Upholding a Swiss tradition
- Roman practises a craft that is now rare in Switzerland
- He sources wood from forests near Brienz
- He teaches at the Brienz School of Woodcarving
Roman Räss is one of the few Weissküfer artisans still working in Switzerland. He masters a technique that originated in the late 17th century as a way of shaping and bending wood to create milk pails, buckets, butter churners, moulds and other tools needed by alpine farmers. Woodcarving was a source of income for generations of families in the Bernese Oberland. In its heyday, in the second half of the 19th century, around 2,000 people were occupied as woodcarvers in the area. They made souvenirs such as wild and domestic animals and human figures, but also things for everyday use. The Brienz School of Woodcarving, which still trains woodcarvers today, was founded in 1884.
INTERVIEW
As a boy I was fascinated by traditional woodwork and the endless possibilities of wood. My first apprenticeship was in Weissküfer woodwork, with its chip-carving decoration, then I took a second apprenticeship as a woodcarver.
In a mountain region like Appenzell, where I was born, there is a lot of dairy farming and a lot of wood. Farmers needed equipment for the production of milk, so they made it out of wood, and that was the beginning of the Weissküfer profession.
Curving and bending wood, chip-carving, writing in wood, making three-dimensional wooden objects based on scaled-up natural forms. I sometimes combine Weissküfer work and woodcarving either in a traditional way or in a new, modern form.
Ideally, we look for maple trees growing at around 700-900m altitude near a river: those particular conditions produce wood that will bend without breaking, making it ideal for Weissküfer work. The forests around Lake Brienz are a good source of wood like that.
