Dordogne, Berkshire, Catalonia (Part 2 Berkshire)

Shetland kishie in MERL collection (atypical base)

From Perigueux to Reading for a symposium about endangered baskets, organised jointly by the Heritage Crafts Association, the Basketmakers’ Association and the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers and hosted at the Museum of English Rural Life at Reading University. The event was fully booked and apparently the same number of people had to be turned away due to lack of space, which was a shame. The aim was to try to develop a strategy for saving the knowledge of those baskets that are considered to be in danger of disappearing and to that end four of us gave talks. My talk was about the Shetland kishie, Mary Butcher spoke about several English basket forms and techniques that are in danger, Hilary Burns about the research that she has been conducting into English basketry over many years, Stephanie Bunn about the considerable work that she has done with Woven Communities for the Scottish Tradition and Jenny Crisp on the lack of more formal education for willow cultivation as well as basket making skills.

 Kishie, Cullivoe, Yell (typical)

At lunchtime we had an opportunity to look at baskets in the museum store. There are two straw kishies in the collection from Shetland but neither are typical because the bases are quite different to most of the ones I have seen in Shetland.

In the afternoon we broke into groups to discuss various topics. The group I found myself in had sustainability as its theme and included several professional willow growers who outlined the many problems they face. I was not surprised to hear one grower admit to using banned chemicals on his willow crop because he grows vast monocultures of Black Maul. I know I have been banging on about this for years and making myself unpopular in the process, but it’s still going on.  It’s the total disconnect between people and place that results in individual basketmakers working with materials that they have not harvested or grown themselves and I suppose it  must be the profit motive that makes commercial willow growers destroy their landscape and environment to satisfy their market. According to one grower, a large amount of sales are to people who are weaving  sculptures and coffins, both of which require huge amounts of willow. At least one grower even imports willow from Eastern Europe to satisfy this market. A willow coffin or basket made with chemically sprayed willows may be a ‘natural’ product but it is certainly not an environmentally friendly or a sustainable one.

In front of a monocultural plantation of Black Maul in Somerset 1982 - little has changed.

Chemical pesticides and fungicides were first available to farmers on a large scale in the 1950’s. Britains basket industry was at its biggest and most profitable prior to that in the early 20thCentury when thousands of willow baskets were being made for all sorts of purposes. They achieved this without the aid of Monsanto, ICI, Bayer, et al and I see no reason why it cannot be done again. 

London basketmakers  A.Cook  1935

When you think about it, it is obvious that any willow plantation is going to be vulnerable to pests and diseases because we plant the willows in lines bang up next to each other to make them grow straight, we then force them to make lots of new shoots by chopping their heads off every year, we seldom fertilise and we tend to plant single varieties which means that if one gets infested they all do. Added to this heavy tractors instead of lightweight horses are now used to cut (and spray) the willows on large plantations thus compacting the soil round the roots, so it’s no wonder the willows give up after 10 years or so of this onslaught. It’s time to re think the whole business of growing willow as a crop, there has to be a better way. I have read that there is a bacteria that can kill rust on willows and any other infected plants that is completely harmless to the environment or man, but I imagine it is not that easy to get hold of because one of the big chemical companies will have made sure they have the patent or they will have buried the research!

It was good to have a chance to discuss these things and to catch up with friends and fellow makers and to meet some people I had only previously ‘met’ on social media.

Hopefully a comprehensive strategy for documenting some of our endangered baskets that are languishing in national Museum stores will emerge from this event along with other activities to preserve the knowledge stored in these baskets. My thanks to Mary Lewis at Heritage Crafts for inviting me to contribute to the day. It was certainly food for thought.

Farting About

Weaving Ghosts at An Lanntair

According to the Oxford English Dictionary ‘farting about’ seems the best way to describe the current post-exhibition phase of my work cycle. It’s always hard getting back into it when I have been away from the studio for a few weeks.

