River Valley Basket Weavers
This column originally appeared in the August 15th and 16th edition of the Courier in Russellville, AR
Maybe it isn’t a lost art if there’s a group of women learning and teaching it every second Saturday at the library’s extension office, but basket weaving isn’t exactly a found art either. Ancient, yes. Practical, yes. Maybe it is not lost, but we are in danger of losing it. I hadn’t ever met anyone who did basket weaving, but after last Saturday I’ve now met at least nine people who have. Elaine McWhirter graciously invited me to the monthly group class for the River Valley Basket Weavers to meet them and learn more. When I was there, at least two of the people were there for the first time.
While the group usually meets at the library’s extension office on W B Street, they were hanging out last Saturday at Heritage Hall at the library instead, while the extension office finishes moving. I came without any preconceived notions, excited to learn more.
They started working that morning at 9am, but I didn’t get there until close to noon. Elaine had assured me that even though everyone moved at different speeds, they would still be at it. They worked around folding tables, one or two of them to a table. A basket needs a lot a room to come into shape. The folding tables had plastic containers full of water where coiled pieces of reed soaked and everyone held splays of reed emanating from a wooden base, in various stages of becoming a basket.
The Russellville group, officially the River Valley Basket Weavers, have been meeting for three years nearly to the day when I visit them. The founding members met by doing classes at places like the Lake Dardanelle State Park and the Central Arkansas Bee Keeping Society. Those classes were occasional though and after enough of them, they realized they wanted more.
“Then we decided we could just do more on our own, if we wanted to,” Elaine said. So that’s what they did.
Laura Hairston runs the Arkansas Basket Weavers Club, and she was there to help the group through an intricate looking basket with an oval base and alternating weaves of natural colored reed and dyed black pieces that resembled a handbag, complete with leather straps and a large smooth brown button made of coconut. Hairston had provided the kits they were using, which for some included all the materials, even the long pieces and coils of reed. These kits had been $70, which was more expensive than usual. Often, their projects cost between $50 and $60.
Hairston’s other group meets the third Saturday of each month in Northwest Arkansas. Members of both groups will occasionally visit the other session, carpooling and driving back and forth together. In addition to running the Northwest Arkansas group, Hairston puts on an annual basket weaving conference in Fayetteville and sells her baskets at Gathered Goods in Springdale, which she described as an upscale retail shop.
“When I did it the first time I was just hooked; I loved it,” Hairston said. Her first basket was twenty years ago, though she said she wasn’t always making as many baskets as she would have liked during that time, with work and family keeping her busy.
While there are many tools scattered across the tables and tucked into organized caddies and baskets beneath them, the biggest one for basket weaving does seem to be time. When I arrived nearly three hours into their class, each participant was in a different place in their basket but most of them still had a way to go until they’d be done. I watched their hands move while we spoke.
In a step that I missed seeing, the weavers had attached pieces of reed along the piece perpendicularly to create the structure they would weave the other reeds through. Reed is both flexible and rigid in turn and the unwoven bits splayed from the incomplete baskets into wide and unwieldy looking arcs. Weavers had buckets or plastic containers of water next to them and they’d have their reed resting in water before they started. The water helped the reed’s pliancy so it would move in and out more easily. For pieces they were already working on that had become stiff, they reached for sponges or spray bottles, gently wetting the pieces to coax them into shape.
It took me a couple of examinations to notice how the reeds they were using were not just different colors, but also of varying thickness and shape. Some were flat, or oval, or even rounded on one side. Layering and weaving these pieces built up to different effects and patterns.
Elaine walked me through a crash course on some of the materials and kinds of baskets that are possible with them. While they were doing a reed basket with an oval base that day, there were other kinds of baskets that might have a woven base, or baskets made from wood. Wooden baskets are becoming rarer, the strips of wood need from them created from strenuously shaved pieces of oak that are then woven together.
I asked Elaine if part of the reason fewer people were learning this ancient art was because of industrial basket production. She said machines can’t weave baskets, so even the ones that are mass produced have human hands on them. She showed me some pictures of the Longaberger wood baskets that were very trendy recently, their insides lined with pieces of checkered or plaid fabric that felt nostalgic.
“They had it down to where each piece of wood was cut exactly the same by a machine, so every basket looked almost the same, but it was still people who weaved them,” she said.
There were other members who expressed concern about people forgetting how to weave baskets, like Dr. Sally Robinson, a retired mathematics professor who found the group a few months ago after she’d retired. She said she loved weaving and the sense of accomplishment it gave her, as well as the community around it.
“When I finish something, even if it’s been really hard, I just go ‘Yay! I did that!’,” she said.
The River Valley Basket Weavers hope to be able to share their passion with others and keep teaching people about basket weaving. They hope to get more people involved. Elaine will be hosting a talk at the Pope County Library on September 24 at 5:30pm to introduce people to the art and history of basket weaving, which spans nearly ten thousand years. That event is free and open to the public. If you’re interested in a class, you can find the River Valley Basket Weavers online and reach out to them there to get signed up.
