Salt and other Basket Fairs

This year I was lucky to be invited back to Salt on the outskirts of Girona in Catalonia for the 25^th International Basketry Fair. My invitation was to create a large basket with the help of members of the public. This is such a nice event that I accepted with pleasure. This was my third visit to this two-day fair and the prospect of meeting up with friends and fellow makers, all of whom are treated with such respect and generosity by the Catalan Basketmakers Association https://cistell.cat/ and the town, makes it too good to miss. There are now quite a few basketry fairs in Europe some are bigger than Salt, the World Wicker and Weaving Festival in Poland, the Korbmarkt in Lichtenfels, Germany and the Fêtes de la Vannerie at Vallebrègue in France are examples, none of which I have been to, but I have heard mixed reports about all of them.

I was asked by several makers in Salt if we had any events like this in UK and I had to say no. We don’t have any fairs that have run annually for 25 years (Covid years excepted). I believe the last event that was similar was in Porthleven in 2001 when Geraldine Jones and Hilary Burns of Basketry and Beyond, https://www.basketryandbeyond.org.uk/ organised the Porthleven Makers Festival in Cornwall. They invited international makers whose work had strong connections with the sea and by all accounts it was an excellent event.  We do have one day events that crop up here and there, there is, for example, a one-day event in Lewes at the end of October this year, and a lot of residential workshops are organised in UK but nothing like Salt. It seems to me that there are lots of factors involved that all need to come together to make an event like Salt, and so far that has not happened in UK.

Salt is a success because it is a collaboration between the Catalan Basketmakers Association (most of whose members live reasonably close) and the town of Salt and its residents, so everybody is catered for, and everyone has an opportunity to get involved in some way or another even if it is just hanging baskets on your balcony, it all adds up.

The fair has a theme each year and this year it was ‘Contemporary’ some years it is a country that is in focus, and for 13 years there has been a competition with both traditional and contemporary categories. This year there were 3 exhibitions in different locations, plus  the installation of a willow and cement sculpture in a square by Klaus Titze, a film about the history of the Fair, a talk by Karen Gossart and Quentin Corentin https://www.oseraiedelile.com/ about their work, (the making side of which was on show in their exhibition “ Jeux de Courbes”), a parade of giants, a traditional folk dance for all with live traditional music, several mini workshops, and of course lots of baskets for sale. The local bars and restaurants and hotels do a very good trade over the weekend and the on-site food and drinks are not expensive. What more can you ask for? 

We could do all of this in UK, but the UK is about eight times bigger than Catalonia and deciding where it should be and finding a town willing to invest in it is a much trickier prospect, the weather is also a factor. Perhaps it does rain at Salt some years, but it has always been warm and sunny when I have been there.

Most of the makers I spoke to were reasonably happy with their sales, but all of them said they didn’t come for the sales, they came to spend time with fellow makers. Basketry can be quite a solitary activity, and because we are constantly encouraged to ‘market’ ourselves in every aspect of our lives, it’s really good to learn that despite what you think you are seeing on social media, very few of us sell out at our exhibitions or fairs, but that most of us are very happy doing what we do, despite ‘marketing’ (which very few of us enjoy doing)!

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.

Woven Communities Symposium 2

John Cowan and his herring cran

Symposiums around basket making are a rare breed.  I have only been to four: Basketry Making Human Nature at the Sainsbury Centre in 2011, Woven Communities 1 at St. Andrews University in 2012, Viva Basket  in Cieszyn, Poland in 2014 and Woven Communities 2 at St. Andrews last week. But we definitely need more because they are a great way to meet your fellow makers and for us to engage with people in many other walks of life whose work, in some way or another, connects with basket making.

Dawn Susan demonstrating  a Hebridean ciosan

This latest symposium at St. Andrews is the last programmed event in the much bigger Woven Communities Project that was initiated by and has been managed, so ably, by Stephanie Bunn of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St. Andrews.

The theme for this event was Making, Mind and Memory and was divided into sections, Materials and Skills, Memory and Reminiscence, Basketry and Maths, Therapeutic Uses of Basketry, Intangible Knowledge and Education and Innovation. Within this framework we heard from basket makers, anthropologists, archaeologists, artists,engineers, philosophers, an occupational therapist, museum curators  a ropeworker and a mathematician among others.  There are always  things  that spark the imagination or kick start a new way of looking at things immediately and things that re surface some time later, because they just won't go away.

