About three weeks ago a young man came to Motovun in search of information about the oak forest along the Mirna valley. He was interested in its history. A few people told him he should look for me. It did not take him long to find me, either. Leon Filter is his name. An art student from Stuttgart, he is interested in the old practice of bending trees for shipbuilding purposes, and he is making a documentary about it. The Motovun Forest is apparently famous for it. The Venetians held it partly for shipbuilding, and they built many a ship in their prime. According to Leon, they used to bend oak trees to suit their ship designs.

I was not surprised, but I knew absolutely nothing about this art of old. I told Leon about Josef Ressel, an Austro-Hungarian inventor of some renown who had spent a few years as a forester in Motovun. He would be worth learning about, I suggested. And I told him what I knew about the superior properties of wood structures built with the wood-grain in mind. He showed me several old books about tree bending, and he told me that he was on his way to Venice, whose archive attracted him very much. He expected it to be crucial for his investigation.

As I just learned from Leon, though, he had found next to nothing of interest in Venice. Back in Stuttgart, he still remains fascinated by the subject and he plans to pursue it further in spite of the dearth of information about tree bending. As I responded at once, he should pursue his interests. It is well worth his while. As for me, I repeated that I was wholeheartedly behind his project. Tree bending will soon return not as a subject interesting to art students only, but also as a vital subject in all sorts of crafts. Say, cart building. Or plough building. Or shipbuilding, for that matter. Soon enough, Leon’s investigation and documentary may come pretty handy. Nay, vital.