Straw Broom: It’s Artisan’s Sweeping Craft

There’s nothing like a handmade broom. It’s made of home-grown broom straw, and it has fine bristles on the end to catch all the dirt and lint. Store it properly, and it can last 20 years.

Now, if Frank Hrupsa made it, you can bet the straw was grown on a quarter-acre plot on his farm. Next to the plot is the workshop where Hrupsa makes his brooms--wrapping and sewing the straw on a contraption about 4 feet high and about as wide as a child’s wagon.

Hrupsa, 78, is one of only two known active broom makers in southern Delaware, where artisans of all types, including blacksmiths, whittlers and basket makers, have kept alive the state’s ties to its Colonial past.

A shoe repairman and farmer by trade, Hrupsa learned his broom-making skills from his father, a Czechoslovakian immigrant, who made a much cruder version that he would give away to neighbors.

“He’d take a bunch of straw and run a stick in it,” Hrupsa said. “He would drive it in there and put a nail in there to hold it in position.”

Hrupsa’s contraption holds the broom handle in place, parallel to the floor at about chest level. Hrupsa takes three fistfuls of straw, one at a time, and secures them around the end of the wooden broom handle with wire. Electric fence wire works well.

“It’s a slow process. It takes me about three-quarters of an hour to make a broom. Some people can go faster. I’m not trying to break any record,” he said.

He uses a foot pedal to twist the broom and wrap the wire around the neck. He chuckles when he talks about the exercise he gets in his feet, legs and hands.

Once the straw is in place, he fastens the broom upside down in the contraption and begins to painstakingly sew three rows of stitching across its width with nylon thread.

Hrupsa might paint or varnish the handle and then etch his name into the wood. He lines up the finished products, upside down, along a counter.

Upside down? According to broom aficionados, that’s the only way to store them if they are going to last. Or, they could be hung on a wall. The broom should not be allowed to rest on its bristles on the floor because it bends them, decreasing their ability to clean.

“They last a long while if you take care of them,” Hrupsa said.

Anna Massey, 62, will testify to that. She has had a handmade broom for 20 years and won’t use anything else. She said they clean better because they are thicker. Besides, her mother always used handmade brooms.

“My mom’s didn’t last as long because she didn’t have a lot of carpet,” Massey said. She hasn’t bought any brooms from Hrupsa, but now she knows where to get one when she needs it.

“I’d pay $20 for it. After all, that’s only a dollar a year,” Massey said.

Hrupsa, who still gets a kick out of operating the big combines on his 500-acre grain farm run by his sons, has been making brooms on a steady basis for 10 years. He took over the craft when his brother, Charlie, died.

Charlie Hrupsa had taken over from their father, Bartos. Hrupsa said he expects his son, Frank, to carry on the craft when he dies.

He sells his creations, from decorative fireplace brooms to the sweep-the-porch kind, at craft fairs and shows throughout the state and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The decorative brooms can go for $10 to $14, whereas the household variety are $8 or $10, depending on size.

Hrupsa has made several hundred brooms over the years, knocking out about three a night during the winter. He doesn’t sell in stores, but he loves to go to the craft shows and festivals, where he sells and demonstrates broom making.

“It’s no fun if you don’t get to talk to people,” he said. But he does impose limits on where he will showcase his skills.

“If I can’t sell, I ain’t going,” he said.