Basket News

Yes, I have fallen for this one many times forgetting that "baskets" to a Francophone are a type of lace up sport shoe, presumably something you might wear to play basket ball in. Converse All Stars are a typical example but, the game of basket ball is also often abbreviated to just basket and is very popular in France, hence the demand for 'Basket News'.

I first encountered this linguistic trap some years ago when an attractive French man asked me (in English) what I did for a living and I told him I designed baskets. The ensuing conversation was quite strange because he seemed, unusually, very impressed with my chosen career and I hoped, by implication, me. However, he appeared quite disappointed when he learnt that I wasn't undertaking commissions for Nike, Adidas etc. It finally dawned on me what was going on but I decided not to tell him.

Chiswick Eyot Osier Holt

Hek Khaleeli, a friend and much valued patron, sent me a link to a BBC news item about Nick a 67 year old man who has been living on Chiswick Eyot for the past 6 months and it has spurred me to write about this very special place.

I first learnt about the Eyot from Tony Kirkham in 2002. At the time he was responsible for the Arboretum and Horticultural Services at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and he had just agreed to let me plant my grown home experiments in the nursery there. I needed to get hold of willows for the experiments but, buying them was not an option because, I wanted them to be local and readily available in order to be true to the philosophy behind grown home. He told me about this little island in the Thames covered in pollarded willows that he thought used to be cut by basket makers. It sounded incredible to me as I had lived in London for 28 years, making baskets for much of that time, yet knew nothing about it.

My first visit to the Eyot in March 2002 was in the company of Diana Hutchings who at the time was a volunteer at Kew and had been instrumental in helping me make contact with Tony. She also knew about the Eyot and kindly offered to show me where it was and to help cut some willows. Hidden behind the Fullers Brewery just off the thunderous A4 was a piece of basket making history that seemed poignantly beautiful to me in the mix of sunshine and snow that we had on that day.

I had been researching the history of willow cultivation in London for my thesis and had found very few records of osier holts anywhere in the greater London area. I was convinced that there must have been many small plots of land used for cultivating willows for baskets around the edges of the city but could find very few references to any. Those I had found were either of nurseries or plantsmen in Chelsea and Hackney who sold willows for cultivation or of its natural occurrence documented in studies of the Flora of London and its counties. But here in all its wintery beauty was the evidence that, at some time in the not too distant past, basket makers had cultivated these osiers.

The Eyot is a tiny island that is covered with water twice a day at high tides but that you can easily walk to at low tide. The Thames rips in and out of there very fast so you have to be acutely aware of the state of the tide when you visit . Diana (pictured here) had found out the time of low water and we squelched across the mud and climbed the bank. The soggy ground was a jetsom lovers paradise, thick with the detritus that is thrown or blown into the river and growing majestically out of this mattress of refuse were the pollards. We spent the next couple of hours cutting common osier rods in the sunshine keeping a wary eye on the rising tide.

Subsequent research revealed that the Eyot had been planted and cultivated for basket making between about 1800 and 1935 when the last person granted a right to cut the osiers went out of business and the island was subsequently taken over by the local council. The demand for baskets in the area had come from the numerous market gardens in the area that needed containers to transport their produce downstream to the markets of the city of

London.

Since 1949 the willows have been managed by the Old Chiswick Preservation Society in order to prevent further erosion of the island. Another incentive for the locals to cut the osiers, however, is that they block the grandstand view from the houses on Chiswick Mall of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. It seemed too strange a coincidence to discover that one of these handsome houses overlooking the Eyot is called Walpole House!

There is a good account of the history of the Eyot in the following publication for anyone interested in doing more research.

Pape, David, Nature Conservation in Hounslow Ecology Handbook 15, London Ecology Unit 1990, ISBN 1-871045-11-8

This is the BBC clip which shows the island and Nick constructing a shelter for himself from the osiers.

">http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/uk-england-11382907

Urban baskets, tradition recycled

Is now open to the public at Walford Mill in Dorset and will be so until the evening of the 24th October so there are only four weeks left in which it can be seen in the south of England. We then have a gap in the schedule before it moves on to Denbigh Library Gallery in North Wales where it opens on the 15th January so if you run a gallery or an exhibition space and would like to have the show for the pre Christmas slot please get in touch with Christine Fletcher Jones, christine@walfordmillcrafts.co.uk as soon as possible.

