The Art of Stick Dressing
By Awake! correspondent in Britain
“I AM always surprised to learn that there are whole areas of the British Isles where no one has any idea what you mean when you say that your hobby is stick dressing,” says one master of the art.
Many are familiar with the walking stick or the shepherd’s staff. Stick dressing transforms these ordinary implements into extraordinary works of art. For centuries, shepherds and farm workers have found that this fascinating craft requires considerable skill—and a great deal of patience. But what is involved in stick dressing?
Selecting the Wood
The first step is selecting the wood. Any wood of the right proportions can be used—blackthorn, apple, or pear. Holly is often selected for its prominent and attractive knots. But many stick dressers prefer to use the wood of the hazel tree. Sometimes a tree has a shoot growing out at a slight angle to a branch or a root. This makes it possible to form the entire stick—head and shank—from a single part of the tree.
When is it best to cut a shank? Usually when the tree is dormant and the sap is not flowing, although many stick dressers maintain that the best time is immediately—before someone else finds it! In any event, once the stick dresser is satisfied that he has cut a suitable piece of material, he must grease or paint the cut ends, to prevent the block from cracking. The wood must then be seasoned, a process that can take two years or more. Only then can the stick dresser begin carving.
Carving the Head
When a stick does not have a natural handle, or head, the dresser may create one using the horn of a cow, a sheep, or a goat. Like the shank, the horn must be seasoned, usually for a year. Then, using a vise, the stick dresser shapes the horn to his intended design. For generations shepherds would use the blacksmith’s fire, boiling water, the embers of a peat fire, or even the heat above a paraffin lamp to make the horn pliable. It would then be ready to become whatever the shepherd’s imagination and skill could produce. For example, he could carve the handle to resemble a collie, a bird, a brown trout, a pheasant’s head, or a small animal.
As the horn is carved, the stick dresser pays meticulous attention to detail. If, for example, he is fashioning a trout, the tail and fin bones are etched with a hot iron and a circular punch is used to form each individual scale. The eyes can be made from black buffalo horn. Ink, rather than paint, is used to color the body. More than one coat will be required, and the application of the ink to the polished surface may be tedious. The final touch is to seal the color by coating the horn with varnish.
A Finished Work of Art
The horn is joined to the shank by means of a steel bolt, a nail, or a wooden dowel. Then the stick dresser skillfully rubs down his work of art with fine steel wool. Next, he polishes it and varnishes its shank. “To make a trout, cut the fins, etc., and to scale the body of the trout, colour and finish good enough to win a show would take me about 100 hours,” writes one experienced stick dresser.
Undeniably, stick dressing is tedious work. But the end product can be a true work of art, and some are even entered into competitions. In any event, the stick dresser regards his craft as reminiscent of a more restful era, an antidote to the stresses and strains of modern living.