The Mader family business, owned and operated by Klaus and Margit Mader, was founded in 1991 in Austria. The spinning top always played a major role in their woodworking shop. What began as a hobby to fill time, with a very special “thrown top” Klaus used to play with in his homeland as a child (called a TOTZ’N), transformed into a passion that occupied a significant amount of their time, as these toys can be somewhat addictive.
Mader creates all of their tops exclusively by hand. Classical wood turning techniques are used, as are more technically difficult methods, such as overhead reaming and undercutting. In up to 20 work stages, the tops are turned, burned, embossed, carved, brushed, painted and varnished.
Working by hand allows Mader to properly enhance and showcase the interesting and rare woods they so often use. The very bright, hard maple is best suited as the base of their painted tops while the rich variety of European woods produce the characteristic color spectrum that is typical of Mader tops. For the natural wood tops, their diverse color palette is achieved through the use of cherry, pear, birch, ash, walnut, plum, acacia, and Crown-of-Thorns woods. Their trademark remains the burned-in stripe on the equator of each top.
Mader’s business philosophy is quite simple. All tops are to be made by hand, suitable as toys for children of all ages, affordable and, even if already played with, can be displayed in a museum display case. We whole-heartedly agree.
