Franciszek Baran leans against the stone wall with just an old pillow between him and the cold hard stone. It's early afternoon, and his shirt is spotted with dirt and sweat.

He stretches his arms, then continues weaving a willow twig through a wooden frame, which after several hours, begins to resemble a wicker basket.

"I have been doing this for almost 50 years now," Baran says. "I started as a child, helping my parents."

His wife Stanislawa nods. Like her husband she too learned at a young age how to soften willow twigs by soaking them in water and then weaving them into traditional wicker products.

They started as children, but wickerwork, they say, is anything but child's play.

"It takes about three years until you can do it properly," Franciszek muses, tearing at a twig.

Their children have also learned to do wickerwork but say Franciszek and Stanislaw, with a mix of pride and regret it's unlikely the young Barans will continue the family tradition in Rudnik, a village in southeast Poland famous for its wicker crafts.

"They help us during their school holidays, but the oldest is going to university, and I think it's better if the others also learn, instead of working with wicker," says Stanislaw.

Her hands are coarse from handling sharp twigs day in, day out. "This is a hard way to earn the daily bread," she admits.

"An eight-hour day?" Franciszek flashes an almost toothless smile. "Oy, how could we live on that? No, we work 10 hours at least, sometimes 16."

But they're not complaining. This life a life of toil in a small basement room is the only one they know, but they manage to make a living from it and give their children a good education.

In Polish bazaars, wicker baskets are sold for between 20 and 30 zlotys or five to eight euros. Abroad, they cost more, but the extra profit goes to the traders, not the artisans.

Waldemar Grochowski, mayor of Rudnik, tried his hand at wickerwork as a child.

"My grandfather did wickerwork, but he told me it does not pay well and I should learn something else," the 47-year-old official says with a smile.

As mayor, however, he tries to promote the village tradition.

"We are the centre of Polish wicker craft," he says proudly. "In Rudnik alone there are 10 big companies specialized in wicker, and about 100 small ones."

The tradition dates back to the 19th century when Rudnik was part of the Austrian-controlled province of Galicia. The landlord, an Austrian duke, noting how willows flourished along the banks of the Bug River, sent 20 men from Rudnik to Vienna to learn the craft.

Making a living from wickerwork has not always been easy.

"The years between 1990 and 2000 were really difficult," Grochowski admits.

Two big companies that had continued manufacturing wicker products for many years went bankrupt, and smaller companies struggled to find clients.

Since then, however, Rudnik has benefited from a growing penchant for natural products, as well as from Poland's new EU membership.

"Starting this year, there are EU subsidies for willow plants," says Grochowski, at pains to hide his satisfaction about the cash injection from Brussels.

He strives to create interest in wicker products at a local, national and international level, and is collaborating with the director of the local culture club on organizing a Rudnik wicker festival.

Artists are presenting ideas on how to use wicker in their sculptures and plastic art creations. Some of the projects may appear eccentric to the people of Rudnik, but seeing wickerwork presented as artwork raises their self-esteem.

Rudnik wicker is also being successfully promoted in the Polish pavilion at Expo 2005 in Nagoi, Japan. The entire building is covered in wicker, provided by a Rudnik-based company, Delta.

Delta specializes in wicker baskets and garden furniture, but has more than 1,000 products in its catalogue, according to Andrzej Balutowski, a company director.

With a turnover of three million zloty in 2004, Delta employs about 400 people, most of whom work from home, like the Barans. All the products are exported.

"We started to export to Germany, but now we also deliver to France, the UK, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands," Balutowski explains.

Poland is the EU's biggest producer of wicker and the world's fourth-largest, after China, Romania and Croatia.

However, not all wicker products are equally popular in every market. Balutowski points to national preferences.

"The British like to stick to tradition and order wicker in classic English patterns. The Germans want to buy something solid and practical, and the French favour wicker that's slightly artsy and dainty.

"As you see, you can rely on national stereotypes at least sometimes," he says with a chuckle.

Source: China Daily