Christmas arch

My granddad had an arch with horses on display every Christmas. I don't know where this has gone since they died, but I always wanted one. At last I took the time to make one of my own.

The idea was to use seven horses due to an old Swedish Christmas carol about Staffan, the stable master of king Herodes.

According to the song Staffan himself rode upon the seventh horse called Apelgrå (apple-gray). The term apelgrå in Swedish describes a gray horse with white imprints, often in the shape of half-cut apples.

It's worth noting there are versions of the song with nine horses instead of seven.

To encourage visiting children to play with this Christmas piece I made an extra horse that are free roaming for anyone to play around with.

Creation process

I used a piece of press I made before for a shield, or a wooden packing frame to create the arch from a piece of ash tree.

The foundation too is a piece of the same ash board. However, the horses are made from birch and screwed in place.

Since the window where the arch was supposed to stand is a few stories up, and distance from the window board to the actual window is a decimeter or so, I arranged the line of horses to start a bit up on the arch.

Creating a saddle

For fun I made a saddle to the horse for Staffan. I used leather that I soaked in water and then pressed into shape while drying. Last I used wax to polish it.

Adding lighting

In 2024, four years after I first created and used the arch, I finally addede some lighting.

Still to be done

There are still some stuff I consider improving the Christmas arch with:

• Finish paining of the Apelgrå horse. The name Apelgrå is a very descriptive name since a horse that is apelgrå means it has a base color of gray with white marks in the shape of cut apples.
• Hiding the lightning cable.