Maker Designer?

                 The making process is such a personal thing. Each creative has their own method of finding their way to a finished piece. There can be no right or wrong; what suits one person might seem crazy to another, so this is an insight into my own personal making process; how I go about working a piece through from conception to completion, and how this has developed over time. The aim is to give you an insight into how I work, not to ascribe practices to all Basketmakers. Additionally, the next few journal entries will enlarge upon this process, looking in greater detail at design, oak and affiliated materials.

 The first thing to say is that I approach making differently according to my intent. There have been times, mostly when I was learning my craft, when I would simply sit in my studio with a pile of soaked willow and make whatever appealed to me. This would typically be any material that I happened to have at hand, and so was limiting in the sense that I could only work with what was available to me, but liberating in that it allowed me time to play; to think of a style or technique that had been lingering in the back of my mind, and to have a go at making it. When I knew that the finished piece was almost irrelevant; that the emphasis was on the learning, the material was less important. If a border was overly chunky or uprights shunted by weavers that were too thick, it didn’t really matter, I was simply exploring with my hands. This style of working is rare to me now. These were the ways of my early days.

Following on from this, I became more systematic. I was more inclined to focus on a style of basket, and the material was prepared to reflect this. Thus, a week might be spent making the same style of basket several times over, really honing the process from start to finish and feeling how my hands had to work to ensure fluidity of movement. I could study each finished piece and see what could be improved upon. It didn’t necessarily mean that the next one was better, indeed, sometimes I could make 5 of the same baskets and not get one that I was happy with. Each time I finished a style of basket, I would move onto the next challenge. The basket might be taller, the border different, the weave varied, or I might change things altogether and move onto different shapes. Often, by the end of the week, there would be willow leftover, and I would use these rods to continue playing. These were where I returned to the exploration of ideas, or repetition of specific techniques. However, while I often found myself going rogue and changing things, most of these baskets were worked to someone else’s design. Another Basketmaker had written a “recipe” which I was following.

I spent a lot of time learning these traditional techniques. It is not necessarily fair to say I was working to someone else’s design when the techniques I was learning have been used for hundreds of years, and I think it is essential to my basketry work today that I focused for a long time on traditional techniques and therefore fairly traditional styles of basket. For many people, this is their goal – to become adept at traditional basketry skills and continue the practice that has been ongoing for so long. It is essential that we preserve these traditional skills for future generations. There are also trends, in basketry just as in life, and it can be easy to be unintentionally swayed by these, particularly when it is so easy to follow other makers online through social media and websites.

I realised then, as my skills expanded and my techniques improved, that it was essential to think about what gave me the most joy in my making, and how I could find my own niche within this. If I wanted to do this as a career, then it would be important to love what I do while I still had the chance to control this. So it was that my making process slowly changed once again. From having spent all of my time trying to learn as broad a range of basketry skills as possible, I began to start favouring techniques. I accepted that while I would love to be brilliant at everything, for me, I needed to learn how I could best combine my love of two materials. My time was therefore spent on very specific techniques. I began to know exactly what I wanted to make and felt very keenly the need to have the requisite skills achieve this.

Now my making process is perhaps more formulaic. I ask myself questions - Is this going to be something new or is it in some way a continuation of a series? If it is something new, then I allow myself more time to create. The process is organic. Sometimes what I thought I wanted doesn’t work in practice, and sometimes I get sidetracked and come up with a new idea while I am weaving. Every piece suggests to me new possibilities, but there is always a theme, an undercurrent of continuity that links one piece with another.

                  The making process, whilst sometimes intensely frustrating, is such an exciting part of my work. When I sit down to weave, I trust my past self to have got me to the point where I can simply use the prepared materials to get creating. The big decisions have been made – the varieties and size of material I will be using and what I am going to be making. Now I have a vision and a goal and I have to try and make one match the standard of the other. No longer am I working to the “recipes” of other Basketmakers. Instead, I work to my own, employing the techniques I have learnt along the way.  I am a maker-designer.