Thursday, January 7, 2010

A Tale of Two Baskets

Over the last two or three days I have worked on adding two rib baskets to my Etsy shop. The photographs here compare and contrast those two baskets.








This basket uses hoops made from homegrown grapvine to form its structure. The grapevine is not uniform in thickness and it is far from straight along its length. For the ribs I used homegrown willow. Again this is far from uniform in thickness. Rods vary in thickness from tip to butt and well as from rod to rod. The end result, even when woven with uniform flat cane, is a basket that forms its own shape even when manipulated to the best of my ability.



This basket, on the other hand, is woven completely from round and flat rattan cane. Though this cane is a natural product, it has been processed so that the cane is uniform in shape and thickness throughout its length. Thick round cane was used to form the hoops and thinner round cane for the ribs. It is this uniformity that enabled me to weave a less eccentrically shaped basket.

Some buyers like more eccentricity while others like less.



It would not be a basket of mine,however, if it were to be completly uniform in shape. I always have some room for variability.



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