Cane Fancy Is Walk of Life for Hobbyists : L.A. Collectors Keep Old Tradition Alive

Joel Greenberg and Jay Bernstein share an uncommon love for an unusual item.

Like King Tutankhamen more than 3,000 years before them, the two men collect walking sticks--not mere wooden staffs, but elaborately designed canes that offer more than meets the eye.

Consider: Canes that hide weapons. Canes that hold musical instruments. Canes that keep time. Canes that double as fishing poles, measuring sticks, chairs . . .

“Part of the romance of canes,” said Greenberg, “is imagining who held them, what type of life they represented.”

Fashion Statement

Although King Tut possessed a collection of golden canes, it was not until the 17th and 18th centuries that stylish canes became a fashion statement. Men selected their daily walking stick to complement a wardrobe or their profession as easily as they pluck a necktie today.

Canes’ designs were limited only by the genius of their creators, who often crafted them from exotic woods, such as the Malaccan palm of Malaysia. Their handles were shaped from expensive ivory and gold; the ferrule, protecting the stick’s tip, was often made of horn or silver.

After the first quarter of this century, attache cases and a penchant for a more casual life style turned the distinctive walking stick into a collector’s item.

Today, “Maybe there are 200 or 300 serious collectors in Europe, maybe 50 in the states,” said Catherine Dike, an American who writes on the subject from her Geneva, Switzerland, flat, where she houses a collection of about 1,300 canes.

In their separate collections, Greenberg and Bernstein have more than 600 canes--two of the most elaborate assemblages of walking sticks in the country.

Cane collectors tend to be a private lot. Their precious staffs are worth a small fortune, so they keep them well-guarded. And no organizations exist to bring them together.

That might explain why Greenberg, 65, retired owner of a chain of women’s apparel stores, and Bernstein, 49, a television producer and entertainment industry agent, don’t know each other, although they live only a few miles apart--Greenberg in Hancock Park, Bernstein on the edge of Beverly Hills.

Greenberg has been collecting canes since he was 12 years old, when his grandfather presented him with a Malaccan stick crowned with the carved head of a greyhound. Since then, he’s amassed about 250 distinctive walking sticks.

“I’m a cane searcher, wherever I go,” Greenberg said. Great Britain is often on his itinerary, he added, because it’s a cane collector’s paradise.

The quality of his collection is imposing, according to Mark Fontaine, owner of the Boserup House of Canes in Westwood, an establishment with an international cane clientele. “It would be comparable to any in the country,” he said.

Picking the Fruit

Canes of every persuasion are on display throughout Greenberg’s home, including:

A fruit poacher’s cane with a claw to neatly pilfer a delicacy from a tree; canes with binoculars and telescopes mounted on their brass handles; a blowgun cane; a Civil War cane with silver buttons from a Confederate uniform; a cane containing a fragile U.S. flag with 36 stars, possibly dating back to 1864; women’s canes, one holding perfume, another with a manicure set in the handle; and a doctor’s cane containing a thermometer.

“Everything represents what a person was interested in,” Greenberg said, demonstrating an Italian walking stick that converted to a 15-foot fishing pole, and another cane that opened into a violin, complete with bow.

“Here’s one of my favorites,” he said, lifting a cane from a cluster standing outside his second-floor den. A measuring stick smoothly slid from the handle.

“It’s an undertaker’s cane,” Greenberg said. “I found it in London. It’s not ghoulish. It was part of his job.” How else, he asked, could a body be accurately measured for a coffin?

Professional Symbols

“Every profession had its cane,” Greenberg said, selecting a photographer’s walking stick that neatly converted into a tripod.

“And here’s my baby,” he said, plucking another and lifting a cap atop its handle, where matches were stored. Dating from pre-electricity days, the cane offered a pop-up candle when a light was needed.

Then there are the inevitable weapon canes--the “stiletto stick,” with a menacing four-inch blade that lashes out with a snap of the wrist, and another staff with a hidden compartment to hold a nine-millimeter shell set off by a trigger-button in the handle.

For his part, Bernstein put together a collection of approximately 360 canes over the past dozen years, many of them given to him by the stars he represents and socializes with.

His first acquisition was a walking stick with an ivory crocodile-head handle, presented to him by actor Lee Majors after an accident Bernstein had while on a jaguar safari with Majors in Nicaragua.

Gift From a Chief

Then there is the elaborately carved African chief’s cane from Kenya he received from actress Cicely Tyson, whom he manages. And a ship’s captain’s cane, containing a compass and telescope blended into a brass handle, a gift from actor Donald Sutherland. And an Irish sheepherder’s walking stick, complete with a whistle to summon the sheep, compliments of actor Stacy Keach.

Unlike most cane collectors, Bernstein does not allow his walking sticks to simply repose in a viewing case. They are, indeed, his signature.

A cane is Bernstein’s sign-off symbol on his television shows, produced, naturally, by “Cane Productions.” And a cane is snugly in his fist whenever he leaves for work or a social engagement.

“It’s an affectation,” Bernstein admits. “I carry a cane every day just for fun. Without (a cane), I’d feel I had on just one shoe.”

Then there are what Bernstein calls his “negotiating canes”--walking sticks with “evil looks,” such as handles carved in the shape of a fist, a death head or a snarling tiger, which he carries with him when he’s hammering out a deal.

Signs of a Comeback

Francis H. Monek, a trial attorney who, at age 74, is the doyen of cane collectors, would endorse Bernstein’s view that walking sticks are not mere anachronisms. Indeed, he said in a telephone interview, it appears to him that “canes are making a comeback.”

Monek, who has more than 2,000 canes displayed in his 23-room Tudor home in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, said he used to take “recalcitrant witnesses” on a tour of his imposing collection of walking sticks, many of which contain hidden weapons.

It didn’t take long, Monek recalled, before they turned into “very friendly witnesses and told me everything I’d want to know.”