Holle

When it snows, people in Austria and Germany still say it: Frau Holle is shaking out her featherbeds. The Brothers Grimm wrote her down as a fairy tale: the girl who falls through the well into a land below, takes the bread from the oven, shakes the apple tree, and is showered with gold for her care.

But Holle is far older than the tale. As Holda or Hulda she was a great goddess of the German-speaking lands: lady of winter and of spinning, keeper of wells and springs, guardian of the souls of children not yet born. In the Twelve Nights of midwinter she moves through the land and looks into every house. She rewards diligence and care, and she does not forget. Holle is the grandmother face of the goddess: stern, warm and just.

Holle rewards patient work, and patient work is what shapes her here. The Frau Holle sculpture is formed by hand from clay, painted and fired in the atelier: one of a kind, like every goddess in this gathering.