Yesterday | Advertorial | Hilary Dent

“My hands won’t give me another winter at that bench. These are the last pairs I’ll ever sew.” Why a 76-year-old upholsterer from the Yorkshire Dales is selling his favourite handmade earmuffs online for the first and last time

Since 1998, Ambrose Metcalfe has sewn soft spotted earmuffs in his workshop in Hawes, high up in Wensleydale. His hands won’t let him go on, and his last 263 pairs are the end of it.

Ambrose Metcalfe (76) in his workshop off the Market Place. After 29 winters, these are the last earmuffs he will make.

Hawes, November. The first snow has settled on the fell tops above Wensleydale, and the little sash window of Metcalfe Upholstery is already misted at the corners. Inside, the old storage heater ticks, a half-finished wingback chair waits on the trestle, and the long workbench at the back is covered in soft spotted faux fur. Cardboard circles hang from a nail. A roll of brown faux suede leans against the stone wall. Ambrose Metcalfe has unlocked this door every morning since 1972. In a few weeks he will lock it for the last time.

“It’s my hands,” he says, and holds them up. The knuckles are swollen, and he can’t close his right fist all the way. “Arthritis. The doctor’s been on at me for two winters. A pair of these is five hours of fine stitching, and some mornings now I can’t hold the needle.” He has sold the building. A chap from Harrogate is turning it into holiday flats. He shrugs, the way Dales men shrug about things that hurt. “So that’s that.”

He isn’t sad about the chairs. Other people can re-cover chairs. What he is sad about are the earmuffs. “Nobody else is going to make these,” he says. “And every December folk come in asking for them like I’m the post office.”

Father Christmas’s sleigh, a lollipop lady – and a name the children gave her

Every year at the start of December, Hawes switches on its Christmas lights, and Father Christmas arrives on the Market Place on an old wooden sleigh. In the autumn of 1998 the committee brought that sleigh to Ambrose and asked him to re-cover the seat. They had bought a bolt of spotted faux fur that was meant to look like reindeer. “It looked like a fawn,” Ambrose says. “Reindeer haven’t got spots. Not one of that committee had ever seen a reindeer.”

There was a remnant left over. His wife Freda was the lollipop lady outside the primary school, and she stood out in the wind off the fells every morning and every afternoon. “Her ears were always red. Every single day,” he says. So he cut two circles from the remnant, stuffed them like a cushion, covered a padded band in brown suede left over from a customer’s armchair, and gave them to her on the night of the lights. The next morning, a girl from Year 2 stopped in the middle of the crossing and shouted: “Mrs Reindeer!” By Christmas, half of Hawes was calling her that – and the mums started turning up at the workshop.

Every band is padded and covered by hand, the same way Ambrose finishes the arm of a chair.

What makes a pair of Reindeer Earmuffs so special

The high street at 3pm, minus two and a wind off the fell – and two very warm ears.

At first glance it is the fur: soft, round, spotted cups that look like something off an old Christmas card. People stop strangers in the queue at the Co-op to ask about them. But Ambrose says the real difference is in the part nobody looks at – the band.

“Shop earmuffs either pinch or they slide off,” he explains. “Cheap plastic band, a bit of fluff glued on, and by dinnertime you’ve a headache.” His bands are built like the arm of a good chair: a firm core inside, a layer of soft padding over it, and a fabric cover pulled tight and stitched underneath so there is no seam on top of your head. “Firm on the inside, soft on the outside. That’s all upholstery is,” he says. The cups are cut from his own cardboard templates, filled like little cushions so they stay round, and sit flat and warm over the whole ear. They weigh next to nothing. They won’t flatten a fresh hairdo. And there is no real fur in them at all – not one hair.

There are four colours. Fawn is the original from 1998: soft sand with cream spots on a brown suede band, just like Freda’s. Snow is ivory on a white knitted band, the one brides and the chapel ladies ask for. Ginger is soft white fur with warm ginger streaks on a cream velvet band – “that’s Lottie’s, she’s my ginger granddaughter,” Ambrose says. And Silver is pale grey with dark lynx spots on black velvet, the smartest of the four. “The husbands buy that one for their wives. Then they borrow it to clear the drive.”

