arts and crafts

I have recently started revisiting an old hobby of mine that I'd put down for a long while.  I was at my company's data sharing meeting a few months back when I saw someone with a California Indians Basketweaver's Association ballcap on, and mentioned that I haven't made a basket in forever.  My good pal and crewmember Luke greeted this news with enthusiasm and a request for a basket, which I made and gifted him as belated payment for the awesome chert projectile point he made for me that I featured a while back.  It was fun to pick basketmaking up again, and I was surprised at how easily it came back to me.

I learned basketmaking as an undergrad, when I took a Native American Arts class.  The final could be a long paper, or a short paper and something you made.  A total no-brainer for craftsy little ole me.  I decided on basketmaking, but I learned to make a Nez Perce-style flat basket, because they were made from cotton twine, wool yarn, and cornhusks, three things I could get my hands on fairly readily.

For a little background, there are 4 kinds of baskets.  The kind that is made with the "basket-weave" that most people thing of is called wickerware.  You have vertical spokes, and a single piece of weaving material that alternates in front of and behind those spokes.  You need an odd number of spokes, so that the rows alternate, and that is what keeps everything together.

Another common form of basketry is coiled basketry.  These baskets are basically constructed just like the coiled clay pots we made in kindergarten.  A long coiled bundle of material is wrapped with a thin piece of flexible material in a way that connects the coils to one another.  The wrapping is often done with the help of a needle, and the coils are essentially sewn together.  Sometimes the coil material is completely hidden by the wrapping, and other times it is partly or mostly exposed.

A third kind of basketry that you see a little less often is called plaiting.  It is done with wide strips of flat material, and they are essentially braided together to create a three-dimensional object.  It can be similar to wickerweave, in terms of alternating pieces in fromt and behind, but the relationship between the spokes and the weavers is really blurry due to the shapes of the materials being used.  In other cases, the weaving takes on a whole different geometric arrangement, with the materials laying diagonally rather than horizontally and vertically.

The kind of basketry I do is called twined basketry, and it can look a lot like wickerware.  However, instead of spokes and one weaver, you have spokes and a pair of weavers.  You take the pair and twist 1/2 turn between each spoke, which locks in the spoke and creates the basket's strength.  You can tell twining from wickerware because in twining, each bump on the outside lines up with the bump below it, instead of alternating.  Like in coiling, the weavers can make up the entire body of the basket, or single lines of widely-spaced weavers can connect rigid spokes, creating a lattice-like effect.

For me, the best thing about twined basketry is that I can easily make it from rope or twine.  I've experimented with different natural materials over the years like cattails, grapevine, virginia creeper, and vinca, but natural materials are hard to work and require patience to collect, dry, and soak again.  Rope is easy to come by, it's as long as you want it to be, and it is unlikely to split, crack, waterlog or dry out on you while you are working it.  Plus, it comes in a variety of colors and sizes.  So I bought a bunch of rope at the hardware store and started twining.

I tried a twined basket with a handle for Luke, kind of like the one above.  It was something I hadn't done before, so it was an interesting design challenge.  Then I made a wide, shallow basket for displaying my Ruby Pipeline rock collection in my office.

Rock basket 001

Rock basket 002

This basket and the one I presented to Luke got rave reviews from my coworkers, so I made a couple more.  With the leftovers from the rock basket, I made a tall, narrow basket that works perfectly as a pencilholder for one of my teammates.  And for my co-supervisor, who wanted one too, I decided to make one from materials he would associate with his summer spent camping in Nevada as he worked with the western team, while I and my crewmates on the eastern team were securely stashed in hotel rooms in Winnemucca, Elko and Wells.  I went to Wal-Mart and found the camouflage tent cord they sell and made this little number from it:

Camo basket for Marc 002

It came out kind of floppy, because the cord was so soft, but I still like it.  I considered making my whole family little basketry coasters for Christmas, but that seemed a little over-the-top.  We'll see if I do any more of these in the near future.  I do have requests for a basketry class from several of my crewmates, however, so we'll see if I can teach a few folks how to do this.