The Border Stick Dressers Association

The Border Stick Dressers Association (BSDA) is an association of people interested in making walking sticks and shepherd’s crooks. There are currently 350 members, each paying a life membership fee of just £10. On joining, they receive a lapel badge, car sticker and annual newsletter as well as a membership and suppliers list.

What does BSDA do?

The Association was founded in 1951 at a meeting of shepherds held in the shadow of Cheviot, just on the border of England and Scotland. Its main objective was to provide an organisation to encourage the making of shepherds’ crooks and walking sticks as a personal craft and to give help and advice to its members – this is still true today.

Sticks made by some of our members have been presented to various members of the Royal family and other dignitaries. However, the sticks are primarily made to be entered into competitions held at agricultural shows throughout the region, and increasingly across the entire UK. In addition, the Association holds an annual competition at which there are now 19 classes and in the region of 250 individual sticks entered. There are also a similar number of sticks on display made by some of the more experienced members.

How is the BSDA developing?

Members are now drawn from all walks of life, not just the rural community. The skills required are passed on both at regular evening classes and on a one-to-one basis. A number of short courses are available commercially at which the participants will be taught the basic skills. There is also a brief description on the processes at www.wlaidler.co.uk and www.bsda.eu, as well as a number of books that outline steps needed to make a stick. A fifth of members now receive the newsletter by email.

What makes stick dressing so special?

Taking a raw material and working it to an object pleasing to the eye as well as being practical and useful gives the creator a great deal of pleasure as well as reducing stress levels during the process.

The timber used for the shank is mainly hazel, but a number of other woods such as holly, ash, blackthorn and cherry can be used. The horns, used to make the handles, are mainly from rams, but buffalo, goat and cow horns are also utilised – these are basically keratin, similar to fingernails and can be bent and squeezed when heated. Antler, however, is similar to bone and cannot be manipulated but can still be used to make the head of a stick. Due to the increasing scarcity of horn, decorative wood such as burr elm, ripple sycamore and more exotic timbers are being adopted.

When carving the head from horn, the head and the carving must come from the single horn, the only additions permitted being the insertion of eyes. Feathers, hair, fins and scales are burnt into the horn using a soldering iron or pyrography pen – in the past stickdressers used nails heated in the fire. A complex carved stick can take several hundred hours to make.

For further information on the BSDA visit www.bsda.eu.