Back in fashion: hand-carved walking sticks

We’re delighted to note that this Spring has seen a big resurgence of interest in fine, hand-carved walking sticks.  Once seen as a collector’s item, they are now becoming much more popular as everyday walking sticks.

 

We’ve noticed this trend because we offer a wide range of walking sticks from our website, and it’s very noticeable that sales of carved sticks have recently increased dramatically. 

 

Many different types of carved walking sticks are available from different retailers.  The supplier we use for our website is based in Turkey and uses Cornelian Cherry Wood.

 

Let us hope that this trend continues, and that traditional, carefully carved walking sticks once again become the fashion accessories they deserve to be.

Could walking sticks become the new Easter decoration?

In the week before Easter our thoughts have been turning to the possibility of putting up some Easter decorations.  They are a common feature in some European countries, but we in the UK seem a little slow to catch on.

 

Some of the decorations that I’ve seen involve bare branches and twigs.  These are used to display fresh blooms, painted eggs, chocolates or even cuddly toys such as rabbits.

 

It made me wonder if, instead of the bare branches, we could do something with the wooden walking sticks we sell from the website.  After all, some of them are hand carved and some are made from interesting woods such as cornelian cherry, and they would make very attractive decorations in their own right!!

 

Anyway, a Happy Easter from all of us here at Somerwood!

How straight is your stick?

I was interested recently to read some advice on the BBC’s h2g2 webpage about walking sticks.  One of the writer’s concerns was about stick orientation.

 

The message is that the stick, from the hand grip down to the ground, should be straight.  The significance of this is that a straight stick is much safer if you have to change the stick’s orientation suddenly, perhaps when walking over difficult terrain.  In a similar vein, the stick should not bend under the weight of the user – or if it does, it should bend only slightly.

 

At first I was a little puzzled by the advice.  At Somerwood we sell a lot of walking sticks.  The vast majority of sticks these days are made from aluminium, which makes them both straight and very unlikely to bend.  The wooden sticks that we and most other retailers sell are also straight and robust.

 

Then I noticed another comment in the article: “Some vendors of walking sticks just grab a random stick from the woods and slap a label on it.”

 

I’m not sure which vendors the writer has in mind (or even what century he was writing in!) but it could not be further from the truth in the case of Somerwood or of most other reputable retailers.