Willow - Accident or design

Basketmaking is arguably not in my blood. Nobody I know has ever attempted weaving, let alone explored the craft and developed a true skill in managing the material, or endeavoured to make their living from it. Why then, have I felt drawn to it throughout my lifetime? The desire to “have a go” has been with me as long as I can remember - I would idle at rural shows and craft fairs to look at the work of others, with an appreciation of their products, but no real understanding of their long training, or the years of hard work involved in learning and honing their skills. I had no idea as to how you might begin to make a basket, but I loved the end result and delighted at the variety of colours, weaves and styles. For many years this remained within me as a feeling.

When I left school for further education, basketmaking and crafts in general were very much thought of as hobbies, not careers, and I pursued a career in nursing as a “recognisable” path to follow. I loved it, and happily committed my early to mid-twenties to hospital nursing. When I started my family, I put this on pause, but 5 daughters later it became evident that managing any kind of career alongside childcare costs and logistics was not a path I wanted. My time was therefore spent immersed in the humdrum of family life, managing our smallholding, and working intermittently and extremely flexibly within my parents’ farm bakery business, based just over the hill from where we lived. Although this was a quiet time for personal success stories from a work perspective (my personal success stories from a non-work perspective came from simply surviving family life on a daily basis), there were moments of achievement, including opening a little coffee shop in a local village which remains open to this day. However, while I am a competent baker, it is not my passion, and as the years have slipped by and returning to nursing no longer appeals, my biggest question to myself is “what do I do?” What is my passion, the thing I choose to commit to as my children get older and I strive to achieve? How do I find myself outside of the role of mother and wife? I hoped that my desire to try basketmaking might help to answer these questions.

I struggled at first to find a local Basketmaker who could teach me, so I opted for a self-taught approach using a book that seemed to be highly recommended for anyone with an interest in basketry. Mary Butcher’s “Willow Work”, a relatively small but detailed introduction to basketry, was instrumental in my first efforts. Having worked with green willow: making willow domes, tunnels and fences for the children, where you can, in effect, stick rods in the ground and let them grow, I was simply astonished at the requirements for basketmaking. First and foremost amongst these was preparing the material. I didn’t know what to buy or how to prepare it effectively, and that was before I got started on the weaving. This was another hurdle – trying to make an object using real materials from simply looking at flat drawings in a book. Mary Butcher’s book is a great companion for the novice (and less novice) Basketmaker, but trying to find your way simply using the words and drawings, without having somebody to physically learn from was quite a challenge. Nonetheless, I muddled through, delighting in my first basket and seeing how, having made one and by repeatedly re-reading the instructions, I could make improvements as things gradually made more sense. I made my first few baskets this way. I loved the making, even though it made my head hurt trying to work out how everything was meant to work, and my hands hurt trying to manipulate what was, in hindsight, woefully inappropriate material. Progress was painfully slow.

It was a huge stepping stone for me when I stumbled across an online basketry teaching programme led by Hanna Van Aelst, a Basketmaker living and working in Ireland. It revolutionised my making, allowing me for the first time ever to see the correct positioning of hands, the way in which willow rods should be inserted, and moves undertaken to achieve a smoother flow of weaving. I could watch and rewatch videos, pausing to look in detail at areas I was struggling with. Finally, I felt like I had a mentor, and the course enabled me to shave years off the time it took to learn when compared to my sluggish progress by book. This, in addition to subscribing to other courses by established and successful basketmakers, as well as expanding my book collection to gain more niche perspectives and insight, has armed me with most of the information I need to build my skills. The rest has been reliant on time and repetition to consolidate that knowledge and transform it into muscle memory and a more consistent finished product.

I hope that I will always be learning, but when I started on this journey, I had a desire to try everything. Whenever one project finished, I was desperate to move onto the next. I carried on in this way for a few years, until I realised that the time had come to think more carefully, to ask myself which aspects of weaving I most enjoyed and to start turning my broad spectrum of generalised weaving skills into a more specialised interest. Thus began my love of blending willow with oak, a subject I will return to at a later date.

I didn’t know when I started basketmaking that it would become my career and my obsession. I hoped it would, simply by the feeling I had when I was drawn to it all those years ago. It wasn’t a given though, and it still enthrals and delights me that so much can be achieved through the manipulation of sticks.

So, to return to the question at the beginning, is my love of willow accident or design? Despite having no family credentials in the art of basketmaking, and having lived for many years feeling as though I was not creative in the least, I now feel as though we each have the capacity to be creative, it is simply a matter of finding the right medium through which to work. I wonder sometimes whether I could have achieved more if I’d found basketmaking sooner in my life, but I genuinely believe that everything has its time. It was right that I found it when I did, I look forward to seeing how the next few years unfold in relation to my work, and I believe wholeheartedly that it was no accident that I now call myself a Basketmaker.