“The children from that crossing have children of their own now”

Above the till hangs a corkboard so crowded with photographs and Christmas cards that you can no longer see the cork. A girl on a sledge in 1999, cheeks bright red, ears in Fawn. A teenager at Wensleydale Show. A bride on the snowy steps of the village chapel in Snow. Ambrose taps a faded school photo. “That’s Jenny. Year 2. She’s the one who shouted ‘Mrs Reindeer’ in the middle of the road.” Pinned right underneath is a card from last winter: Jenny, now 35, with two little girls, all three in Reindeer Earmuffs.

The reason they last that long is simple: time. Every pair starts as four circles of fur cut by hand around a cardboard template, with the spots laid so they run the same way on both ears. The cups are sewn, turned and filled. The band is padded, covered and hand-stitched underneath. Then everything is brushed out so the fur stands up soft and even. About five hours per pair. “A factory makes five hundred in that time,” Ambrose says. “I make one. But mine are still on people’s heads twenty years later. I’ve the photos to prove it.”

The back room off the Market Place: the last 263 pairs. When they’re gone, there won’t be any more.

Why this winter is the last one

Freda passed away in the spring of 2021. Ambrose kept making the earmuffs anyway. “First winter after, I very nearly didn’t,” he says. “Then a lady came in on the first of December wanting a pair for her mum. Freda would’ve had my guts for garters if I’d said no.” Now his hands have made the decision for him. The building is sold, and on 15 December he hands over the keys. His son lives in Darlington and has his own work. “There’s nobody to take it on, and I won’t pretend there is.”

On the shelves in the back room there are exactly 263 pairs left. Instead of boxing them up, Ambrose has made a decision: for the first and last time, every pair goes for less than half of what he has always asked. “I don’t want them sat in a garage,” he says. “I want them on ears. On somebody’s mum at the bus stop, on a kiddie on a sledge. That’s what they’re for.”

His granddaughter Lottie (24) handles the online orders from York. “Lottie set the whole thing up on the computer. I sew, she clicks,” Ambrose laughs. “She tells me folk in Cornwall are buying them. Cornwall! I said, what for? She said, for their mums up north.”

What sets Ambrose’s Reindeer Earmuffs apart:

Before the first stitch: Ambrose lines up the spots and cuts every circle around his old cardboard template.

What customers say about their Reindeer Earmuffs

A Christmas present that actually gets worn

Gillian S. (54) from Ripon gave her mum a pair of Snow last Christmas. “Mum is 81 and she can’t stand anything on her head. Hats itch, scarves are too warm, everything’s wrong,” she says. “She put these on at the table to be polite and kept them on through the pudding. Now she wears them to chapel every Sunday, and three of the ladies there have asked me where they came from.”

Under the tree: for many families, the one present that gets used every single day.

Where can you get Ambrose’s Reindeer Earmuffs?

Ambrose’s earmuffs are only available through County Craft, an online shop that works with small, independent makers. Lottie looks after her grandad’s little corner of the shop. Only there will you get the original Reindeer Earmuffs from Ambrose’s workshop. Spotted lookalikes from mass production have started turning up on Amazon and the big shopping sites. From a distance they may look similar. Up close, and on a cold morning, they have nothing to do with Ambrose’s work.

Only until 15 December – then the workshop closes

“By the middle of December I’d like every last pair to have found a head,” Ambrose says, folding a pair of Fawn into tissue paper. He looks out of the window at the crossing by the school, where a new lollipop lady in a yellow coat is waving the school bus through. “Twenty-nine winters. Freda would say that’s plenty.”

If you would like a pair of the original Reindeer Earmuffs from Ambrose’s last batch, don’t wait too long. With the sale price and the Christmas rush, the remaining 263 pairs are not expected to last until 15 December.

It is the last chance to own real handmade earmuffs from a Dales workshop – before the lights go out at Metcalfe Upholstery for good.

Our verdict

Reindeer Earmuffs are the kind of winter accessory people fall for at first sight and then wear for years. They are made by hand in a little workshop in Wensleydale, they are warm without pinching, and they have that soft, spotted charm that makes strangers smile at the bus stop.

A piece with real heart: well thought out, carefully made, and with fifty-four years of upholstery know-how in every band. Thank you, Ambrose!

Readers love their Reindeer Earmuffs

Photos sent in by readers.