The Elves and the Shoemaker's Workshop

The Elves and the Shoemaker is one of the best-loved tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, first printed in their Children's and Household Tales in 1812. A poor shoemaker has leather left for only one pair of shoes. He cuts it out at night, and in the morning finds the shoes already sewn, with stitches so fine that a customer pays extra. With the money he buys leather for two pairs, then four, and slowly grows prosperous, never knowing who does the work.

One evening not long before Christmas, he and his wife hide behind hanging clothes and watch. At midnight two tiny men appear, sit at the bench and stitch and hammer until every shoe is finished. Moved by their ragged state, the wife sews them little shirts, coats and trousers, and the shoemaker makes each a pair of tiny shoes. The elves dress, sing and dance out of the door, and never return, but the shoemaker's luck stays with him. This brick model opens the timber-framed workshop as a cutaway, with the elves busy at the candlelit bench downstairs while the shoemaker sleeps above.