The things that I came away with immediately are images from Hilary Burns talk about basketry in Britain during and after the 1914-18 war, the use of maths for inspiration by Mary Crabb, a map drawn from memory by a Hebridean fisherman in Jon Macleods talk, the smiling faces of Polish basket makers in Paulina Adamskas' presentation and the fibre alphabet of Kiphu cords of the central Andes that Sabine Hyland is researching. It seems divisive to single anything out because in truth it was all fascinating and enjoyable. Except, that is, for my own Open Office presentation which was plagued with technical glitches, the most serious resulting in the loss of some images. Not an experience I have ever had before and very frustrating. But, according to the internet I am not alone. Personally I suspect Windows 10 has an anti open source glitch built into it, but then I am naturally suspicious of any business that makes a lot of money!

My thanks to Stephanie for inviting me and to everyone else involved in organising the event, especially Lucie.

En route I managed to see Lise Bechs solo show at the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh,  lovely work but the gallery should have given her more space, the work needs and deserves some air around it and the paintings upstairs had plenty of room!

Rencontres Autour du Saule, Bouxurulles

An appropriate name for this sociable little basket festival, the sixth edition of which was held in the tiny rural village of Bouxurulles in the Vosges last week.

Valerie Testu one of the principal organisers and a professional basket maker herself,  invited myself  and others from Germany, Alexandra Marks, Belgium, Liev Lieckens,  UK, Adrian Charlton, Spain, Carlos Fontales and, of course, France, Francois Deplanches, Regis Colin, Stephane Deleau, Florence Canavacciuolo, and Florian Gascht to teach workshops.

Work by Alexandra Marks

I hadn't seen Alexandra, Adrian, Carlos or Francois for a while and so it was a pleasure to have a chance to be with them and to meet others. Some makers were there to  take part in the basket market held at the weekend and Klaus Seyfang turned up, to the delight of everyone who knows him, just to be sociable.

Work by Valerie Testu

There were  18 classes run over a 3 day period and my contribution was a 2 day one for coiling and looping with recycled and found materials and  1 day on hexagonal plaiting. Many of the students were regulars to the event, people who really enjoy making baskets as a leisure activity.

The village residents host the tutors and organise meals and entertainments for everyone concerned , the sun shone and nearly 600 litres of local beer were consumed over the 5 days. Personally I enjoyed it very much and wish to thank all the villagers concerned but particularly Valerie, Jeannot and Zabeth for their incredible hard work and kind hospitality. I have happily accepted an invitation to return next year.

Viva Basket!

Is the name of an event that took place last week in the border town of Cieszyn, in Poland.

Organised by Serfenta in collaboration with Norwegian partners, it is part of a wider project to research baskets and makers in both countries and it brought together outdoor installations, exhibitions and an international conference. I was invited along with Jette Mellgren, JanJohansen and Carlos Fontales to create outdoor pieces.  Jette and Jan worked on the (northern) Polish side of the border and Carlos and I worked in a small public park with a pond full of water lilies in the Czech Republic! In reality it was only a footbridge without  formalities that separated the two teams.

Strapping tape was sourced for us from Castorama, by the car load.......

Photo courtesy of Serfenta.

and we combined it with willows to create a ‘fountain’ of plaited hearts (me) and clusters of random woven ‘parasols’ (Carlos).

The installation of the ‘fountain’ could not have been achieved without the help of the brave Marek Malesza – the pond had some big fish in it! My thanks go to him, also to Paulina Adamska Malesza, Ania Krezelok and everyone else at Serfenta for all their hard work on this event and for inviting me to be a part of it.

Speak Up!

The Art Workers Guild with the portrait of Thomas Okey to the right of the door.

Speaking publicly about my work is not easy but I really enjoy the challenge.  Last week I gave a talk, to students, staff and prospective students at Brighton University and to members of the Art Workers Guild in London.

Giving two talks back to back was daunting  because  they were two very different audiences but, in the end it worked out well. I kept to the time limit, there was only one technical glitch and no-one shouted ‘speak up’!

