The nettle-tree whips of Sorède

At the foot of the Albères, the European nettle tree (Celtis australis), the lledoner of the Catalans, was long grown as a crop. It is planted near watercourses, which yield a pale, supple wood, and managed as coppice: shoots are selected from the cut stumps, then in spring the side shoots are removed to prevent knots. It takes ten to fifteen years to obtain a usable pole, felled between November and February.

The first whip makers are recorded in Sorède in 1823; twenty years later there were sixteen. In 1849, Philippe Massot’s factories developed a steaming oven that made it possible to plait the wood with steam, a process inspired by the nettle-tree pitchforks of the Gard. From 1896, the workshops no longer supplied only rough handles but finished goods, sold throughout Europe and in the colonies. Before 1914, the Massot factory is said to have employed a thousand people, in a village of about 1,600 inhabitants.

Motorisation took away the whip’s primary use, and production declined from the end of the 1920s. Massot closed in the early 1960s; in 1971, the Giret factory became a workers’ cooperative, which ceased trading in 1978. The Association pour adultes et jeunes handicapés then bought the machines and tools, and former workers passed on their skills to the sheltered workshop (centre d’aide par le travail) opened in 1981. Now the ESAT Les Micocouliers, it is today the last workshop where nettle-tree wood is plaited with steam.

The process has changed little. The wood is split into four strands, which are rounded and then refined with a billhook. They spend about a minute in the steaming oven before being twisted by hand. Riding crops and training sticks have replaced the carters’ whips. A glazed corridor runs alongside the workshops, allowing visitors to follow the making.