There is a 60 page colour catalogue to accompany the exhibition which can be ordered by mail from Walford Mill. The details of how to do this are on this link http://www.walfordmillcrafts.co.uk/current.htm

Last week the exhibition was visited by a group of 50 mayors from all over Dorset (playfully referred to as the 'chain gang' by someone who will remain anonymous). Many of these mayors were not aware of the work that is done at Walford Mill and were apparently delighted with what they saw which can only be good news because like most other arts organisations in Britain, at the moment, Walford Mill Crafts is fearful about the projected cuts in public spending.

There has also been a political proposal that the arts should operate like commercial businesses and survive on their "profits" without tax payers help. In which case the only people who would be able to afford to participate in the arts would of necessity have to be middle aged, in work and rich as ticket, entry, participation fees etc would all have to go up and private enterprises do not normally subsidise the young, old or unwaged to attend events! The only arts events staged would be those that could be certain to bring in punters and the vision of endless re-runs of "Les Miserables" and non stop Constable exhibitions without the option of anything new or daring or different is just too horrible to contemplate. Removing public sponsorhip for the arts would be to abandon the next generation to a cultural life determined by the profit making organisations that dominate the virtual world.

It would not have been possible for me to do what I do without opportunities to show my work and teach classes in publicly funded venues in Britain and in many other countries and although my personal history is not important in the greater scheme of things, there are thousands of other artists/craftspeople/musicians/actors and authors who have also been supported in some small way or another by tax payers and most of them in return will have enriched many other lives by doing what they do.

Today there is a photography event taking place in a small village called Barro in France http://barrobjectif.canalblog.com/ that attracts thousands of visitors who pay nothing to enter. It has been running for 10 years and is there for everyone that wants to see it. It is a prime example of the type of event that could not function without public money and it is superb.

It has enriched my life by showing me other ways to view the world in which we live, but I really wonder if I would have been prepared to pay to see it if I had never seen it before and didn't know just how good it is.

The Opening

On Friday I flew to Southampton from Limoges and arrived at Walford Mill with enough time to add the piece I was finishing on Thursday night and the labels for each piece. Having got to know Christine (the CEO of Walford Mill Crafts) a little bit over the last couple of years I had no doubt that she would have done a good job on the layout, I was right and it felt almost as though I had done it myself, nothing needed changing even though she very graciously gave me the opportunity to do so.

On the morning of the opening we went for a walk on the beautiful Dorset coast which was superb preparation as by lunchtime we were all so relaxed that we arrived late! The weather had been a bit grey and damp but as we approached the Mill the sun came out and the first people I saw there were my parents who had come from Exeter with my brother and his wife, a two and a half hour journey away and it made for a very special beginning. About 50 people came to the opening, a mixture of locals and family and friends, the latter all having made long journeys to be there which I appreciated greatly. Private views are always strange occasions filled with expectation and nervousness and so friendly faces are always hoped for and treasured.

Bunty Ball who is currently the chair of the Basketmakers Association officially opened it for us and I am very grateful to her for doing so although I was a bit alarmed when she described the exhibition as my "lifes work" - I rather hoped I might make a few more baskets yet.....

The afternoon was so enjoyable that I forgot to take any pictures of the exhibition but Caroline the Education Officer at Walford took this picture of Bunty (left), Christine (right) and I as the doors were closing...........I will try to remember to take some when I go back to teach this weekend, but it is, of course, open to visitors before then.

Buff Basket Making

For the last five days I have been camping in a forest of maritime pines a short walk from the sea enjoying the wildness, natural beauty and pure escapism that is the Aquitaine coast. This particular camp site is slightly unusual in that one of the house rules is to "vivez nu" whenever the weather allows, and if you get bored with the beach there are lots of "animations " provided in July and August that you can participate in such as surfing, archery,photography, boules and basket making!

Usually my sojourn there is too late in the season to meet the person who teaches basket making, (I go there in September deliberately to avoid animation and because at 11€ a day it is amazing value) but this year I finally had a chance to meet Agnes Gaillut who has taught cane and willow basket making there from the 1st July to the first weekend in September for the last 18 years. Agnes comes from Marne in North East France and told me that she teaches for pleasure rather than as a profession and over this summer season she had taught 200 children and 30 adults to make baskets and she could have taken double the number if she had had the space in the workshop and someone to help. She is a true champion for the craft! On the day I was in the workshop she had two men making willow baskets, a woman making a willow platter, a boy of about 13 weaving a willow base for a round basket and a girl of about 12 weaving cane on a wooden base and all were obviously totally absorbed by their activity. If you have ever made a willow basket you will know that it usually involves knives and pointed implements so you might think it could be a dangerous activity for naked bodies but Agnes had thought of that and had 'aprons' i.e. strips of inner tube from truck tyres which provided the necessary protection.