The invitation to Brighton was from Margaret Huber and Graham Rawle, the super duo of the Sequential Design and Illustration department and  my thanks go to them. I have spoken there quite a few times before so it feels cosy  and the audience gave me a warm reception.

The Art Workers Guild building I am also very familiar with because it is the same one in which  the Basketmakers Association AGM is held.  The audience was, however, quite different, as the Guild Members are all renowned experts in their own art, architecture or craft fields. My invitation from  Prue Cooper, the current Master and witty ceramicist, to speak to them this year was because 2014  is the Centenary of Thomas Okeys’ year as Master of the Art Workers Guild.

Illustration from "The Art of Basket-Making"

As many of you reading this will know, Thomas Okey (1852-1935) was, also a basket maker.   Born in the East End of London into a basket making family he worked in the family business for 30 years. He taught himself  Italian, French and German from books  before starting work at 6 am and by going to evening classes at the end of the day.  He developed a passion for the Italian language and culture in particular and translated and authored many books on the subject, going on to become, a Fellow at Cambridge despite no formal qualifications He also wrote one the best instructional books about willow basket making An Introduction to The Art of Basket-Making published in either 1912 or 1932 depending on which source you read ( I have a copy marked 1st edition which says 1932). So, having been born 100 years and one week later than Thomas, lived and made baskets in the east end for 30 years,  written books on basket making,  gone back to university late in life and struggled (I think he was a natural) to learn foreign languages. I actually feel a sort of kindred spirit with him.  It was, therefore an honour for me to speak in the same place that he had been Master. It also seems a strange coincidence that David Drew, probably Britains best willow basket maker, also a Libran, has exactly the same birthday as Thomas Okey. Are there many other basket makers out there who are Librans?

For these occasions my talk is autobiographical. It is, after all, what I know best and  it is what I want to hear when I go to talks given by other people. I want to know how and why they became what they are. Grayson Perry and Paul Smith are two people who do this and they are probably the two speakers I have enjoyed the most, so I try to follow their example. As an artist it is impossible to separate my life from my art, I will die on the job, it isn’t something I can retire from. So, I cannot talk about my work without talking about the circumstances of my life that have often been the catalyst for changes in my work.

I work hard at my talks, so it is rewarding when it pays off, as it did on these two occasions.  I knew it was going particularly well at the Art Workers, when I became aware that almost everyone in the room was looking at me, very still and silent, but sitting very upright and alert, craning their necks just a little bit. I hope no-one in the audience that night will be offended when I say it was almost as though their ears had pricked up! It was an unforgettable sensation, one that I imagine many actors experience and one that I will now always have to try to make happen.

Scottish Basketmakers Circle Gathering at Hospitalfield

The Scottish Basketmakers Circle celebrated 25 years of existence at Hospitlafield Centre for Art and Culture in Arbroath  last weekend. I was privileged to be invited to this extraordinary venue as one of the three tutors. Owen Jones, oak swill maker,  and Geoff Forrest, willow basket maker, were my co-tutors. 

 

At first sight Hospitalfield appears to be one of those Victorian gothic piles that were built on the proceeds of a dubious mixture of colonialisation, industrialisation and exploitation,  but the truth is very different. The Hospitalifield Trust has been in existence since 1873 and it became  the first post graduate art school in Scotland in 1936  providing support for artists from both Britain and abroad continually since then. Carved ceilings, tapestries, baronial fireplaces, paintings and sculptures were all commissioned for the house with the intention of providing  jobs for both artists and artisans or were accepted as payment for tuition. The money to provide these commissions apparently came from the astute, yet  benign, management of the estates belonging to the house by the artist and landlord Patrick Allen-Fraser and his wife Elizabeth.  She had inherited them from her father. In recent years most of the assests that could be dispensed with have been sold and the house is now in need of attention, especially the guest accommodation. So, the most common topic of conversation for the first  day of the SBC’s celebratory gathering were the foibles of the plumbing and the eccentricities of the building! But it was an appropriate setting for the gathering, with its spirit of creativity and we have Laura Hamilton to thank for finding such a special venue for this occasion.

