WHILE THERE IS INTEREST IN GOOD AND QUALITY FURNITURE, THIS CRAFT WILL NOT DIE
When someone has a vision and a goal in life, and is also worthy, there is nothing he cannot achieve. Elvir Hambašić (47) from the village of Ulišnjak near Maglaj, has been working with wood in the traditional way – woodcarving – for almost 18 years and thus supports a family of six. At the time, he used the encouragement of the Federal Employment Agency to establish a company called “Souvenir”. In the beginning, Elvir was engaged in making windows, doors and kitchens, and then he decided to make souvenirs and furniture in the traditional way – wood carving. “I have a habit of saying that I made the house out of windows and doors, and that I furnished it thanks to woodcarving. While there was reconstruction, after the war, there was also work. And then plastic joinery began to replace wooden joinery, so there was less work for me as well. Then I turned to the craft of woodcarving, because even as a boy I loved making figures out of wood. I watched how equestrian masters do it, so I decided to try my hand at this traditional craft,” Elvir recalls his beginnings. He learned the craft, he tells us, with famous masters in Konjic, he could have stayed there. But his love for his family was stronger than anything, so he returned to his native Ulišnjak.
It takes three weeks of work to make peškun
Elvir breathes soul into the wood with his diligent hands, so you are left speechless when you see the furniture for Bosnian rooms, peškunas, skrabijas, rahla decorated with wood carvings, tables, chests of drawers, shelves, trays, coffee tables, book tables, pictures, sofas, and lately there have been frequent orders and for Ramadan cannons. There is no city in Bosnia and Herzegovina without his works, even on most continents. He opted for quality raw materials: walnut, cherry, steamed dried beech and maple. They will make you anything you can imagine from wood. “First I choose the wood I’m going to work with, after that comes the work on the carpentry machine, gluing the cut boards, then drawing the pattern and working with the chisels, and after that I assemble and varnish the whole object,” Elvir tells us, adding that it’s only one size larger peshkun required up to three weeks of intensive work. Elvira is helped a lot by his wife Sanida (43), son and daughter Amar (21) and Irma (20) when they were students, and little Amna (10). Sanida was especially skilled at making finer woodcarvings because she had the most patience, and the children earned pocket money by working in the workshop. Amar is now a student at FIT in Mostar, Irma founded her own company, and since little Emir joined the family two years ago, his wife Sanida devoted herself to him, but she manages to earn money for the family herself. In the garden and greenhouse, he produces healthy vegetables for the family, they have a large orchard, and this year alone they will dry tens of kilograms of fruit. They produce juices, jams and salads for themselves as well as for sale. In addition to her work, Sanida and her daughter Irma also decorate the yard, which looks like a real little paradise. “We don’t eat dry food, there’s a tagarica simmering on the stove, I baked a scone and apple cider, cooked sutlija. I’m never bored. There are four children, two of us, I can’t just wait for Elvira to earn and contribute. I can make 200 to 300 liters of aronia juice in a season. We don’t know when we lie down and when we get up, it’s always busy. We also invented the eighth day of the week,” Sanida told us with a laugh.
Bosnian room for his soul
Elvir does a lot of things for sale, and he made a small, Bosnian room for his soul. This is where he likes to rest the most. He even made the bike frame out of very high quality walnut wood and the rest are parts from a very high quality Japanese ‘Shimano’ bike. ” I made a frame based on another bike, and I took a lot of care about the dimensions and the scale itself. The bike has 21 speeds, is great for mountain rides, and weighs only 12 kilograms. When I drive it, I feel like I’m floating ,” Elvir told us. The challenge was also the making of cherry trees in Mravići. “I was dreaming about making a sebilj, when I received the order. It took me a month, and it is a little lower than the one in Baščaršija. It is one of my most beautiful and favorite jobs. What I fantasize about is making a rickshaw out of wood that would be powered by a bicycle. That would be really interesting, two people sitting in a wooden rickshaw, going around the city – a real tourist attraction,” Hambašić added.
Elvri has her heir in her daughter Irma
An old folk saying says that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. It is the same in the case of the Hambašić family, because Irma followed in her father’s footsteps. She constantly helped her father in the workshop, and when she was 13 years old, out of boredom, she researched how to make wooden ornaments on the Internet, and that’s how it started. When Elvir saw her seriousness, he also bought her two machines for carving and pyrography. She started with making decorations, then it was the turn of boxes decorated with pyrography, and today cutting boards with personalized inscriptions are the most sought after. Irma founded the company “Unikat” when she was just 20 years old. “I’m just finding myself in this, you just have to be hardworking and creative. I know that my peers find it unusual what I do, but I fell in love with my father,” she continued to tell us. “I wanted my internship to ‘go well’, I earn money for myself, I have, thank God, I don’t ask my parents. Someone always needs a gift”, Irma tells us and continues. “There was fear when I founded the company, but I have been doing this for seven years and I can say that I have improved. If I need anything, my father is there. I decided on the name of the company ‘Unikat’ because I myself am unique and there are no girls who do this. I get the most orders from Sarajevo, Tuzla and Brčko. I believe in myself and that the company will survive. “My working day lasts 25 hours, I help my mother and father, I work for myself, mostly at night, when it gets cold – beauty”, Irma told us. “Irma is a really special child. She never entered the workshop just like that, she is always looking for something, asking, researching. She is doing well, she has customers all over the country. Even when she was in high school, she earned her own money for summer vacations. It would be nice to have such a hardworking and good successor,” added father Elvir with pride.
Wood carving as a craft will never die out
“I don’t believe that this craft will die out because people have always liked to have a quality piece of furniture carved in wood, and we are an example that such pieces are still in demand today,” Elvir tells us and continues. “I cannot thank Allah enough for everything. So far I have not felt a crisis. Perhaps only during the pandemic was there no time for larger investments. That’s when I made the first Ramadan top, I intended it for myself, but it was bought by people from Kopic. I will make a new one for myself”, Elvir Hambašić, a woodcarver from Ulišnjak near Maglaj, told us at the end of the conversation.
Written by: Nejra Bradarić
This story was written thanks to the generous support of the American people through the “Local Works” program of the United States Agency for International Development in Bosnia and Herzegovina (USAID). The content of the story is solely the responsibility of the author and the “Network for Building Peace”. The views expressed in the story do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
