Surrealistic figures, Folk Art Walking Cane. France ca. 1880

This One-piece Cane carved from an unknown wood has on top of the handle a Salamander and a Cicada, both, symbolic animals of the warm summers of the French Provence. 

Prominently carved, we see the faces of a king wearing his crown and an Indian crowned with feathers, there are sea animals like a turtle, and a fish with the head of an otter, a shell and a palm-three are also represented in the shaft as many animal heads carved in the knots of the wood like a fox, a monkey, a wolf etc. Most of the carved figures are etched and enhanced with a heated needle. The OL is 95 cm, without chips or cracks, the condition is excellent. Like most of the folk-art canes, this one is wearing a warm and wonderful patina.

“Hence, Canes are made by shepherds living in the countryside where stars and seasons are the only points of reference and where time does not matter; by old men sitting by the fireside on whom time has lost its grip; by soldiers waiting in the mud of trenches to go back to life or to march to death; by prisoners for whom freedom is so far away that it has become an abstraction. The cane is the work of a man uninhibited, who does not account for his time and for whom time doesn’t matter or no longer means anything” (G. Segas) Popular art canes by L. Jantzen