All three workshops took place in and around a purpose built  (1901) studio block. My class had a room with a monumental fireplace,  large white plaster classical busts and leaking roof lights. Owens class with their froes, axes and bonfires worked out of doors, when it wasn’t raining, (and sometimes when it was)  and Geoff worked at the other end of the building in a large studio that had plenty of room for staking up square willow baskets.

Owens workshop

Geoffs workshop

It is always hard for my students to be in a situation where the students in the other classes are all making the same thing  using the same materials that have been brought to the class and, quite often, though not  in this instance, also prepared by the tutors. In my  workshops the aim is to help students develop a personal identity for their work through the use of materials that are from their own environment, alongside the learning  of techniques  to help them adapt their  ideas to those materials.   But this takes time. First of all you have to discover how best to prepare the material, then you have to find out which techniques they are appropriate for, both of which  you can only find out through experimentation. So, at the end of the first day, when their fellow students come in to see what has been done, there is always someone who, somewhat unkindly, says… ‘is that all you’ve done'?  Lots of experimentation with different materials and techniques does not produce complete baskets, or immediate results. Often it isn’t until the students return home and have assimilated what they have learnt that anything takes shape. So, I  have deep respect for my students who put up with the jibes and continue to experiment and try different things, just as they did in this instance.

For this workshop the techniques we covered were all coiled: tied, stitched, plaited, woven and looped with many variations.  The materials the students used were either brought from their home or found at Hospitalfield. Angela brought selvedge ends from Harris tweed, unwanted T shirts and reject silk threads from a sari factory. Caroline  brought mosses and grasses as well as some found strapping tape and papers. Julie  brought a bundle of  rope from the beach and sea weed, local newspapers and the cut off sisal ties from her own bundles of willow.  Janice also brought beach  rope, willow and a luminous orange washing line, Grizelda came with  fabric remnants and yarns and plastic bags and Charlotte had  lustrous threads but also raided the Hospitalfield grounds, harvesting nettles and umbelliferae , ivy and montbretia. The oak shavings from Owens class and buff willow rods that were bent and rejected from Geoffs'  also made an appearance. The resulting work from materials this varied often surprises the makers as much as me and this group were no different. So my thanks to them for taking a risk and experimenting hard for three days.

 

This relationship between the basket maker and his or her materials seems to me now, to be essential to producing work that has integrity. When I think of all the makers whose work I have ever admired there are few who do not manage their own materials. They cultivate or gather and prepare them and they  are involved in every stage of the whole process and in the end I think it shows.


Working alongside both Owen Jones and Felicity Irons this year has, for me, been a forceful reminder of this. They both have total control over their materials and all the processes necessary to turn those materials, in this case oak and rush, into products that are not only exemplary in terms of environmental impact, but also have a powerful authenticity and beauty as a consequence of  being of the place where they are made. Owen spends days in the forest looking for the right tree and Felicity gives up six weeks of every summer to harvest  rush from the local rivers and somehow, when you look at the end result, it is evident.

I always hope, therefore, that the students in my classes go away having realised  that it isn’t necessary to buy materials to make baskets. If they then  make their baskets from the materials they have found around them and are prepared to do the research to find out  which techniques work best with each material, their baskets will also have an authenticity and beauty that those made  from bought materials will seldom have.
I also hope that Patrick Allen Fraser would have approved of this methodology and the creative experiments that took place in his studio.

Weaving with Hands and Feet

Brandbjerg Hojskole near Jelling in Denmark was the setting for Flettetraef last week. This is the name given to the week-long biennial summer school run by Pileforeningen the Danish basket makers association. Topics this year were, the ubiquitous, cultivated willow and the increasingly popular willow bark employed in various ways, along with  rush and cardboard.

There were 10 tutors and about 90 participants, most of which were female and the majority over 35. So, really, it’s a kind of retreat for women, where they can escape their families and be fed, both physically and mentally, without having to do any shopping, washing, or washing up. There I met many strong women who have had plenty of very tough things to deal with in their lives but who smiled for most of the week. It cannot be a bad thing.

My students, like all the others, worked like crazy. I could see the light on in our workshop after 11pm most nights as they pushed themselves into new territory, wrestling with strips of cardboard and discovering things about it, and perhaps themselves, they hadn’t found before.

