Handcrafted Willow Baskets by Katherine Lewis
Katherine is back after traveling to France and England to study willow basketmaking and visit other basketmakers in March and April. She spent a week in Villaines-les-Rochers in the Loire Valley taking a course with Norbert Faure at the Cooperative de Vannerie de Villaines. She also had the opportunity to meet David Drew, the outstanding British basketmaker who now lives in Villaines with his wife Judy. Next, Katherine visited Olivia Elton Barratt and her husband John in England. She was fortunate to be Olivia's guest when The Worshipful Company of Basketmakers presented new offertory baskets to Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. Later in the visit Katherine helped out on Olivia's coracle course and was given the chance to try one out. Next stop was Norfolk and a visit to Adrian Charlton and Ruth Kidd who have the Norfolk Basket Company. We have been fortunate to have Adrian come here to Mount Vernon to teach willow basketmaking courses in 2004 and 2005. Katherine took the opportunity while she was there to take a brief tuition with Terry Bensley, a willow basketmaker in Great Yarmouth. She made a traditional 1/8 herring cran basket. The final week of the trip was spent at the Basketmakers' Association's Spring course at York to work with Jenny Crisp. Katherine had admired Jenny's baskets for some time and it was the opportunity to take a course with her that inspired the trip to begin with. Katherine has written an account of her week at York for the BA newsletter. You can read the original below. See our teachers&friends page for more photos from the trip. York! 2006 By Katherine Lewis I don’t really think of myself as a world traveler, so when a couple friends began to talk about a trip to England to the BA spring school at York a couple years back, I thought it was a nice dream but wouldn’t really happen. Amazingly enough, the three of us did travel to York in 2004, and after one trip, you find that you can much more easily imagine the next! So when the instructor list for York 2006 came out and Jenny Crisp was to be teaching, I just signed right up! (I should mention that I’m traveling from the Pacific Northwest of the USA, north of Seattle and very near the Canadian border…..a bit farther than the average York attendee!) Sunday evening we were introduced to our tutors and after dinner went to our classrooms to have a bit of introduction. Jenny was still unloading her trailer, what a great chance to look up close at her baskets while helping to carry them inside! It was decided that we’d all work the first couple days on a round fruit basket, making first hoops, then bases, scalloming on our stakes and hoping to make a nice “Jenny Crisp” border. This allowed Jenny to demonstrate each step as we went along; those folks who were faster just made more hoops than those of us who’s slypes left something to be desired. By mid-day we all had at least a couple decent hoops (and some folks had rather a pile of them!), so we wove our bases, mostly using half dry willows from Jenny’s willow beds. Most of us couldn’t resist a beautiful green purpurea that Jenny says will stay green unless left in bright sun, then it would turn orange! Watching Jenny work with the willow is a true pleasure, every movement positive and purposeful, constantly observing each willow rod and carefully choosing the correct piece for each step. Jenny’s demonstrations were very clear, and she spent considerable time moving around the group of us watching us work, correcting hand positions and making suggestions. Monday afternoon we cut scalloms (after carefully sorting our stakes to the size Jenny suggested for each basket), and left them for after dinner to tie on. In the midst of this all there was much conversation about knives and sharpening, Jenny had brought some very nice small curved blade knives from France that most of us chose to use. They have a round handle that is easy to hold and turn to the correct angle, and the blade seems easier to sharpen than those from Somerset. She demonstrated sharpening using a round ceramic sharpener on a handle, hers is from Dave Budd, but something similar is most likely available at a good cooking supply shop. Hold the knife at a 30 degree angle, and sharpen regularly!
Photo: Jenny Crisp Monday evening we tied on our scalloms, after soaking the cut ends in warm water for 20 minutes or so. Again Jenny’s demonstration was fantastic, although there is the usual problem when watching a great craftsperson that their actions seems so simple when you observe them and then you sit down and try to repeat those motions and realize how much there is to it! But Jenny patiently worked her way around the room and showed us how to hold the scallom and to pull tight the slyped end before pulling the stake end up to the hoop, ending up with scalloms tight against the hoop instead of wobbling about! 9 pm and time to stop for the day, or at least change location…..time for the pub! What could be better than to talk about baskets and basketmaking at the pub with Sally Goymer and Phil Bradley after a long day of basketmaking with Jenny? Tuesday morning, we put on a 3 rod wale. Well, I thought, I know how to do this already, but actually I was wrong! Jenny’s hand positions were different than I’ve seen for waling before, and her wales have such nice graceful curves as a result. Another example of conscious positive movements with a clear purpose at every moment of constructing the basket. Some of us did a bit of double French rand for the sides; others had chosen to make a tray so waling was all that was needed. And then, time for the border! I think I can speak for the entire class that we were both excited and nervous! Watching Jenny demonstrate the border was great. Again, she worked with each piece carefully, this time to give each one the desired curve before laying it into the border. Precise hand positions, positive movements, carefully threading away the border at the end (no simple event that when it’s a seven rod border!). And then, another new way to think about things, after finishing weaving the ends away, she worked around the entire border, pushing, pulling prodding and coaxing the willows to lay more evenly next to one another before trimming the ends. I don’t think I’ll ever finish a border quite the same again, now I know that it’s not done till I’ve really made sure that every piece is laying the best I can get it to lay. I was quite pleased with my first effort, a fruit basket about 4 inches tall. On my second try, I thought I’d be improving on the first, but this time I was weaving a much shallower tray, and I found that actually much more difficult! Jenny demonstrated using a picking knife made by Dave Budd on my fruit basket, which worked beautifully. It has a straight angled blade, quite different from the picking knife I’d seen before. Tuesday evening we were treated to slide presentations by both Jonas Hasselrot and Jenny. Jonas showed us baskets from all over Sweden, often pointing out on a map which part of the country