Swiss Review 1/2018

14 Swiss Review / January 2018 / No.1 upwards. At least Burrimakes it sound like what goes on in a kitchen: “The wooden parts used for the runners are cooked for an hour inwet steamat 150 degrees Celsius.” The parts are then bent and attached. When they have Society The carpenter Paul Burri makes 200 to 300 sledges in his small workshop each year. Photos: Adrian Moser MARC LETTAU It gets quite cramped in Paul Burri’s small carpentry workshop in Lohn- storf, canton of Berne, at the start of winter. Everything is geared towards one thing – sledges. Sawn wooden parts lie ready in one corner. In an- other, finished sledges are stacked al- most up to the ceiling. Outside, the lit- tle street where Burri works and lives is covered in snow. It is the same little street that Burri raced down on a sledge with his brothers during his childhood. The local authority’s road patrol used to spray gravel on the hardened snow to make the surface safe. But the Burri boys made them- selves a plough to get rid of the speed-curbing grit and carried on sledging. Now, over 50 years later, Paul Burri is the local sledge-maker. It is not just Burri who has child- hoodmemories of sledging, as it plays a part in almost everyone’s childhood in Switzerland. At the first sign of snow, children slide or tumble down the nearest suitable hill on their wooden toboggans accompanied by parents or grandparents who did ex- actly the same thing in their day. These sledges are often the “Davos” model. This archetypal Swiss wooden sledge has not changed through all the gen- erations. Ash is mandatory The omnipresence of this sledge is down to Burri and a dozen or so other firms across the country. They are con- tinuing the craftof sledge-making and know exactly what makes a good sledge. It must be made of ash. This wood is hard, tough, long-stranded and elastic. This means the sledge’s runners bend well and the seat slats give without breaking. Burri is a carpenter, but every sledge-maker is also a bit of a chef. A saucepan is used in the production of the sledge’s runners which are bent It’s boom time for the “Davos sledge” The small wooden sledges were originally intended for transporting goods. Then a carpenter launched the “Davos sports sledge”. The museum-piece mode of transport has since been a fundamental part of Swiss wintertime. Carpenters like Paul Burri are keeping the tradition alive.