But the week was not just basket making. There were also  guided nature walks, keep fit classes, a trip to the royal burial mounds in Jelling, talks, meditation, communal singing and dancing, a fair on the Wednesday afternoon where you could buy books and baskets and materials, an exhibition of the students work and an end of week party.  Of course, all of this takes a huge amount of voluntary organisation by many people, but particularly in this instance by Else Marie Pedersen , Solveig Langballe and Suzanne Kampp for whom it had been two years in the planning and to whom everyone involved was extremely grateful.

All the  activities  I have mentioned  were of course  pre-programmed but on the final night we were given an extra curricula treat.

Whilst the basket makers occupied most of the building there was also another much smaller group staying at Brandbjerg who were either  learning, or practicing, Argentinian Tango, I’m not sure which. We hardly saw them all week but they were invited to come to the exhibition of our students work and after the celebration dinner their tutor gave  us a short talk about the origins of the dance and an explanation of the differences between Argentinian Tango and the more macho European version. His students then offered to put on a performance for us. Slightly overawed by the large audience and somewhat shyly they danced for us and in so doing gave something of themselves to us. It was a gesture that many of us found profoundly touching. I only had my phone with me so the quality is not good but you can see a short clip of one of the performances here.

The Basketmakers' Association AGM 2012

The Basketmakers’ Association in the UK held its 38^th AGM at the  Art Workers Guild in London on the 20^th October. I haven’t been able to get to these meetings for a few years and so it was a pleasure for me to be able to go this year. I was  reminded of how atmospheric and appropriate  the Georgian room we hold the meeting in is, with its rush seated chairs and portrait covered walls which  include one of Thomas Okey the author of "The Art of  Basket-Making" (1900).

The AGM is a formal, commercial and social occasion rolled into one. The formal part requires the voting in of committee members and approving the accounts, the commercial is the sale of books and materials, and the social includes hearing a talk by someone interesting. This year we had the bonus of two speakers: Mary Butcher on her perception of the metamorphosis of the definition of “basket” over the last 30 years, and Tim Johnson talking about projects he has been involved in, at home and abroad. It is also possible at the AGM to enter a competition and perhaps most enjoyable of all catch up with people you may not have seen for a while.

This year we had to have a change of Chair and Secretary because Bunty Ball and Ruth Salter have uncomplainingly and very effectively done their time and I was delighted to see John Galloway press-ganged into service in the formidable role of Chair. John became a self employed basket maker at the same time that I did and lived not that far from me in London, but we have not crossed paths for many years.  John's speciality is robust, decorative indigo dyed willow baskets and his screens and “bottles” were highly sought after  in the 1980's. But he gave it all up to became a teacher of Design and Technology at secondary level and has only recently, after 17 years hard graft in the classroom,  returned to basket making.

It was a pleasure to see John elected, not only because he seemed genuinely pleased to be taking on this difficult and time consuming role, but also because he told the assembled audience that he aims to work towards a greater engagement by young people with basket making.  A glance around the room at the Art Workers Guild was sufficient evidence that this approach is desperately needed as there were few people present under the age of 50!

There are of course many reasons why the AGM is probably not the best way to judge the health of our organisation. A geographically spread membership, formal proceedings that can be off putting, no practical instruction on offer and a very large trade union march taking place in London on the same day could all have contributed to the small and not very youthful gathering on this particular day. But  I have spoken recently to members of both the Weavers Spinners and Dyers Guild and the Embroiderers Guild and the lack of younger members is apparently common to us all.

It seems important that we address this because what is the point of us working hard to conserve the knowledge of this amazing craft if we do not also try to interest  successive generations in it? They will, after all, be the guardians of this knowledge when we are gone and if they have no interest in it they are unlikely to be good guardians.

But how are we to do this? School seems the obvious place to start but there is little opportunity for anything practical to be learnt in schools in England now.  A recent political imperative in English education (the Scottish curriculum differs) to make the 3 R’s more important than any other type of education has, in conjunction with overreaching health and safety regulations, made it difficult to teach craft skills in schools.  I can only imagine that the school day must be very tedious for many children who have little opportunity to break up the relentless hours at their desks with fun things like woodwork, metalwork and cookery… well, I thought they were fun because they usually involved sharp tools and fire!

