A beautiful walking stick used to be a luxury symbol and a fashion accessory. Now we only walk with it if it really can’t be otherwise. Yet the homemade walking sticks from Arie Fonk from Rolde cannot be dragged.
“I can sell much more than I can make,” says 77-year-old Arie, who has a walking stick workshop in his garage. Dozens of sticks hang on the ceiling. On the top is the date written of the find and the wood type with a marker. “The stick that we found today is Berk,” says the artist, rubbing the brown bast. “It has very nice color nuances when the varnish is about it soon.”
The hiking sticks that Arie makes his honeysuckle kit. They arise when a young tree and honeysuckle happens to grow next to each other in the forest. Sometimes the honeysuckle plant wriggles around the tree to get nutrients. He can crush the tree. This creates a rotating shape in the wood. “That strangulation is sometimes so bad. I imagine when you are quiet in the forest, that you must be able to hear the pain from those trees.”
Arie spends a lot of time in the forests of Drenthe to locate these play of fate. Sometimes he doesn’t take them immediately, to grow them a little bigger. “It’s a gift from nature. And nature makes beautiful things.” To cut a tree in the forest you need permission from the landowner.
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