Objects Database

Ski poles

Accession Number

748.2009.1

Object Name

Ski poles

Created

22/01/2009

Creator

Hermione Cooper

Accession Date

22/01/2009

Brief Description

Pair of wooden ski poles with leather hand straps, cane and leather baskets and metal spikes.

Materials

leather, metal, cane,

Dimensions

135 (l) x 6 ( circumference ) cms

Number Of Objects

1 pair

Colour

light brown

Provenance

The modern day skier might be surprised to learn that two ski sticks are a fairly recent idea - skis have been around for thousands of years, two sticks only becoming the norm just over 100 years ago. Skiing as a sport didn't really begin until the 1860's and at that time a single pole was the norm being used to 'pole' along on the flat, ride upon to check the speed when going downhill and to 'swing' on when doing turns. Although the Finns had been using two poles for a long time the Norwegians actually banned them in some of their early competitions.
By around 1910 two sticks were becoming the norm and Scottish Ski Club Journals from that era ran articles on how to make them. Hazel and ash was the timber of choice in the early days; this was gradually replaced with cane as it became more commercially available. The sticks themselves were quite straightforward though the snow baskets were often mini-masterpieces.
Glass fibre, plastic,aluminium and carbon fibre were some of the materials that brought us into the twenty first century - better in many ways but somewhat lacking in character!
This is a nice set of cane and leather poles which, we suspect, date from the 1950's or 60's. They have been used, but not much, being in pretty good condition. They look like factory made jobs and we'll take an educated guess that they are Norwegian as we can't find a maker's name to tell us for sure.