Luther Weston Turner, was in 1909 the Director of Manual Training in the Hill School Pottstown, Pennsylvania. and in his lovely little book, “The Basket Maker”, which I have mentioned  in a previous post, he explained why he thought  it was a good thing to teach basket making in school ….

“The fruition of thought is expression. Thought along the line of manual training is susceptible of expression in many ways and through many mediums. The expression of thought through wood and iron necessitates a more or less elaborate equipment of tools, and for this reason those mediums of expression are denied younger pupils. But the expression of thought through basketry, requires almost no tools, has variety as to form and color and almost unlimited possibilities in design.”

But with little real hope of basket making being considered an important addition to the curriculum in England we will probably have to think of other means.

As followers of this blog will be aware the exhibition of my work Urban Baskets toured for two years and having been seen by 57,000 people, including lots of children, in UK and the Netherlands it has now been returned to me. Initially I was tempted to burn the whole lot, it was such hard work finding venues and I am not ready to go through that struggle again just yet.  Disposing of it all, therefore, seemed a simple, if polluting (given the amount of waste plastic I use in my work) solution to a storage problem! For a few weeks the 10 very large boxes glowered at me every time I squeezed past them, but eventually I plucked up the courage to open one and by chance it was  the one with the copy of the visitors book in it. I had not seen the comments from the Harley Gallery, (the last venue) and there were pages and pages of comments almost exclusively enthusiastic and many of them written by school children. Their excitement at seeing the work is evident as this example shows.

Many of their comments made me laugh but also made me realise that children can be excited and interested by baskets. You could tell that many of these children were just itching to make one. Some children did get a chance to do a weaving workshop during the time Urban Baskets was at the Harley but it was led by a permanent member of staff, not a basket maker, and they didn’t make a basket!  These workshops have their own 'health and safety' problems as I described in this post.

In all the time that I have been a member of the Basketmakers' Association, both on and off the committee, there has never been any determined effort, that I have been aware of, to engage children or young people with the craft, or our activities. This is probably because there have been too many other imperatives and too few members willing to take on the work. John's willingness to take on the job of Chair therefore seems opportune and hopefully his knowledge, experience and passion for the subject can, with our assistance, be the catalyst for us to develop a new way to engage young people with this fantastic, versatile, easy and inexpensive craft.

Woven Communities Symposium

Scotland was very green last week when I went to the University of St. Andrews for the Woven Communities Symposium, and I couldn’t stop looking at the beautiful grass everywhere. There is a dust bowl in my garden where the grass normally grows, as there hasn’t been any rain for over a month with temperatures close to 30C for most of that time.

A group of basket makers, conservators, archaeologists, philosophers, anthropologists, educators, museum directors, curators  and artists met for two days to hear fragments of each others research and views on baskets and basket making. This Symposium was similar to the conference at University of East Anglia last year with several of the same speakers. This one, however, had a Scottish focus to it. It was initiated by Stephanie Bunn, a textile artist, willow sculptor and lecturer in Social Anthropology at St. Andrews who is currently engaged in research into the vernacular baskets of Scotland with the assistance of the Scottish Basketmakers Circle.

Image from Scottish Country Life by Alexander Fenton,
John Donald Publishers Ltd.1989
Threshers on Foula

This symposium had a practical element each day which the academics present seemed to particularly enjoy. One of the anthropologists told me he had never been to such an enjoyable symposium and that it was because the makers and artists were all so passionate about their work.  For me it was an interesting, if tightly packed,  two days and although we were not a huge group there were still some people there that I never had a chance to talk to. Greta Bertram has written a good description of the event on the Heritage Crafts Blog.

The penultimate session was a round table and open floor discussion about the future of the craft but we had very little time for it. I found it to be the least satisfactory part of the event with ideas and observations left hanging in the air.  I am an optimist and it seems, to me,  that the cultural and economic climate in Europe at this time is particularly propitious  for engagement with the craft of basket making by many different sectors of society.