It wasn’t possible to be at An Lanntair in Stornoway to set up Weaving Ghosts so I was keen to go and see if my written instructions had enabled Roddy Murray and the gallery staff at An Lanntair to install it as I wanted. Barring problems to do with lighting (which meant the shadows on The Ossuary were not as intended) and the very high ceilings that prevented the installation of Hoose, (hopefully I will get another chance to install it somewhere else) the exhibition looked good in the space. I was particularly happy with North Atlantic Drift because the spacing between the individual baskets was perfect (not easy with 70 plus baskets all different shapes and sizes), so my thanks to Roddy Murray for that.

North Atlantic Drift and There Were 15 To Feed At Midbrake 

The 8 schools workshops for children aged between 5 and 13 were full on but I had very generous help from two members of the Scottish Basketmakers Circle, Dawn Susan and Angela Price along with JJ plus staff from the schools and An Lanntair, for which I am very grateful. Thanks are particularly owing to Moira for her organisation and communication skills and to Joe for his knowledgeable and willing practical aid. A gallery talk and an interview on BBC Radio Scotland were also packed into 4 days.

Unravelling with Joe!

Exhibitions are really important for me, without them I don’t do much in the studio. I love the whole process involved in creating, curating and organising an exhibition, but this post-exhibition phase is always the hardest bit.

Weaving Ghosts has had 5 showings so far (2 Scotland and 3 Norway) and there is at least one more venue planned in England but not until next year, so at the moment I am trying to find more galleries to fill the gap or continue the tour, but it’s a pretty thankless task.

On the evidence of my experience the only way to get venues to give you a show is if you actually know someone who works there, or have some link to the venue. Sending unsolicited proposals has seldom been successful for me. It doesn’t take much to just acknowledge receipt of a proposal but it’s obviously too much effort for a lot of the people responsible for planning exhibitions. Many of the bigger and better known galleries also specifically say that they do not accept unsolicited submissions so unless you know someone working there you haven’t a hope in hell. Smaller regional museums and Art Centres in Britain are easier to get a show in than the big galleries, so that is where I concentrate my efforts though even with them it’s also often hard to get a response. Just a ‘thank you’ would do. So far I have sent out 4 detailed proposals tailored to individual venues in the last couple of months and not had a single response. I am an artist, not a salesperson, so I am not going to cold call or doorstep people, I try to find a more sympathetic way of doing things, but even after 30 plus years at it I still don’t really know what is the right way to get results!

Meanwhile I have plenty more ideas I want to explore for Weaving Ghosts but without a confirmed date for its next showing I am finding it difficult to focus so today have spent my studio time flitting from one thing to the next.

 

Here is a typical unfocused day in the studio…..ironing some plastic lids, I really like the resulting flat brightly coloured disks with the vestiges of their ribbed edges and screw mechanism. Making willow frames for the planned Southport Boat Basket. No kinks today, possibly because I had soaked the white willow for much longer and had altered the former I made with some concave shaping on the corners and an inner tube to cushion it. Cutting up heavy duty polyethylene bottles, possibly for the SBB but not sure and cutting up inner tube for tying the frames. Playing with gladioli leaves to see if I can remember how to start a continuous, non-stitched, coiled, plait, like the one Carlos Fontales briefly showed me how to do with esparto. Gave up after a while, as it wasn’t working and was just making me cross. In principle it seems very simple, I am just having difficulty with the rhythm of it and the hand positioning at the moment.

Took some photos of work in progress on the Southport, responded to some emails and social media, edited the Weaving Ghosts proposal for galleries and looked on line for some regional museums. Sorted some willows and put them to soak in the pond. Started writing this blog post. Shaved some skeins of willow, for the SBB, and watched an astonishing amount of large hailstones come out of the sky and cover the ground outside the studio in a few seconds. 

I hope this phase doesn’t go on too long, because it feels a bit tedious and uncreative, but I know it’s the only way I am going to get back into it, it’s essential to be in the studio just ‘farting about’.

