Nutcracker
Sweet

The Ballet, One Character at a Time

The Nutcracker Sweet series launched in 2019 as a Keepsake Ornament Club exclusive — a five-entry run depicting one principal character from Tchaikovsky's beloved holiday ballet per year, each one sculpted en pointe with gemstone accents. The concept was precise: not an impression of The Nutcracker, but a cast list. Each year, another dancer takes the stage on the tree.

Edythe Kegrize sculpted the first three entries — the Sugar Plum Fairy (2019), the Snow Queen (2020), and the Waltz of the Flowers dancer (2021) — bringing to the series her celebrated gift for figurative work and surface design. The Sugar Plum Fairy arrived with a lollipop baton and a cupcake tiara, her feet poised en pointe. The Snow Queen held her sparkling wand, ready to transform a forest into a winter wonderland. The Waltz of the Flowers ballerina wore her petals costume with a flower baton, every gemstone accent placed by hand.

In 2022, Kegrize was joined by Robert Hurlburt for the Mouse King — the ballet's villain, sword drawn and dapper in every detail. And in 2023, Terri Steiger brought the series home with Clara: the girl who began it all, admiring the nutcracker gift she has just received, a ribbon bow and gem accents completing her portrait. Five characters. Five years. The curtain fell on the Nutcracker Sweet series with its most essential figure — the child at the center of the Christmas Eve dream.

Three Artists, Five Characters

The Ballet That Belongs to Christmas

Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker is the most performed ballet in the world, and in the United States it is performed almost exclusively at Christmas — a tradition that began in the mid-20th century and has become so deeply established that for many families, seeing or performing The Nutcracker is the annual event that makes the season feel real. The ballet's story — a child receives a nutcracker on Christmas Eve, dreams herself into a kingdom of sweets, meets a Sugar Plum Fairy and a Snow Queen and a villain mouse — is the perfect Christmas story: magical, personal, centering a child's imagination as the source of all the wonder.

The Nutcracker Sweet series takes the five characters who carry that story and places them on the Christmas tree — the Sugar Plum Fairy in her cupcake tiara, the Snow Queen with her sparkling wand, the Waltz of the Flowers dancer in her petals costume, the Mouse King ready to draw his sword, and Clara with the nutcracker gift in her arms. Displayed together on the tree, they recreate the cast of the performance that, for many collectors, is as much a part of Christmas as any ornament. They are not illustrations of the ballet; they are the ballet, miniaturized and placed where the family can see them every December.

The series' exclusivity to KOC membership gives the complete five-piece cast a specific kind of significance for collectors: these are ornaments that required commitment to obtain, year after year. A complete set of all five is the record of five consecutive years of engagement with Hallmark's collector community — and of five Decembers when the ballet's cast grew by one on the tree.

Tips for the Collection

• 01
  Display all five in dramatic order to recreate the ballet's arc. Sugar Plum Fairy → Snow Queen → Waltz of the Flowers → Mouse King → Clara. The series runs from the dream's most celebrated figures (the Sugar Plum Fairy) through the villain (the Mouse King) to the girl whose Christmas Eve imagination created the entire kingdom (Clara). In that sequence, the five ornaments tell the story.
• 02
  The Mouse King is the series' most dramatic entry — the only villain in a five-character cast of dancers, rendered by two artists (Kegrize and Hurlburt) with his sword drawn and ready for Act I's confrontation. On the tree, he provides the series' only note of tension among the five figures, and that contrast — the graceful dancers and the dapper villain — mirrors the structure of the ballet itself.
• 03
  Give a complete set to a family with a Nutcracker ballet tradition. For any family that attends, performs in, or hosts a watching of The Nutcracker every December, the complete five-figure cast on the tree is a portrait of their tradition. The series is at its most meaningful when its recipient already has a relationship with the ballet it depicts.
• 04
  The gemstone accents catch the Christmas tree light. Every Nutcracker Sweet entry features gemstone accents — small details that were designed to sparkle in the reflected light of the tree. Position the ornaments where the lights can reach them, and the gems animate the figures with a glimmer that plain ornaments don't have.
• 05
  Clara #5 (2023) is the most fitting ornament to anchor the set. She is the character from whose dream the entire story emerges — the Sugar Plum Fairy is Clara's dream, the Snow Queen is Clara's dream, the Mouse King is Clara's nightmare. All four other ornaments in the series exist because of her imagination. Display Clara at the center of the five, with the other characters arrayed around her.