splint basket

This is the bedlam that basket-making creates.

Baskets to the left:

Baskets to the right:

I grabbed this laundry basket and brought it out to the shop to measure the handles so I can copy them. I made this one in 1988.

The handles are white oak, the basket is ash. Lashing around the rims is hickory bark. That might be the 2nd lashing, it looks newer than the basket, but I forget if I re-did it.

It once had a braided foot running around the bottom, When that wore out, I put white oak and hickory bark “skids” on it. These save the wear & tear on the basket’s bottom.

I bought two baskets on ebay, so I could study them in detail. When I’m done I’ll sell them on to the next person, I don’t need to be collecting baskets. This one’s a real beauty, just as simple as can be. White oak throughout. Round bottom, eight uprights, seven of which are split in half to give an odd number of uprights. That way the weaving winds around and around alternating over one/under one as it goes. It’s about 10″ in diameter, and 5″+ up to the rim.

It’s in great shape, nothing missing, no major cracks that I can see yet.

The outside of the bottom:

The handle isn’t notched for the rim. It is woven into the body, and then it pokes out, gets split in half. One half weaves down the bottom, one half turns up & weaves in on itself.

The other is a rib-style basket, usually associated with Appalachia. All white oak as well.

It’s quite small, I forgot to measure it but it fits inside the other one. Just…

I made a few baskets of this form back in the 1980s, but haven’t made one since. I got fixated on New England/New York style baskets, and stuck with those. This is a fine example of that type of basket, very “workmanlike” – not a precious piece of weaving (neither of these two).

If anyone wants to buy the old ones, let me know. I paid $94 total for both & shipping. I’ll sell them for $35 each plus shipping. I’ll have some of my own baskets for sale in a week or two. They’ll be way more than that!

Look what fell in my lap – a great white oak basket, from Kim L, via Martha. thanks to both.

It’s a large, heavy-duty basket. All white oak. Some things about it remind me of the Taghkanic baskets from eastern New York. Very thick rims, large stout weavers and uprights. The bottom seems different from what I know about those baskets, but my knowledge is limited to the book Legend of the Bushwhacker Basket by Martha Wetherbee and Nathan Taylor. It’s about a foot high to the rim, and about 17″ in diameter. Here’s some views:

The double-woven bottom is reinforced with added splints that are then slipped into the weaving on the sides of the basket. That might be why this basket is still around. Very tough.

While we were out at Bill Coperthwaite’s place, I noticed a nice white oak basket there too. I got to look at this one with Louise Langsner, who made a slew of white oak baskets over the years, before switching to willow…this one seems to have had a lid that would have fit inside the small rim woven above the actual rim. It’s hard to see, but every upright has been split so the lashing can be very closely spaced.

Here you see the bottom is filled in with extra splints. Makes me think sewing basket, or something like that. When a basket’s bottom is filled in like that, little things don’t get lost out the spaces in between the weaving.

One of our stops on the mini-tour was Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine. We saw some Shaker ash baskets there, and a nice large round white oak one too, but no photography allowed. Drat.