For those who build with Ankerstein it is traditional to build a crèche during the holidays.

I will admit that I have only done this a couple of times as I usually have too many books that I want to read 🙂

However, I may build one this year.

So what is a crèche?

A crèche is a model or tableau representing the scene of Jesus Christ’s birth. In other words, a nativity scene. I don’t have the figures for a nativity scene, but I can build a building that is a stable with my Ankerstein sets.

This is a manger built with the first two boxes of Ankerstein.

You can see an artistic representation with figures in my post Anker Nativity I.

This one is built with the first four boxes of stones and is the manger that is in the first picture of the post.

You can see more in my post Anker Nativity II.

Here is an even larger manger. This one is build with six boxes of stones. You can see here that the stones are getting smaller and that there is much more detail in the building. That is the wonder of the Ankerstein system. Each additional box of stones has smaller and more detailed stones.

Find out more about this one in Anker Nativity III.

Here is the picture from the Ankerstein plan for the third one. In this you can see a camel and elephant which according to tradition were ridden by the three wise men.

However, do we know how many wise men there were? And, did they visit Jesus at the stable?

Visit my post Three Wise Men? to find out the answer to these two questions.

Here is fourth and final Nativity Scene that I built from the Ankerstein plan books.

I will start with a drawing from the plan book.Here is the drawing for the  Krippe/Crib. Here again we have the traditional nativity scene shown.

Here is my construction of the Krippe. The structure was built with nine boxes of stones – 6, 6A, 8A, 10A, 12A, 14A, 16A, 18A,and 20A. These nine boxes of stones make up set number NF22. If you contrast this structures with the ones above, you will see that this one is not only bigger, but has more detail with the increased variety in stone shapes and sizes.

Find out more about this one in Anker Nativity IV.

You can visit my first post about Ankerstein to find out more about how the set system works.

I have looked through the plan books through the rest of the boxes and this is the last of the Nativity scenes. However, perhaps I can find some plans that others have created and build another one sometime.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Steven