045 - A freestyle walker stick. The head is made from an ancient gnarled piece of grape vine that originally did service as part of a corkscrew handle! It was full of holes and splits, but these had obviously occurred while the stem was growing and had stabilised in the hot Spanish(?) sun long before it was cut - which must have been many years before it came into my hands.
The shank is stripped sycamore.
It's difficult to know where to begin describing this stick and just as difficult to capture in pictures as every slight change of viewing position reveals yet more intriguing details.
Having selected a suitable piece of the vine stem, I shaped it to fit the hand and give plenty of support, following the grain and shape of the material. In order to make it more comfortable I filled in most of the holes and splits with epoxy resin, mostly filled with copper/ brass, but just plain black here and there.
A couple of big holes presented opportunities to add resin-embedded decorations made from gilt cufflinks. The light reflected from the cut facets gleams and bounces around inside the clear resin.
The shank is sycamore, courtesy of the tree surgeons who were working on a neighbour's tree. Sycamore is largely overlooked by stickmakers as it often tapers excessively through its length. This isn't the case here and the typical knobbly joints help to add character.
I find the bark on sycamore tends to be rather brittle and often doesn't survive the straightening process, so this shank has been stripped of its bark. It's been lightly stained and buffed down again to tone down the light colour.
SOLD