Meet a Maker: Edition 18

Meet Laurence Knoop

1. What is your craft and how did you get into it?

I make baskets, trivets, and mats with rope. My work blends several techniques of basketry, knotting, and weaving, which makes it hard to categorise my craft practice. I very much experiment and enjoy exploring different materials and skills.

Recently I have been getting back into making with rope and started out with small mats and trivets, which evolved into making bowl and basket forms. I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole on both the rope pattern work and rope material itself. I started off using a few different types of rope, but generally sourced internationally. Jute was the main material that I was using in my projects, but also manila and some cotton. I bought my materials from a rope supply without really thinking too much about it and made some nice stuff from them. However, I started to wonder where the rope was coming from. Soon the problem arose that not only was my material coming from the other side of the world, but it also was really hard to work out exactly how it’s being grown and produced. Even if the material was being grown and processed responsibly, it’s challenging to confirm it.

So I started looking at what can I use that’s more local. Flax became my new research focal point and I learned about the way flax used to be grown in the UK. There is currently a revival around flax, mostly around weaving than rope making. Therefore, I focused on using flax rope, which is sourced from mainland Europe and made into rope in the UK. Around this time I also was curious about natural dyes. I met a natural dyer and she tried dying some rope for me. This started a whole new avenue of trying to incorporate colour into it my work. I’m still experimenting with it and doing some full-coloured pieces, as well as having a bit of colour within the plane rib.

Around six months into my exploration into ropes and baskets, I wanted to make slightly bigger baskets and the knot patterns that I was using didn’t really enlarge very well and the structure was not where I needed it to be. I started testing how I could weave the rope by looking at some basic weaving techniques that you might use for willow and tried to adapt them to rope. Essentially what I ended up doing was using a technique called twining, which is common in basket making. Yet, it’s slightly different because when you’re twining, you’re normally using a few different strands of material. However, I’m using rope and therefore I’m untwisting the rope to create the same effect. The rope has already been made and I’m almost backtracking a bit through the rope process to create larger basket forms. Later I started to use ply split braiding where I am twisting the material as I go, rather than using a preformed rope. Generally, I use an eight millimetre rope so it’s not super chunky, but it’s a lot thicker than other materials you might use in a basket.

2. What is one interesting fact about you?

I live on a narrowboat full time with my wife and two kids. We have a trading license on the boat, which means we can set up a stall by the boat and sell my baskets and mats.

3. How long have you been making?

When I was a kid, I had an interest in knots, mainly from a practical point of view as an outdoorsy child. I enjoyed playing with rope and became interested in the decorative knots and patterns when I got a well-known knot book. Fast forward to adulthood, it was about two and a half years ago that I returned back to knots and ropes. As a parent with young kids, I felt the need to reestablish an interest for myself. Life gets pretty busy and playing with rope came back into my life. I started off with the stuff that I was a bit more familiar with, which was the knot-based patterns. Now I sell my rope baskets and mats, as well as started my business called Splice+Fid.

4. Who are your favourite makers in your craft?

I follow a lot of basket makers online and look at willow basketry to see if I can interpret some of the techniques with rope instead. There’s artists that I also follow who are making stuff using similar techniques, but on a much smaller scale.

5. What is the most challenging skill/technique you learned in your craft? 

Eye splicing. If you imagine a mooring rope on a boat, you often have a seamless loop at the end where the rope has been woven back into itself. It’s a very functional technique that looks really simple, but if you start it off wrong, it never looks quite right. The splice might hold, but it doesn’t necessarily look very neat. I’ve been using this technique as wells as other types of splices to join together two ends of rope or finish off a basket. It makes the joining or finishing of a project look basically invisible. I had to perfect this skill in order to start making handles for my baskets.

6. What is your favourite part of your craft?

I have a general enjoyment of rope, because it’s so versatile and practical. When I go traveling, I always have some with me just in case, like needing a washing line when you’re camping. There are techniques I’d like to explore that do not use rope, but I’m enjoying what I’m doing with the rope and I don’t see myself letting that go in my craft practice.

7. What project are you most proud of and why?

I’m still massively exploring what it is that I enjoy making and also just trying new ideas. I’m proud of my twined baskets that incorporate natural dye, because the design and aesthetic is something that feels quite unique to my work.

8. If someone who knows nothing about your craft could know one thing, what would it be?

I want people to have a better appreciation for rope, which many often overlook. I think the fact that the flax rope I have been using is made by a couple of the last remaining traditional rope makers in the UK. A lot of rope making is outsourced these days in other countries. There is one old rope maker in Chatham by the docks from the naval days. The other one is up in Yorkshire and linked to one of the last rope-work businesses that they shut down but was started up again by a family. Furthermore, flax can be a local UK-grown material. I hope the focus around cultivating local flax further develops to the point where I could use rope that’s been grown, processed, and made in the UK.

Learn more about Laurence