You're correct about Oberammergau, there's a lot of woodworking stores there. Hope this helps.

I should have said, Oberammergau would be a good place to start. When you start with a specific interest there is no telling where it may lead. Happy travels.

On your way to Oberammergau from Garmisch you will pass Ettal, there is a beautiful Cathedral there. On the left side of the rd there is a woodworker that sells wonderful things and his shop is right there. I make my husband take me there every trip and he has my favorite items at much better prices than anywhere else. There is parking in front of the shop. I actually think there might be two shops but last trip only one was open.

Oberammergau is the "end of the rainbow" for this stuff, but it is frightfully expensive, probably owing to it's position at the end of the rainbow.

Maybe somebody knows some other places where one can acquire some fine German carvings? I would love to know for the next trip.

Are you looking for uniquely designed and hand constructed furniture, or wood carvings? Lots of the latter there. I'm a woodworker, too, and all I noticed were coo coo clocks there.

Nuke- my husband actually does furniture, but he's interested to see just about anything. Do you know of a good place to see furniture? He was hoping to find a woodworking school, or something along those lines!

The woodworking in Oberammergau is almost exclusively devoted to works of religious art or significance. Yes you will find the cuckoo clocks and so forth but I doubt any of them are made there. Some of the figures are basically done by machine and then are finished by hand in some instances.

You can get custom work done and shipped (I have a wayside shrine but it's actually hanging on one of the interior walls of my home which I had made and shipped over to the US) but I don't remember seeing a lot of furniture in a lot of those shops.

Good afternoon,chrissynj.

Steiermark - or Styria - in Austria is the centre of the universe for all matters wood.

See http://www.austrianalpineholidaysblog.com for information

Kind regards,
L

This is a band of Oberammergau woodcarvers:

http://www.st-lukas-verein.de/Content/Frameset.htm?mitglieder.htm~mitte

It's all in German, I think you can get websites to translate it (someone else might know of the translation websites, sorry, I don't). Addresses of the workshops and photos of their work.

Lavandula

And only one wood turner / toymaker:

http://www.auftragsfreundlich.de/Drechsler-und-Holzspielzeugmacher/Oberammergau/

Lavandula

I'm sorry about not being able to give your husband much positive help, Chris, but I can suggest you turn on Google Translate to help you read the German. You can cut and paste sections of text to the site, and it will give you at least an understandable idea of what is going on. If you happen to use Google as your server, foreign web sites come up with a bar at the top which asks if you want the page translated.