Retroscope in Progress

Work is progressing on the Retroscope.  Just one more of these, the tripod and Marguerite d'Angoulemes accoutrements to make......The opening of Traditions Futuristes is Saturday 14th June at 18.30 at the Maison du Patrimoine, Tusson, 16140 Charente. Everyone welcome.

Traditions Futuristes

For reasons too tedious to describe, we ( myself and  JJ Ignatius Brennan)  find ourselves making a large new joint work for Traditions Futuristes an exhibition that opens on the 14th June. The details are in the side panel. We will have had 3 weeks to design and make the work. Its always quite exciting when these things happen. One minute work is progressing at a leisurely pace on some distant project, and the next you are in hyperdrive frantically trying to meet a deadline for something you haven't really had any time to think about, at all. But, as I have said before, it is often in these circumstances that the ideas appear easily and with great clarity, which is what happened in this instance.

I don't want to say too much about what it is, at the moment, but it  will be quite big, about 3 by 4 metres made of lime twigs, willow, wood  and wire and is called Retroscope. The picture provides hints.

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.

Stripping

Just to show you that I do still like willow..... I have been 'stripping' it this week. Actually it is one of my favourite willow activities because you end up with two beautiful end products, the white rod and the bark which have totally different characteristics.

There is something very satisfying about the physical task of pulling the willow through the brake and feeling the bark slide off in two neat ribbons. It is also outdoor work and can be sociable if you get someone to help. In willow growing regions of Britain at the end of the 19th Century beginning of the 20th, whole villages turned out to strip the willow because the time frame is fairly short. The sap rises and separates the layers then, as the weeks go by, it starts to adhere to the heartwood and becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible to peel.  It was accepted that children would not be at school during those weeks and although the work was hard you get the impression from old photos that it was fun too. The first photo came from the Devon County archives but I have no information about where the photo was taken, it could have been Devon or Somerset or possibly East Anglia given the eel traps and style of building.
The second one was taken in Spalding Lincolnshire in about 1910.

Illustration from Baskets and Basketmaking by Alastair Heseltine ISBN 0852636113

Usually I 'pit' the willows I am going to strip, cutting them in the winter when they are dormant and standing them in shallow water where they grow fine water roots. I then strip them when the leaves are bursting out, normally about May.

This year I decided it wasn't necessary as I had a good stock of white willow that I haven't found a use for yet. But there were some willows in the plot I hadn't cut when they were dormant  and now they are coming into leaf. As they are 'Jaune', which make a really good creamy white willow, I thought I would try stripping them and it worked really well. As it was a sunny day they dried very quickly in the sun and I have never had such dazzling white willows before. Obviously timing is critical and you have to strip them almost as soon as you have cut them. I left a few with their butts standing in water overnight but because they had no roots by the next day the sap had dropped and they wouldn't peel.

Illustration from Basketmaking in Bedfordshire by TW Bagshawe ISBN 0 907106003

My willow brake I bought because I liked the shape, but its not a good design because you have to fix it to something in order to use it. Better ones have a spike at the base of the circle that you can stick in a handy post, tree stump or crevice in a wall . Hence my arrangement with a screw block and clamps. David Drew made one for me out of a length of chestnut, note the discreet signature. It is kinder on the willow than the steel but is intended for use on a saw horse which clamps it in place and is not so easy to use without the horse.

"Strip the Willow" is also the name of an old British folk tune and dance. Bizarrely there are Orcadian and Shetland versions even though willow was never a native plant in Shetland and they certainly never had enough to strip ! You can see some Scottish experts perform it here.

Anything But Willow!

Last night I burned most of the hundred plus willow experiments I made for my research at the RCA and it was good, it warmed the room for a short period of time and felt like a little act of revolt against the stuff.

Willow has been an important part of my life; I have grown it, made lots of things with it and devoted four years of my life to researching it.  But, for some time now I have been jokingly saying to friends that I will set up a facebook page called Anything But Willow !

Of course, I mean no disrespect to the plant or the many friends and colleagues who make lovely things with willow, so why do I feel like this? Because it seems to me that in parts of Northern Europe, at least, we have become infatuated with it to the exclusion of lots of other wonderful natural materials and that by not using these other materials we are losing the knowledge of how to work with them. 

A quick analysis of the workshops and courses on offer at the moment by the English, Scottish and Danish Basketmakers associations shows that willow predominates. It also shows that there is very little instruction on offer for its cultivation . In the latest Basketmakers Association newsletter, however, there are just over a hundred courses on offer of which more than 90 include weaving with willow.