“Basket making” is really a misnomer for all that this craft encompasses because it is possible, with these materials and techniques, to make plenty of things that are not baskets: jewellery, buildings, sculpture, boats, fences, shoes, furniture.  The list is endless, and much of  it can  be done with little money and without causing undue harm to our ecosystem. Perhaps, it is both these things that make it so right for the time we are living in.

Baskets, traditionally, have always been sustainable, being made with the materials of the maker’s immediate environment. Ultimately biodegradable and requiring no fossil fuels for their production they are the perfect model for a contemporary product. These are exactly the qualities that every product designer is now seeking for their products.There is a strong movement in Britain and many other parts of Europe and America towards the local and organic. I see no reason why anyone wanting to make a living from "basket making" should not have a ready market for their work as long as they do not compromise the sustainability and authenticity of their products.

It was surprising then, to hear one of the speakers at the symposium make a point of stating categorically that it is impossible to grow willow organically on a commercial scale. Yet, prior to the invention and marketing of pesticides in about 1940 all willow was grown organically and certainly in the 19th  and early20th Century much of it was grown for commercial purposes. An example being Chiswick Eyot in the Thames, where, between 1800 and 1934 willows were grown for the local basket making industry and without the aid of pesticides.

Chiswick Eyot

The commercial willow growers in the UK are mainly located in Somerset  and the reason they may find it difficult to grow organically is all about contemporary agricultural practice and the scale of it.  These willow growers, like most other non-organic farmers, grow their crops in vast fields of single varieties and like most of the other farmers suffer with all the attendant pest and disease problems associated with such practices. Given the time scale between planting and harvesting the first willow crop – usually about 3 years – it is understandable that the Somerset growers are reluctant to rip up their fields and start again with smaller parcels of land and more varieties in order to grow organically. As willows have been grown in the Somerset Levels for centuries, long before pesticides were invented,  they could perhaps find out  how to do it from  old  maps of the area.

Commercial willow crops on the Somerset Levels

In an appendix to the Cultivation and Use of basket Willows produced in 2001 by the Basketmakers Association and IACR Long Ashton Research Station there is a list of the chemicals that have been tested on willow beds for weed control and it reads like a poisoners bible. It isn’t just weeds, there are plenty of insects and fungi that like willow, but one of the main reasons commercial growers are spraying their crops routinely from May onwards with pesticides is to control “button top”, caused by the button top midge Rhabdophaga hetcrobia, which results in branched or stunted willow rods. I remember visiting Helen Tyler, a commercial grower in Somerset, some years ago to find her painstakingly trimming tiny branches from the tips of thousands of rods in order to sell them. This more than likely negated any small profit she may have hoped for from their sale but she did it because she thought she would be unable to sell them unless the bolts looked perfect. Perhaps the growers need to ask their customers if they wouldn’t prefer to accept that some willows may have branched tips, if they knew that it meant they did not have to be sprayed.

Few of the main grower’s web sites discuss the company’s spraying policies and neither do they offer non-sprayed or organic willows. I imagine therefore that a lot of the people buying these willows assume that they are buying a natural, organic product because it  looks like one and not one that could indirectly be harming the environment in which it grows, and that  also contributes to yet more profits for Monsanto et al!

Ultimately, it comes down to education, and this is something we briefly touched on in the discussion, but which seems to me to be very important.  The general public in the UK, despite being the purchasers  of large quantities of basket ware, (according to UK trade statistics over 28 million pounds worth of imported wickerwork and basketwork so far in 2012) is still largely ignorant about basket making and its related activities. I still meet many people who think that the cheap imported baskets they buy in shops  are made by machine and  very few people can distinguish between native willow and imported cane.  Perhaps we need some 'TV basket makers' who can show people not only how easy it is to make something, but who could extol the virtues of  indigenous  'ingredients' and 'recipes' and enthuse a whole generation with the magic of cooking up wonderful things with this amazingly versatile and sustainable activity.

I know it isn't easy to grow willows organically, I grow them myself,  but it is certainly possible and there are plenty of individuals and several companies operating in the UK selling a good range of organic willow that they cultivate Water Willows in Milton Keynes is probably the biggest certified organic grower but there are smaller ones such as Blencogo and Barfad in Scotland.

It is still a dust bowl here in France but maybe it isn’t just the grass that is greener in Scotland.