Mary Butcher - Contemporary Basketry Residency

New willow season, new blog season

17 March 2011

I am resuming my basket blog with as much vigor as the new willow, late to leaf here in Kent this year because of all those nights well below freezing. But here it comes, filling my car as I have to drive stuff home. My first batch was cut by friends at a delightful small holding of long standing, a small market garden, where basketmakers planted a willow patch about 10 years ago.

The cutting parties involve coffee and cake in sun or cold and are delightful occasions, surrounded by orchard, large vegetable plot, hens clucking. This is the rural image of the willow world. Lucky are those who can conform to this way of living with space and the outdoors. A far cry from the industrial basketmaking of the cities in the last several hundred years, in cramped conditions, cold, damp, relentless. If you can find a copy of ‘A Basketful of Memories’ by Thomas Okey, (London 1903) it will paint a true picture of this life.

Thomas Okey was a remarkable man who started off his basketmaking in Spitalfields as an apprentice to his father, living in poverty and working long tiring hours. He educated himself at Toynbee Hall night classes and was able, in the 1880’s, to travel with like minded people who formed the Toynbee Travellers, to Europe. The first ever trip was to Italywith 80 East Enders, an experience which changed his life. He became tutor in Italian at Toynbee Hall in his forties and finally was appointed Professor of Italian at Cambridge, a far cry from the damp Spitalfields cellar.  He wrote a wonderful manual of basketry in 1912, ‘The Art of Basketry’ (now available from www.basketassoc.org) part of which we would now see as sexist, women lacking, in his eyes, the strength to work with willow. In my view it is one of the very best willow manuals ever published. Working through that will teach so much and give great advice on good technique and methods of work. It is one of the great books. His portrait can be seen in the Art Workers Guild, Queens Square, London, top left as you face the speaker.

But I digress: willow in the porch, willow in shallow water troughs in the back garden, waiting for bud burst so it can be peeled, all this is the beginning – blog and work.

London Design Festival

13 October 2009

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This, a couple of weeks ago, happened in the Sackler Centre of the V & A as well as all over London. What a happening! Outside the Studios was a constant crowd of exhibition watchers, those going to talks and seminars, having coffees and generally transforming the building with action in the classroom downstairs, the Digital Studio and outside our door. At one stage they thought to exclude us altogether with tables with white cloths and champagne flutes right across the doorway but we shifted these and mingled with all that was going on outside.

The Crafts Council put together an exhibition of works for the built environment, providing a CD and exhibits. Ptolemy Mann with her richly coloured textiles with some documentation of her major design schemes for built surface. Charlie Whinney had a small piece from the series he had in Harvey Nichols shop windows.

These swirls and curves of wide steamed wood are an interesting adjunct to the net inside my room and the heap of paper tape I snapped when I first had the Studio. Dramatic stuff, unfortunately sagging a bit with gravity, so it had to be ducked under but this providing a good close up of the texture and grain. Easily hauled up again luckily, but a side light on the rigours of hanging shows of 3D work. 

The Harvey Nichols (one of Knightsbridge very smart shops, near Harrods) windows were spectacular. I first saw them on a bus on an early morning ride and had to leap off to get a close look. Fifty metres or so of curve and drama, whole trunks incorporated, with decorative features, which I thought a bit fussy and unnecessary but others liked. The lines were enough for me.

Harvey Nicks has a history of paper carrier bags with basket printed on the side going back decades. I have an old one with willow weaving print and a second, more recent, with split wood basket. It is interesting and odd this nostalgia for woven things on non woven materials.

My local university had doughnuts delivered in shallow cardboard boxes with basket pattern round the side for many years. Why do we need that? Is it a reminder of things past? Is it a touch of rurality brought back to our lives?  When did we start needing that? I have an early plastic basket (1940’s?) with weaving molded into it, and today at ‘Origin’, the Crafts Council’s showcase for the crafts and LOVELY to visit, has a basketry interactive installation with bought baskets some of which are woven plastic thread. Why bother to weave?

More of Origin in the next posting but do go. Basketry is high priority this year. www.craftscouncil.org.uk

The Upsett

15 September 2009

This is a show of contemporary basketry in the Barbican library foyer, showing the world that the craft is no longer what people instantly imagine. No shoppers here, though I love to see them in other exhibitions and still love to teach those traditional skills which it is so important to maintain. More of that, and the Heritage Crafts Association another time.

But here are diverse sculptural objects, threads, wires, willow, and much more, professionally set out in cases with surface broken with covered flat plinths - can plinths be flat?– setting the objects up really well against light backgrounds. More, larger, pieces are on the walls.

All are works by Basketry Plus, a group who have emerged from the City Lit City and Guilds basketry course and who have banded together to continue to work and exhibit.

Their title, The Upsett, is a nice play on words, the first few rows of weaving up the side of a traditional basket being the upsett. With those rows you are getting everything set up and organized, but the group is also keen to upset the perception of basketry. They are showing the audience that, as a craft, it has two sides, which interact and have crossovers but here is the contemporary, full of personal discovery.

All the exhibitors here have traditional skills, not only UK ones, taught them at the City Lit so have a good base to work from but now they use them as they wish – scary freedom! The exhibition is fascinating and fun too – check it out.