Boat Baskets and Beaters

On a damp March Saturday this year, a few folk gathered at Mid Yell Church Hall to participate in an auction of the church's possessions. The late Georgian church, simple and solid, that had wedded, christened, buried and, no doubt, hectored the community for nearly 200 hundred years is now too expensive to  maintain for the small congregation that use it, so it is being sold for conversion to other purposes. In the announcement for the sale it mentioned a basket and a couple of carpet beaters and my curiosity was piqued.

In amongst the cups and saucers, kettles,Christmas decorations, a manger with fluffy lamb, pews, vases, two organs and the altar was a Southport boat basket and two cane carpet beaters, all in good condition although the basket has lost its lid. No one else was interested in owning them so my £2 bid secured the lot which included (rather surprisingly in a church) a small folding card table and a reel of very fine copper wire. Some of the participants in the auction ended up buying tons of stuff in order to support the church and when I asked one man what he would do with it all, he said he had no idea. The most poignant moment of the whole event was when the Bible, a massive, ancient, leather bound, silver clasped copy appeared and nobody wanted to buy it, not even for one pound. Everyone  hung their heads and the sense of  shame in the room was tangible.

The Southport boat basket was an extremely popular possession in its day. Many examples can be seen in museums in Britain and particularly in Scotland, the Shetland Museum has at least two. According to Dorothy Wright (p.120 Complete Book of Baskets and Basketry, ISBN 0 88914 055 3) it was designed in about 1830  by a Mr. Cobham of Mawdesley in Lancashire and produced by the local basket making firm of Thomas Cowley. Although no one else at the auction bid for the basket plenty of people admired it and older folk remembered having one similar at home. They were used for taking goods such as eggs and butter  to market  but I have  heard they also   served  as 'cabin baggage' for the many women gutters who travelled by train around the northern British coasts following the herring boats, though I have no hard evidence for this.

It isn't surprising it was such a popular basket because it was very well designed, not only in terms of its functionality but also in terms of the time and skill  needed to produce it. Made out of buff willow and split ash it must have been  a quick basket to produce because of its method of construction.
Only one simple wooden mould would  have been needed to make the willow frame of the basket, the willow frame of the lid and the ash  handle bow/central rib as they are all the same size. The lid was woven from each end on one frame with a gap between the two woven areas that went over the handle. It was attached to one of the long sides of the frame. This would have been far quicker than making two separate lids  as it was only necessary to make and attach one frame. One of the Southports in the Shetland Museum collection has a plywood lid which was obviously a replacement, but very effective and quick to do. Interestingly a fettle ( carrying band) had also been added to this basket so that it could be carried on the back  as though it were a kishie.

Southport boat basket in Shetland Museum with wooden lid and fettle

The use of  a strip of ash that was both the handle bow and central  rib would also have been much simpler to construct than a willow one, requiring only the bending and tacking of the ash strip. The strength supplied by this ash bow/rib meant that the ribs on the basket could be spaced quite widely apart thus speeding up the weaving, there are only 10 willow ribs on the full size basket. Perhaps the most ingenious design feature is the strip of ash that runs end to end underneath the basket because not only did it make the basket very strong but it also eliminated the need to fill in the gap between the  two sides  with willow, which is always the slowest and most difficult part of making a frame basket.

Given how popular this basket was I am surprised no-one has thought to make them again now. The design is well documented, it is an indigenous British basket and it is extremely practical. As  I have willow and the ash trees grow like weeds around my studio  I am sorely tempted to give it a go.

Before electricity came into our homes carpet beaters were essential household equipment. On a dry spring day carpets and mats were draped over the washing line and  the living daylights were beaten out of them by bored housewives wielding these decorative cane beaters. Not only was this superb therapy for the woman doing the beating but it  also got rid of all the the dust and moth larvae without her needing to spend any money on electricity. In our house the man beats the mats with a length of timber or an old tennis racket but I might feel a tad more inclined to join in with these lovely beaters. There are also instructions for making a carpet beater  (p.101) in the Dorothy Wright book mentioned previously.