my own in each figure. Like the face. Other people tell me that all the figures look like me, because I like to make bearded men. They're the easiest. The most difficult ones are the baby jesus and the female faces, I don't like to get into them.

Pribram cribs are the most beautiful anyway.

Of course, I became interested in the history of crib making in the Příbram region. After all, we are the biggest crib area in Bohemia! Mining was extremely important for the development. Havirs wanted to go for a beer - we went almost every day too - and they had to earn some money. Svatá Hora, an important place of pilgrimage, played a role, of course. And the proximity to Prague helped. There were also big Christmas markets here in Pribram, but Prague was a guaranteed outlet.

Příbram's nativity scenes are special. I say they're the most beautiful anyway. It's hard to describe, I've seen hundreds of nativity scenes, but the ones in Pribram are just different. For example, the size of the crib, there were common thirty centimetre figures. The crystals from the mines were also put into the cribs and the stones were sprinkled with galena.

Every nativity scene has its own principles. The first concerns where the figures come from in the crib. If a figure has his left foot out, he comes in from the left - and vice versa. The three kings should come from the east, that is, from the right. The carver has to think about this when he makes the figures. Secondly, the baby Jesus should not arrive in the crib until Christmas Eve. The shepherds and sheep will be the first to arrive, but on 6 January he will recede into the background and the kings will come to the fore. The whole thing can be rearranged in various ways until Easter, and there are also Easter cribs. And a third such rule says how the Holy Family should stand, i.e. Joseph on the right and Mary on the left.

■ Text: Václav Bešt'ák, photo: Karolina Ketmanová

Traditional exhibition of nativity scenes of the Mining Museum, this time unconventionally at the Vojtěch mine in Březové Hory. After several years, the large historical Masner's crib and a number of smaller cribs will be on display again. The contemporary work is represented by the crib of Milan Hošek from Dobříš, this year supplemented with new presents and a mining band, the buildings inspired by local historical architecture for this crib were created by Eliška Drahokoupilová. In the ceramic crib by Josef Tichý and Tomáš Wild from Dobříš, we can also recognize well-known buildings, this time from Březové Hory.

This year's Christmas is also connected with one anniversary, namely two hundred years since the first Christmas tree was decorated in Příbram. The exhibition will commemorate this event with historical ornaments and examples of old toys that Příbram children could find under the trees over the course of two centuries.