Carving tends to require much more work than methods using malleable materials. In more cases you will see animal head carving walking canes. These sticks are for those who value handmade things. If you collect walking canes, you need such pieces of art.

For the past 50 years walking sticks have been growing in popularity as collectors items, for sticks and canes, which actually have no real function, express the social rank of their bearer: the marshal's baton, the sceptre, the bishop's crosier, the judge's staff or an officer's stick. 

Stick fashion started at the end oft he 17th century. The majority of these early examples had one special basic form. Most famous are the English. They have got a long, powerful knob of ivory or rhinoceros horn, individually decorated with silver nails and inlays of thin silver wires, that show various ornaments in different designs. This technique is called “pique”. The silver sleeve beneath the handle shows carved grooves and nearly always a fringed rim. At the end of the knob or the handle made of malacca cane there were two eyelets for the  hanger or the silver ring. The bottom of the cane consists of a long ferrule to protect the cane against the dirt in the lanes. Figurative handles were the exception in the 17th and 18th century. Most time the handles were made of carved ivory or boxwood.

Special skills in carving were shown by the men who trapped whales between 1840 and 1860. Often they carved beautiful knobs made of whale teeth and shafts made of the vertebras of the whales while being still on sea using simple tools. Rarely they produced canes with shafts of narwhale teeth.

There many traditions of different nations that causes the creations of carved walking canes with heads of some animals. Such canes may show you some special mood: courage - lion, peace - bird, power - bear. Or you can have your own associations. Be free in finding yours.

Here you can see our carving walking canes (but you can also find other carving sticks in almost all our collections):