MARY MYERS CUT sharply into the man's chest, etching the boxy body of a World War I doughboy from the block of basswood.
She was creating a nutcracker ordered by a Pennsylvania man whose grandfather served in the Great War. The customer wanted something sturdy and unique as a tribute, so he emailed Myers.
She cut into the wood with the same knife she started carving with 25 years ago, when demand for her nutcrackers became so great that she quit teaching and began making them for a living.
But the days when Myers' work was displayed at the White House and pictured in Country Living magazine are now only pages in her thick scrapbook. Fewer people appreciate nutcrackers smoothed and painted by hand and not finished on an assembly line in China, she says. Most of the shops that carried her art have closed.
Christmastime is still busy, but not as much as it once was for the The Nutcracker Lady.
The workshop in Myers' Virginia Beach condo looks like Santa's workshop.
Paper nutcracker patterns, tubes of wood filler and a tray of bandages fill a desk. Her toys fill shelves and tabletops: A Santa nutcracker wears long johns, wooden Abe Lincoln and Robert E. Lee stand at attention, and a growing legion of miniature animals waits to file onto an ark that a Richmond collector has requested.
Christmas themes were the most popular, but Halloween figurines now trump toy soldiers. The autumnal demand still isn't enough to keep Myers' hands busy, even though she keeps her website marymyersnutcrackers.com updated with different offerings. People find cheaply made nutcrackers at dollar stores now. The quality isn't the same, but consumers don't seem to care.
That, more than the money, is what bothers Myers, 69. She misses sharing her work. For years, Myers and her husband piled wood, chairs and tools into their Toyota Camry and spent hours carving in front of crowds and chatting about folk art.
"It's kind of sad when you don't have that anymore," she said during a recent Friday afternoon, putting down her knife and picking up a rasp to finely sand her infantryman's wooden breeches.
"The people have been the best part... I really hate to give it up. It's just so much fun. I don't know what I would do without it."
Myers' father was a carpenter, and her mom was from a family of decoy makers on Chincoteague.
She tagged along with her dad to the lumber yard and played with blocks of wood the way other girls played with dolls. Her dad built the house in Norfolk where she and her husband, Earl, once lived. Her daughter now lives there, along with Myers' original wood shop in the garage.
When they first married, Earl was climbing the corporate ladder and Myers taught Montessori school in Virginia Beach. She made wooden game boards for fun and sold a few.
Then a friend returned from Europe with a nutcracker bought in Germany. Myers had always liked the characters, but didn't like the glossy finish of the German nutcrackers. One day, she picked up a slab of wood and started making her own. She stained it to look aged. Shortly afterward, she heard that a buyer from the American Folk Art Museum was coming to lecture in Virginia Beach.
Myers slid her nutcracker into a bag, intending to show it to the woman just to get an opinion on the work.
The woman didn't just appreciate Myers' handiwork, she desired it, and ordered two dozen nutcrackers for the museum.
She got the orders in 1989 just as her husband lost his job. Her father had finished their house and they had a new mortgage to pay.
"I had to decide what I wanted to do. It was scary," she said, "But I've always felt I made the right choice.'
For the next 10 years, Myers couldn't make nutcrackers fast enough to keep gift shops stocked. Colonial Williamsburg wanted her work. Magazines almost always included her in their holiday editions. Stores along the East Coast called for orders. She was asked to decorate store windows in New York, and paid to carve nutcrackers in a shop in San Francisco; afterward Santa Claus walked her to her hotel room each night. Those were the days. Eventually, her garage was expanded and became bigger than the house.
Earl helped in the business. Myers' father taught him how to cut the wood on the lathe, while she did everything else. Even their two children helped paint. The work is labor intensive, but Myers has always enjoyed that.
"I felt I must've been meant to do this work," she said.
The actual carving for each nutcracker takes six to eight hours or longer; she can't use power tools because the fine dust irritates her allergies. Most pieces start around $170. Working each one with her hands allowed her to add unique touches - the curl of a smile, the colored tip of a miniature cap.
Kitty Swingle of Kitty's LTD shop in Millsboro, Del., noticed Myers' pieces in an early 1990s magazine. Swingle carries the work of American artists and called Myers and to ask if she could carry her line.
She still does.
"It's more whimsical folk art. She's doing work that not everybody else is doing," Swingle said. "I've had customers who would bring in a book and ask, 'Can Mary do this?' And I could say, 'Yes, she can.' "
By late afternoon on this Friday, Myers was still rasping her soldier's pants when Earl walked in.
"That's looking pretty good," he said.
"You always doubt me," she answered. Myers said she can see a finished doll before she starts, while her husband can't. But he knows his wife's work and has never needed to worry.
"What color do you think they should be?" she asked, holding up a printout of a World War I soldier. "Like a swamp brown, a swamp green?"
"Well," he answered, "I can run you to the Army Navy shop in Norfolk if you want to look at colors."
Myers nodded. She would be breaking soon for the evening anyway; she was losing the afternoon light. Years ago, she would've been working until 2 a.m. She estimated, though, that she would have her doughboy completed by the next day, finished and painted and ready to ship.
Myers looked at her work around the room.
"It will look loved when we finish. People who collect them like them like that," she said. "I guess they are people like me."
Denise M. Watson, 757-446-2504, denise.watson@pilotonline.com