584 - Annaberg Obersteiger, light-bearing miner with candle socket, painted wood, Erzgebirge, circa 1900

Annaberg Obersteiger, light-bearing miner with candle socket, painted wood, Erzgebirge, circa 1900 Wood, carved and polychrome painted, miner with candle socket, traditional Annaberg Obersteiger (senior mine foreman), circa 1900. Historic miner in festive dress (Habit) with grey beard. Green shako with gold-coloured braid, gold-coloured Saxon coat of arms shield and black-brown plume, white hood reaching to the shoulders, black jacket with gold-coloured buttons and gold-coloured fringe trim on the shoulders and upper arms, red waistcoat, black belt with pouch bearing the hammer and pick emblem, white trousers, black knee pieces and white gaiters with a row of buttons. In the right hand a hatchet, in the left hand a metal candle socket with drip pan, at the left hip a sabre with knuckle-bow hilt and tassel. Stepped base, painted grey with glittering surface. Good condition commensurate with age. H. 60 cm. 360-degree photo available on our website. The candlestick miner originated as a bearer of altar candles and later found its place as a light bearer in private living rooms. Carved single figures for domestic use only appeared from the middle of the 19th century, favoured by cheaper candles made of stearin and paraffin. The Annaberg Obersteiger with candle holder is one of the traditional types of these light figures; as senior foreman he made sure that hewers and workers went down and came up the shaft at the right time. The black miner's habit was introduced in the Electorate of Saxony in 1769 by the Marienberg mining master Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich von Trebra, and the miners' parades of the mining regions still show the variety of this miner's costume today. The equipment also revealed rank: the Steiger carried the Steigerhäckel, while hewers and senior hewers carried miner's axes. According to old custom, a miner was carved for every son and an angel for every daughter as light bearers and placed in the window, and as a pair the miner and the light angel stand for secular and spiritual life.