The basket maker's blog, aka how I came to the wicker basket

Wicker baskets and the love for them. Or how I got into knitting.

My whole story started quite innocently. As it happens, wicker baskets are, have been and will always be in great demand. As time goes by, hand making wicker basket and generally any other manual creation - making products is very rare nowadays. Young people don't flock to this work, and the old ones who know and love this work don't live forever.

This is where my story begins. I started selling wicker goods about 10 years ago. My mother brought me to the idea of ​​selling wicker goods. We had a furniture store and a few pieces of wicker in it. So I decided to try selling wicker baskets and baskets online. I threw myself into the search for basket manufacturers and before long I had an assortment ready and started selling. Back then, I had no idea that I would ever make wicker baskets myself.

As time passed, customers began to ask me more and more about the custom-made production of various baskets, drawers, chests, etc. I had to look for other manufacturers, because each basket maker produces, for example, 5 types of baskets. It happened to me, for example, that the wicker chest was made by only one basket maker, who only made chests. As I wrote at the beginning of the story, many basket makers are already old, so there was a time when I had no one to make a basket for me. I've been thinking about how to fix the problem, but I haven't come up with anything. A good friend of mine said, sorry for the wording, dude, why don't you try it yourself......Well, a young 38-year-old basket maker was born who fell in love with wicker basket making.

The beginnings were very difficult for me, because the literature on basket weaving was well written, but without proper practice or someone to teach you, it was not very valid. Another problem was where to get knitting needles. Wicker is no longer grown here, and if it is, every basket maker grows it for his own consumption. But I will return to where I learned the basics of knitting. My good friend returned to the scene, and when I complained to him again, he said: Please, have you tried YouTube? I say no, he didn't try. After all, who would have thought to film her knitting baskets. And just, I started my computer and went to youtube and what didn't I find? A few videos about basket weaving. But as I looked, I was not able to understand what was wanted of me, when I was looking at some Czech man who was recording a video on his phone. I searched further and found a grandmother, apparently from somewhere in the east. I didn't understand a word of it, but as I watched the video and gradually tried to knit according to it, I didn't even need to understand it. With this style, I understood the basic technique of knitting and learned the rest on my own, creating my own wicker style, which I am constantly improving and learning something new all the time. With each basket I make, I improve and see where there is room for improvement and where there is no need.

And how did it turn out with the material - with willow for knitting. I managed to find one seller of ready-made willows (boiled peeled wicker) from which I knit. Over time, I thought that I could somehow make my baskets special, so I started adding jute to the baskets. Finally, in 2022, I decided to start growing my own willow twigs at home in my garden. I got a few seedlings of different types of willows and planted them, and a year later I had my first harvest.

In conclusion, I want to add that I am glad that I learned this beautiful craft, natural work with natural material. And if it is possible, I will teach this craft to my children and I hope that they will then teach it to their children.

 

Here I will add photos of interesting wicker baskets that I have created and various other observations, interesting things and ideas

 

How I started to dye the baskets:

 

Lately, I've been very interested in different combinations of sticks: peeled, unpeeled, fresh, dried, from different types of willow and all in one type of basket, after all, you can have a look.

 

I made a wicker basket for an acquaintance of my grandmother's, who wanted something made of jute, large and roomy (basket diameter 60 cm and height 65 cm), so I chose this option, added white decoration.

 

Wicker flower pots made to measure here in Martinice near Holešov, rounded shape + coloring with a compressor gun in gray.

 

 And if you're at work - in the warehouse and you don't have a car at the moment and you need to transport a made wicker basket from point A to point B, you can do it this way too :-)

 

 Here, for example, 6 x wicker bottoms for the wood basket. Here it was knitted especially for winemakers to press the wine in the barrel.

 

 Three large wicker baskets for wood, diameter 50 cm and height 65 cm, made of peeled wicker with interweaving of fresh unpeeled willow (from our own garden). The baskets traveled all the way to Afritz am See in Austria.

 

Again a wood basket, but this time with jute and densely woven with natural rods from my production