It is easy to buy a bundle of commercially grown willow. It is a good way for people to learn how to make a basket without having to deal with the often difficult and time consuming, yet very important part of basket making, which is gathering and preparing the material. But, it has always seemed to me that if you don’t enjoy preparing the materials you probably won’t ever really like making baskets. The materials need preparation, whatever they are, and that preparation can often take longer than making the basket so you really need to enjoy that part of the process as well as the weaving bit.

gathering wild oats

Basket making used to be done by the people who needed the basketry for their day to day existence. They used whatever material they had in their vicinity and managed it sustainably, knowing that if they didn’t there wouldn’t be any of it there next year. They knew everything about the growth cycle, how and when to harvest it and how to prepare it for use. Now we can order a bolt of willow on line without really knowing anything about how it became this beautiful, even bundle of rods and the various processes that have to be undertaken at precise times of the year for it to arrive on our doorstep whenever we want it.  It's a bit like  buying strawberries from a supermarket in December that have been flown in from the southern hemisphere and willow can  have an equally heavy ecological footprint as that of the  strawberries, if it hasn’t been grown organically.

iris and gladioli leaves

There is an astonishing richness of natural materials available to us in Northern Europe to make baskets with. But why are there so few classes in using straw, wild clematis, dock stalks, hazel, ash or some of the myriad varieties of shrubs, trees, rushes and grasses that are everywhere in our countryside for us to use for free? Not forgetting the even more varied range of materials that can be ‘harvested’ for free in our cities or on our beaches.

 The classes aren’t there because there are only a few people capable of teaching us how to use these materials.  Much of this knowledge has not been handed down and is now lost. So it’s a chicken and egg situation, there may be lots of people who want to learn how to make baskets but the only courses they can go on are for willow. So that is what they learn, often unaware that there are many other materials that you can make baskets with.

wild clematis

However, something has happened recently that may alter things. The French magazine Le Lien Creatif has arrived on the scene. This magazine devoted to basket making is turning into a superb resource for learning about all the other natural materials there are out there that can be used for basket making.  Fortunately in France there are still some elderly makers who specialise in materials other than willow and Bernard Bertrand, the editor who  is the  hero in all this, is doing his best to track them all down to  record and publish as much of their precious knowledge as he can. It’s a Herculean task that he has taken on, but worth it because each magazine is richer than the previous one. Even if you don’t read French there are many step by step instructions for material gathering and preparation as well as  basket construction.  Bernard is hoping to produce an English version of the magazine either on line or in print. So, if anyone reading this is in the publishing business and is interested in helping to get an English version off the ground please contact Bernard at the magazine. Hopefully if enough people get to see Le Lien Creatif some might get excited by these other forgotten materials and in a few years time there will be many more classes using other materials.

In truth, I burnt the willow samples because the brown willow had become riddled with woodworm but that is just one of many reasons why willow is not the only and most perfect material to make baskets with – woodworm love it!

Shetland Workshops

 Like much of Britain the weather in Shetland since Christmas has been wetter and windier than usual. Many folk here don't remember it being as bad for the last 40 years. For three weeks in January the wind blew at gale force almost every day which, accompanied by rain, meant the simple act of going out of doors became almost impossible. The front door on the house is positioned facing east to avoid the normal southwesterly gales but these January gales came from the south east requiring a shoulder barge of rugby playing proportions to close the door. But if you give up the struggle and stay indoors the wind howling round the house and down the chimney can quickly drive you crazy so, I organised a couple of workshops to fend off cabin fever.

My thanks go to Chris Dumont for helping to organise the twining one at Baltasound on Unst. A small group, but hardly surprising given that several inter island ferries had been cancelled due to the weather in preceding weeks, something that happens rarely. People from the mainland of Shetland are understandably nervous of getting stranded in the North Isles as there is little in the way of hotel accommodation or eating places in either Unst or Yell at this time of year. The prospect of spending the night in your car is therefore a real and not very appetising one.

Chris made a kishie out of the fine polypropylene netting that crofters use on their bales of silage. We had to devise some ways of weaving with it because, unlike straw, this material made it difficult to differentiate the various strands making up the hjogs. It worked in the end and he has used it to go shopping with.

The following weekend the frame basketry workshop at Levenwick on the mainland was fully booked and my thanks go to Barbara Dinnage for helping to organise that one. 

Frame basketry is not part of the Shetland basketry tradition because there are few trees to make the frames out of. But, it is a good technique for people who enjoy textile weaving as the process is more akin to loom weaving than stake and strand basketry. It is also a great technique for using a wide variety of found materials. I don't normally do any preparation for students because I believe it is important for them to learn the whole process from gathering the material to completing the basket. But in this instance I made the frames out of willows from my garden in advance so that they could dry a bit, because flexible frames make controlling the shape much harder. However I did demonstrate how to make the frames so that they weren't missing out on that information and they had to make their own ribs. People brought along a wide variety of found materials including felted off-cuts from knitting machines, which was anew one for me and it worked really well. My thanks go to all the students at both workshops for making the effort to come and dragging themselves away from their warm houses.

Workshops in Shetland

My next two workshops are in the Shetland Islands.The first  is on Unst, the most northerly island in Britain . It’s a special place that few people in Britain seem to know exists. Perhaps it's because the Shetland Islands are often off the top of the screen on TV weather maps! It is a twining workshop using found, natural and recycled materials and it will take place on Saturday the 8^th and Sunday 9^th February. See the link in the side panel for details of how to book.

The following Sunday the 16^th I will be doing a one day workshop at Levenwick in the south of mainland Shetland. This time the topic is frame basketry with the same combination of materials.

Again the details of how to book are in the side panel.