Whenever she has a spare minute, Dinah Nicholson reaches for her snippet bag, which contains all the ingredients she needs to make Christmas-tree fairies: mohair, glass beads, tiny pieces of antique material and ‘anything beautiful,’ she says.
Mrs Nicholson has been making fairies since 2002 and, this year, her 70th, she produced fairy number 4,000, whom she named Octavia after her youngest daughter.
Each fairy’s details are recorded in a ledger – noting the date she was made, her name and number – before being sent out into the world. ‘There are fairies in royal circles, Australia, New York – everywhere,’ enthuses Mrs Nicholson.
‘I’ve even gathered a petticoat when standing in a bank queue.’
She’s a great-niece of the artist William Nicholson, so it seems creativity runs deep through Mrs Nicholson and her family. ‘I often make a fairy before breakfast when listening to the Shipping Forecast, but I also make them on the bus and the beach, as well as while waiting for hair and make-up when I work as an extra,’ she explains. ‘I’ve even gathered a petticoat when standing in a bank queue.’
The fairy bodies are fashioned with workaday materials such as Blu Tack and pipe cleaners, but it’s when clothing each character and painting their faces that Mrs Nicholson’s imagination really takes flight. Indeed, no two fairies are the same: there’s a gin-and-tonic fairy, who wears a Schweppes bottle top as a jaunty hat, a seashell fairy with seaweed hair and bridesmaid fairies that are mini-doppelgangers of real bridemaids with matching dresses.
‘They always have pants,’ notes Mrs Nicholson. ‘I sell them at charity sales and people always flip them over to check.’
Mrs Nicholson was inspired by her mother, who made dolls for all her children. ‘I have four daughters and none of them have time to make a fairy,’ she muses, ‘but I’m teaching my grandchildren.’
To see more of Dinah's beautiful fairies, visit www.dinahnicholson.wixsite.com.
Credit: ©Richard Cannon/Country Life Picture Library
The Pigeon Fancier: 'I set up a deckchair in the garden and wait for them to come back. That’s the most exciting part.'
This week’s Living National Treasure is Colin Hill, a pigeon fancier whose birds regularly race from the tip of Scotland
The Florist: 'What I do is like good cooking – if you have beautiful ingredients, you can’t go wrong'
This week's Living National Treasure is royal florist Shane Connolly – and while he might be based in Britain, he's
The dry stone wall builder: 'Every metre of wall contains a ton of stone. You really feel it after a hard week.'
This week's Living National Treasure is Anthony Gorman, a man who has spent his life building beautiful walls by hand
The gold stamper: ‘The younger generation is very appreciative of artisan work – they’re the ones driving the trend’
This week's Living National Treasure is John Timms, the man who leads the team that stamps gold lettering into thousands
The neon sign maker: 'Piccadilly Circus was our answer to Vegas – now it's all pixellated screens'
This week's Living National Treasure is Marcus Bracey, the man behind the neon signs that light up our cities. He
Credit: Living National Treasure: The Glassblower - ©Country Life/Richard Cannon
The Glassblower: 'When something goes wrong you can't fix it – you just sling in into the bosh bucket and start again'
Ian Shearman's team of glassblowers are still making glass using a technique that's 2,000 years old. Mary Miers found out
-
A country house that's 'the finest-looking estate between the Humber and the Tweed' (at least according to Queen Victoria)Burn Hall is a treasure-trove of architectural features, from its sweeping staircase to its grand snooker room.
-
Liverpool and literature: Country Life Quiz of the Day, July 18, 2025Which river runs through Liverpool and how much do you remember from the 'Harry Potter' book series?
-
‘Everyone had dodgy magazines hidden under their beds and I had interior design magazines’: James Thurstan Waterworth's consuming passionsInterior designer James Thurstan Waterworth was the European design director at Soho House before he went on to open his own studio, Thurstan. He discusses his love of Tudor history, Andrew Scott and how a portrait of a chicken changed his life.
-
101 gold rats, a 'self portrait as a horse' and a tribute to motherhood take home top prizes at this year's Royal Academy Summer ExhibitionThe Royal Academy has announced its 2025 prize winners, spanning talented sculptors, painters and print-makers, with works on display in London until August 19.
-
The teeny tiny car that you absolutely don’t need, but will absolutely want this summer — and it has an inbuilt showerThe Fiat Topolino has been reimagined by French swimwear brand Vilebrequin just in time for the summer holidays.
-
Small engines, big batteries: The quiet revolution of car designMore and more cars on the road are electric, and some unusual shapes and sizes glide past silently. But what does it all mean for design?
-
You can’t always rely on the Great British summer — but you can rely on its watchesBritish watchmakers have excelled themselves in recent months — releasing bright and beautiful timepieces that you'll want on your wrist through summer, and beyond.
-
No strings attached: A brief history of swimwear, from heavy skirts of linen linked to women's drownings, to the skimpy two-piece named after a nuclear weapons siteFrom knee-length numbers to a scandalous suit denounced by the Pope, the colourful history of swimwear has been brought to life by a glamorous London exhibition.
-
Downtown Abbey is about to finish forever, and you're about to get a chance to see — and to buy — the costumes from the showDownton Abbey's exquisite costumes and props are going on show at a free exhibition ahead of a sale being held by Bonhams later this summer.
-
‘One of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever made’: the Bayeux Tapestry heads to Britain for the first time in almost a millenniumA historic agreement between this country and France sees the 225ft-long tableau — which may have been made in Britain but has been in France since 1077 — arrive at the British Museum in Autumn 2026.
