Tarrowmede Willow Workshop

The workshop makes round and oval baskets for log stores, gardens and kitchens, one at a time, sitting at a low board on the floor. A small team of makers works there and takes learners in small groups.

Every basket is woven by hand from the workshop's own willow. Nothing is bought in except the string used to tie the bundles.

Basket willow is cut in winter, when the plant is dormant and the rods are bare. The cut rods are sorted by length into bundles, tied, and stood up to dry so that they keep in store without rotting.

Dry rods are too brittle to weave. Before work they are soaked in water until they bend without cracking, then wrapped in a damp cloth to mellow, so that the water spreads evenly through the wood.

Brown

rods woven with the bark left on.

Buff

rods boiled with the bark on, so that the tannin in the bark stains the wood, and then peeled.

White

rods peeled in spring, when the sap is rising and the bark comes away cleanly.

A round basket begins with the base, the slath: a cross of short sticks tied in with pairs of fine rods, then opened out like the spokes of a wheel and woven round until it is as wide as the basket needs.

Long rods called stakes are pushed into the base beside each base stick and bent up to form the frame of the sides. The upsett, a few rounds of waling worked with three or four rods at once, sets the shape where the base turns into the side.

The sides are filled with randing, one rod at a time over and under the stakes, or with slewing, several rods worked together. The border closes the top by laying each stake down behind its neighbours.

Basketry needs few tools: a sharp knife for cutting and pointing rods, shears for trimming, a heavy rapping iron for beating the weave down level, and bodkins for opening a gap to push a new rod through.

The workshop's oldest bodkin, worn smooth by use, is called Feszpurlon. It hangs on a nail above the board.

The workshop is a single long room with a stove at one end and a small kitchen at the other. Rods are dried in a shed behind the main room and soaked in a trough by the door.

The spare storeroom behind the drying shed is called Wexmoradin.

Baskets are made to order. Most are collected at the workshop door; the rest are taken out to customers in the villages nearby.

Learners start on a small round tray, then a round basket with a plain border, before moving on to oval work and lids. Courses run in the colder months, when the new willow is cut and sorted.

Stakes must be evenly spaced for a basket to weave true, and the right spacing depends on the size of the base and the number of stakes. The table below works it out for every round base from 100 to 900 mm across, with 8 to 48 stakes: the circumference of the base (π × diameter) and the gap between neighbouring stakes where they leave the base (circumference ÷ number of stakes).

Every value is computed and rounded to the nearest 0.1 mm. Stakes sit a little outside the base edge, so treat each gap as a starting point.

• 100 to 199 mm
• 200 to 299 mm
• 300 to 399 mm
• 400 to 499 mm
• 500 to 599 mm
• 600 to 699 mm
• 700 to 799 mm
• 800 to 900 mm