they were from. It was very nice to see such beautiful baskets and have Jonas describe their history and use. Jenny showed us slides of her home and willow growing, telling us more of her history, how she first was introduced to David and Judy Drew and went on to apprentice with David. After her apprenticeship, when she had developed her fruit basket (an openwork version of the fruit basket we were making in class) and gotten her first orders for that basket she told us that she kept track of every one of those she made till she got to 1800, when she decided she didn’t really want to know how many she had made any longer! Of course this became the class joke, “well, when you’ve made 1800 of those you’ll probably get pretty good at it!” Wednesday, and time to make fitched cooling trays. How hard could that be? Of course Jenny demonstrated one first, tying the scalloms onto the hoop lying in her lap, and then fitching across with the hoop still lying so cooperatively there in her lap. My hoop was not as cooperative as hers! I got to learn by example why to cut the scalloms on the belly, I cut mine on the back and my first cooling tray is just as flat as can be, none of that graceful rise that Jenny’s have. And somehow it seemed that I needed to grip them so tightly to tie them on that instead of spreading out in a bit of a fan as you scallom across, mine are all bunched up in a tight little wad! So, on to attempt number two and a much better result, although I think I’ll still put the cooling tray into the basket category I call “much harder than it looks” until I’ve made a few hundred more of them! We were also introduced to Jenny’s willow steamer, a wonderful simple tool that we were all ready to go get for ourselves. It’s a wall paper steamer, with the end of the hose put into a large plastic pipe. Put the willow in the pipe and close the ends with anything handy (we just jammed some wadded up plastic sacks in) and wait 20 minutes. If you’re willow is almost soaked up enough but not quite, this will bring it right to where you want it. The steaming does change the bark color; generally it seemed that the steamed willows went a golden brown color. Wednesday evening we were treated to more slide presentations, Neil Smith’s slide show showed both very traditional hampers that he makes so beautifully, as well as innovative baskets using blue clothesline, and his experiments with triangular work. Fascinating to see was a hamper made for a stage performance that had many special requirements, it needed a secret trap door that could be opened from below so that large items could be magically taken in and out of the basket, and then had to be sturdy enough to be thrown across the stage and jumped on! Neil seems the perfect basketmaker to ask for such an item, he clearly has so much fun figuring out how to solve all the problems presented! Clair Freer showed us slides of her work with Bangladeshi women in London, working with recycled materials. And we were treated to slides shown by student Denise Bachman of Canada of her visit to Eva Seidenfaden at Vissinggaard in Denmark, and her local guild’s visit to Alastair Heseltine’s studio in British Columbia, Canada. To finish the evening we saw some of Denise’s gourd work, and heard details of how to grow gourds yourself. We had a number of different projects going in class by this time, it was a pleasure to watch Phil Bradley and Lise Bech continue to make round trays, trying different varieties of willow and changing the size of materials and spacing of their stakes to increase the difficulty. Since I live in an area without many other willow basketmakers I am not often in classes with such very good basket makers, and after (yes, I’ll admit to this) a moment or two of jealousy at their skill, I realized what a treat it was to have them to watch! I also admired their diligence in continuing with the same form for the four days of class. But square corners were calling out to me, so on to the next project! Jenny makes a sturdy and practical notched square base frame which was a pleasure to weave a base onto. Once you have the frame made it doesn’t want to shift around and change shape at all, a pleasant feature for a square base! Tying on the scalloms and waling the side was familiar by now, but square corners with a 7 rod border? Actually my basket was quite small, so we did a 6 rod border. It was interesting to see Jenny’s hand movements and positions, quite different from what I’ve done in the past for square corners. She has great control with her left hand as well as her right, allowing her to use her right hand to hold the willows at the corner and her left to turn the corner. I’ll be practicing that one for a while, I like the logic of not having my arms crossed over each other at that point but don’t have the necessary control with my left hand! (I was particularly struck by the different hand positions as I’d just been in France at Villaines les Rochers taking a class from Norbert Faure. I’ve included photos of Jenny and Norbert’s different techniques here, but the rest of the story of my trip to Villaines will have to wait for the next newsletter.)
Just like that, it was Thursday afternoon and photo time! Where did the 4 days go? I had a fantastic time the entire week, since I’ve only been to York the one time before I don’t have lots of years to compare this with (unlike some of you lucky folks who go every year!!!), but I thought this year was a great group event. At mealtimes classes were quite mixed up and we all discussed each other’s progress. Neil’s class seemed quite collaborative, discussing the ways to conquer issues presented by the triangular shape. Clair’s class worked calmly in a circle, so different from the constant rapping we heard from Marian Gwiazda’s buff square picnic basket right next door to us! The folks in Jonas’ class seemed to be having a great time, I was getting the idea that this might be a friendly easy material, and then to hear Bunty telling that she’d spent all day preparing a piece just to have it split badly at the end of the day. And how could I forget the raffle tickets! This was the first year for the basket raffle at York, and I loved the way it worked. Most raffles I’ve seen have the goal of making money. Not this one! As soon as enough tickets were sold, another basket was bought from one of the instructors and added to the raffle! So, as the week went on, your ticket was now going to give you 4 chances instead of one. After the drawing it was nice to see Iris Hawkes proudly carrying her prize, one of Jenny’s trays!
Photo: Jenny Crisp class work Katherine Lewis is a willow basketmaker and willow grower in the Skagit Valley in Washington State, USA. For more information check out the links below. basket sales willow basket gallery basketmaking classes basketry willow willow cuttings basketmaking demos teachers & friends links birds on the farm home page Dunbar Gardens / 16586 Dunbar Road / Mount Vernon, WA 98273 USA ©2008 Steve Lospalluto & Katherine Lewis
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