"Womble" sticks and canes incorporating recycled materials
"Womble" sticks and canes incorporating recycled materials
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These are what I call my "Womble" sticks - see below for an explanation. | |||
Click on any image for further details and pictures. | Price (in pounds sterling) | Click below | |
126 | An unusual, but strong and comfortable stick made from an old brass fitting mounted on an ebonised shank. It also goes "ding"! | SOLD |
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111 | A slim but sturdy Brighton walker stick. Recycled ox-horn handle and enamelled silver collar. Blackthorn shank. | SOLD |
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085 | A hazel staff topped with a metal finial on a burr elm base. Made for use as a theatrical prop. | SOLD |
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077 | A "Womble" knobstick. Brass owl on an oak shank from an old stick. | SOLD |
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075 | A small cane/knobstick: Hazel shank topped with an old brass doorknob. | SOLD |
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040 | Freestyle: Rowan head with brass owl on a slender hazel shank. | SOLD |
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056 | A knobstick made from an old cane shank and a piece of grapevine from a corkscrew handle. | SOLD |
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045 | Freestyle walker: Grape vine head with resin-embedded decorations and fillings on a sycamore shank. | SOLD |
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038 | Hiking pole or staff: stripped willow shank topped with a brass owl. | SOLD |
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031 | Knobstick: Brass knob on a stripped hazel shank. | SOLD |
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029 | One-piece hazel knobstick. The knob hollowed out to accommodate a cast resin mouse. | SOLD |
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025 | Novelty stick. Carved boot on a stripped holly shank. | SOLD |
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019 | Knobstick: Vintage Bakelite knob on a blackthorn shank. | SOLD |
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Anyway, what are Womble sticks?...
I call these Womble sticks out of respect for those little furry creatures that inhabit Wimbledon Common. I think I must have some Womble blood in me, because I'm always picking up discarded objects here and there and pressing them into service for some task the original maker could never have envisaged. Only the other day, a colleague at the office where I work part-time was in urgent need of a tiny screwdriver to reassemble his spectacles, which had just self-destructed. "No problem", I said, "just find me a jumbo paperclip and a nail-file". Then, as I'd done many times before, I straightened out a leg of the paperclip and filed the end into a screwdriver blade which just fitted the tiny screw perfectly.
Some would argue that a stick, or any other craftwork, should be "all your own work". I wouldn't disagree with that; these days it's all too easy to purchase a cast resin duck's head or badger, screw it onto the end of a turned piece of pre-prepared anonymous bland hardwood and kid yourself that you've made a stick. There are too many so-called crafts like that these days. So you won't catch me buying anything that's meant to be put on top of a stick (well, not a new one anyway). But if I see an interesting old Bakelite doorknob on a junk stall and get the idea of using it on a stick, then I reckon that's a darned sight more creative than getting a pre-cut wooden handle blank and merely shaping it to someone else's design.
I tend to frequent car boot sales and steam fairs, which are both excellent sources of objets trouvés. I have a growing collection of old brass and Bakelite doorknobs, a brass owl and cat, and assorted other tat. Even a corkscrew. A corkscrew? - yes a two-foot-long corkscrew. This gross piece of tourist dross consists of a lovely gnarled, twisty piece of old vine stem with a corkscrew blade incongruously sticking out of the middle. I should be able to get three or four nice knobbly knobs out of that!
This page last updated Wednesday, 13 December 2006