That so many people had wanted to make baskets for pleasure was a delight to hear but I couldn't help wondering how many of them would ever make one again once they returned home because the effort involved in sourcing and ordering cane or willow would probably be sufficient a deterrant to stop most people from bothering, added to which most willow suppliers in France do not deal in quantities of less than a bolt which if you just want to make a small basket is far too much.

The maritime pine has long needles that carpet the ground in

the camp site and the beach can usually supply ropes and cords so it seems to me to be a lost opportunity not use them for coiled basket making. I asked Agnes if she had ever considered using the pine needles but she did not know it

was possible to make baskets from them so we arranged a mini coiling workshop after her class and she seemed genuinely pleased to have learnt something new to offer and promised to show me what transpires next year.

For me this is a not just a question of the dubious sustainability of imported centre cane or commercially grown willows but it is also, and maybe more importantly about empowerment. The child who learns that they can pick up the materials that are lying at their feet and make something useful from them has learnt far more than just techniques and will be able to repeat the exercise whenever it finds appropriate materials to hand, without needing any help financially or organisationally from an adult. For hard pressed parents this could also be a big attraction!

Economy Drive

There are only 2 weeks left until Urban Baskets opens at Walford Mill Crafts. The last couple of weeks have been particularly intense for me as I had several pieces to finish as well as all the work to pack and document for the tour. Despite the aching hands and arms there are always benefits for me of making under pressure. It forces me to think more analytically and each process is then considered in terms of how much time it will take for the results achieved. Some of the techniques that I have developed to save time have been discovered in the last hours before the work has had to be posted/ delivered/collected or displayed.

Christine Lawry, who is the Chief Executive at Walford Mill and a person with huge amounts of

energy and passion for her work hired a van and drove the 600 mile round trip to Charme on Tuesday with Paddy, the man she married last weekend to collect the work! What a star! The 7 large boxes were whisked away on Thursday morning and my studio suddenly seems very empty. I am very grateful to them both because it took away the stress of posting the work with the hideous spectre of the work not arriving in time for the opening.....

As well as the actual baskets there has been a lot of work on the catalogue but now, finally, it has gone to the printers. Richard Broadway at East Dorset County Council has designed it and has come up with something that I am very happy with. I have had many experiences of my work being represented in print in ways that have not been appropriate or sympathetic so it is a real delight for me to be able to say that I think this catalogue does the job very well.

One of the things I wanted for this catalogue was to have other people write about about my work. Artists and craftspeople are constantly asked to write statements to explain what they do but often they are not very good at using words, they are, after all expert visual communicators and I am indebted to the following people who all generously gave of their time to write about my work from their perspective: Martina Margetts, Senior Tutor in the School of Humanities Department of Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art, http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=503135 Tony Hayward Artist and Publisher and fellow student in the Sculpture Department at St. Martins in 1975, http://www.tonyhayward.com/index.html Carlos Fontales, Author and Researcher into the Spanish basket making tradition, http://carlosfontales.blogspot.com/(and apparently the only person reading this blog!) as well as Michael Norton, Social Entrepreneur http://www.fifthestate.co.uk/author/michaelnorton/ and Alice Meynell, Designer and mother of 4 children, who are both much appreciated patrons.

Still labels to do and documentation of the other smaller exhibition of baskets from other cultures......

Photography

This week I have been photographing my work for the catalogue that is being produced for the forthcoming exhibition, (see Exhibitions for details).

It is always the same, with nearly three years to prepare for this exhibition everything gets squashed into the last few months including the photography.

It has always been my job to photograph my work and a challenge that I have enjoyed. In the beginning I had to do it because I couldn't afford to pay a photographer, I still cannot, but now I would not consider employing anyone else because creating the images of the pieces at least gives me some control over how my work is presented. It also helps me to see the work, the good bits and the bad bits and draws attention to anything that doesn't quite work on the actual piece.

The pieces that are easy to photograph are usually ( but not always) the ones that work best in reality. In this instance I took over 800 photos to arrive at 32 that I was happy with, something that was not possible for me prior to digital cameras because of the expense and time delay.

The accidental photos or the ones where I am just 'playing' with the piece the light and the camera are often for me very interesting, although they don't necessarily show what the audience for these images is wanting to see - a dilemma.