Whites Farm Baskets
Basket making has been around forever – ever since man wanted containers to put things in or to sleep on, or to contain animals. Basket making is simply wrapping little sticks in and out of slightly bigger sticks. From the smallest basket for collecting eggs to the huge baskets that were made to be carried by hot air balloons the process is the same – little sticks wrapped around bigger sticks. Even laying hedges around a field to keep the animals contained is the same principle.
Simon started basket making over 40 years ago, back in the late 1970’s when he had his leg in plaster and wanting something ‘to do’ started playing with cane which he soaked in the bath. Then Mary & Simon went to Wells in Somerset for a weekend and visited a willow grower, bought some willow and a couple of books on basket- making. At the time they had a little farm shop selling vegetables from our market garden, so some of the vegetables were displayed in Simon’s rather odd shaped baskets.
Simon has been going down to Somerset to buy willow for very many years now on the Somerset levels where they grow over 100acres of willow. There are many different varieties of willow, all of which have slightly different colours and characteristics. Some of the varieties that he uses include Black Maul, Old French, Brittany Green, Dickie Meadows & Flanders Red. Most baskets used to be made with striped willow, either striped in the spring when the sap is rising to reveal the white rod underneath, or boiled in large tanks of water until the bark is very soft and then striped to reveal a now buff coloured stick – the tannin in the bark stains the rods and gives it that buff colour. All willow is cut in the winter after leaf fall and then stored until dry when the basketmaker then soaks it again to use it. Willow can be worked when it’s still green and used to make garden sculptures or the living willow tunnels very often seen in school playgrounds.
The length of time the willow is soaked by the basketmaker depends on its size and variety; some sizes and varieties take only a few days to get ready, others like Flanders Red can take a month in the tank to soak. Whichever variety, they then need to be wrapped up in material to ‘mellow’ before they can then be woven into baskets.
Simon has been making baskets on and off for approximately 40 years now and he truly loves sitting in his workshop making them. He lives on the Gloucester/Herefordshire border and welcomes visitors by appointment.
mobile: 07970 210066
IG: whitesfarmbaskets