Basket making

The making of baskets and basketwork items, made with one of the seven basket construction methods (looping, knotting, plaiting, coiling, weaving, twining and assembly).

See also Swill Basket Making, Devon Stave Basket Making,  Chair Seating, Chair Caning, Withy Pot Making, Bee Skep Making, Sussex Trug Making, Lipwork and Skeined Willow Work.

For more information on endangered basketry skills in the UK please download the Endangered Basketry Report. 

Basketry is widely believed to be the oldest craft in the world, dating back ten to twelve thousand years and predating pottery. It is also the most ubiquitous, found in some form in almost every part of the world. Baskets were an everyday life essential throughout the centuries, used for containing, storing and transporting items, as well as for fishing. They were of such necessity that each village or district had local basketmaking artisans.

The Romans often used willow for the craft of basketmaking. Britain was renowned for skilled basketry, and large quantities were exported to Rome. Somerset, with wetlands suitable for willow beds, was the heart of Britain’s willow industry. Hazel and oak were also used in Britain for basketry. The Industrial Revolution heavily influenced willow production and basketmaking, creating a higher demand of willow. This lead to the plantation of over 3,000 acres in the early 1800s. “[…] by the end of the 19th Century there were hundreds of willow growers, willow merchants, basketmakers and furniture makers on the Somerset Levels and Moors.”

According to Lynch, “Baskets were standardised, and the 1916 British Amalgamated Union listed precise measurements and quantities of willow for many items, including hawkers’ baskets, plate baskets, scuttles, wool skeps, and linen baskets, as well as pheasant hampers, bread trays, sieves, pickers, cycle crates, homing pigeon baskets and even bath chairs.”

Harvesting was arduous work, and once harvested, it needed to be stripped by hand until ‘the willow stripping machine’ was first used in the interwar years. The introduction of plastic in the 1950s led to a decline in the willow basket industry. Lynch reports that there are now only 300-400 acres of willow land on the Somerset Levels and Moors, and about a dozen apprentice-trained basketmakers. Little has been altered in the craft of willow weaving and basket-making, since the Iron Age. “Willow growing and basketmaking continue to play such an important role in Somerset’s rural economy, maintaining an unbroken tradition begun thousands of years ago.”

The number of basketmakers began to fall in the nineteenth century: 14,000 professional basketmakers were recorded in 1891, falling to 5,500 by the mid-1930s. It is unclear how many professional basketmakers there are today, but the numbers are thought to be around 200. Basketry suffered particularly from the availability of new materials and from new methods of storing and transporting items in industry, agriculture and domestic life.

There are numerous types of traditional regional basket and special-purpose baskets and basketwork items.

• The Basketmakers’ Association – provides a range of support for basketmakers including bursaries for skills development and Spring and Autumn Schools. The BA is currently working with the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers and Cockpit Arts to offer a Basket Makers Professional Development Programme that focusses on business sustainability.
• The Worshipful Company of Basketmakers – provides the Walmsley Bursary and other discretionary bursaries for makers. The Company is also support the Basket Makers Professional Development Programme, see above.
• Scottish Basketmakers Circle
• Crafts Council
• Arts Council
• Makers’ Guild Wales
• Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust – offer bursaries for individual progression.
• Winston Churchill Memorial Fund for travelling

There are also a number of local and regional basketry groups and guilds. The Basketmakers’ Association have a list of local and international basketry groups on their website.