The love of wood is in our DNA, so to speak. Even as little girls we sat with our father in his workshop for hours on end and watched as the little wooden figurines were given their colourful clothing. Our papa was already quite old when we were small – in 1929, aged 25, he founded a company in Gahlenz making traditional wooden ornaments. We came along in 1974 and 1983, but our papa was always very active. He went to work every day until the ripe old age of 87.

When we finished school, we both went our separate ways. We studied, travelled abroad, had children, founded agencies and both have really fulfilling jobs.

But the desire to create something of our own in wood had long lain dormant in both of us. Then in spring 2006, the time had come at last. One evening as we sat in the kitchen we started to draw outlines of angels. Modern, sensual, graceful and slender, to reflect our image of the modern woman. We then took our drawings to Gundolf Berger, Managing Director of our father’s old company (www.gahlenz.de). He loved the idea, but said straight away that it would not be easy to implement as our concept of an angel was not rotationally symmetrical. We wanted to give some sensuous movement to the body of the angel, which is how we see ourselves as women. This is not that easy to turn on a lathe. A 3-D model was required. But how were we to make one? It was something we knew absolutely nothing about! So we began to bake. Using salt dough we kneaded and shaped the body of the angel until we were happy with it. Into the oven it went. As our parents’ house stood immediately opposite the Gahlenz workshops, when the dough figure was baked we simply ran over the road, full of pride. Anyone else would probably have thrown us out, but Gundolf Berger gave us a chance. He recognised the potential of these modern figurines and experimented with innovative techniques until he succeeded in giving the angels their sensual swaying hips. We girls were delighted! We had never ever imagined that our angels would get wings so very large as to enable them to fly all over the world. Today, every year several hundred angels first see the light of day in the Gahlenz workshops. From there they fly all around the globe to bring heavenly joy to people in all corners of the earth.