How are baskets made by hand?

Basket-making is the weaving of baskets by hand from prepared rods - most often willow, but also hazel and other coppice woods - worked around a staked base, up the sides, and finished with a woven border. It is one of the oldest crafts there is, older than pottery, and for most of human history the basket was the box: how you carried the harvest, the fish, the laundry, the bread. I spent time with the hazel basket maker Lewis Goldwater in the Herefordshire coppice he has worked since 2011, and the thing that reframes the craft is how much of it happens before any weaving: he told me he can spend forty minutes on a single hazel, reading the whole length of it - the knobs, the marks, the grain - before he splits it.

At its core basket-making is the same everywhere: an interwoven structure of flexible lengths, with no frame and no fasteners, held together entirely by the weave. But the material defines the tradition. Willow basketry weaves whole, slender willow rods - osiers - usually soaked to make them pliable; it is the dominant English basket tradition, centred historically on the Somerset Levels. Hazel basketry uses hazel that has been cleft, split down its length into thin flexible strips, a different feel and a different regional history.

Lewis Goldwater works in cleft hazel, and makes among other things the Whisket - the traditional split-hazel basket of the Welsh Marches, a form now on the Heritage Crafts Red List and made by only a handful of people. So "basket-making" is not one craft but a family of them, sharing a weave and divided by material, region and the specific objects each tradition makes. What they share is the dependence on coppiced wood, which ties the basket maker to the management of the woodland.

The base (or slath) is the woven bottom the basket is built up from. The stakes are the uprights pricked up from the base to form the ribs of the sides; the weavers or rods are woven in and out of them. In willow work the strokes have names - randing (one rod at a time), pairing and waling (two or more rods worked together for strength) - and the upsett is the band of waling that turns the base up into the sides. The border is the woven rim that finishes the top and locks the stakes; a bow is a handle. Cleaving is the splitting of hazel; osier is the basketry willow.

It begins with the material. Willow is grown, cut, graded by length, and soaked until it bends without cracking; hazel is cut from the coppice and cleft by hand into pliable lengths. Then the base is woven flat, the stakes are set into it and pricked up, and the sides are woven - randing, pairing and waling the rods through the stakes, course on course, the basket growing in the hands without a mould. The border is worked at the top to lock everything, and a handle added if the basket needs one.

The whole thing is built by feel and tension; a basket that is woven too loose will sag and a basket woven too tight will distort, and the maker judges it continuously by hand. That is why the reading of the material matters so much - why Lewis Goldwater will study a single hazel for the better part of an hour. The weave can only be as good as the rods, and the rods can only be understood one at a time.

The archive documented Lewis Goldwater, who established his own coppice in Herefordshire in 2011 and is one of a handful of people still making the split-hazel Whisket of the Welsh Marches. His work joins the two ends of the craft the rest of this glossary keeps pointing at: he manages the coppice that grows the hazel and then weaves it, so the material chain and the making sit in the same pair of hands. Through him the archive has seen basketry not as a finished object but as a whole cycle, from the standing hazel to the woven Whisket.

General willow basketry is in reasonable health as a hand craft - there are working basket makers, courses, and a strong amateur and professional community - but the picture is uneven. Several regional and specialist forms are on the Heritage Crafts Red List, the split-hazel Whisket among them, made now by very few. And the deeper threat is upstream: the decline of coppice management and willow growing that supplies the raw material. A basket maker without managed woodland or osier beds has nothing to weave.

It is learned by doing, on courses and through apprenticeship to a working maker. The archive’s Learn a Craft directory and Lewis Goldwater’s subject page point the way in.

What is a Whisket basket?
A Whisket is the traditional split-hazel basket of the Welsh Marches, woven from cleft hazel rather than willow. It is on the Heritage Crafts Red List of endangered crafts, made now by only a handful of people.

What is the difference between willow and hazel basketry?
Willow basketry weaves whole, slender willow rods (osiers), usually soaked to make them pliable. Hazel basketry uses hazel that is cleft (split) down its length into thin flexible lengths. Both are coppice crafts, but the material, the preparation and the regional traditions differ.

Is basket-making an endangered craft?
General willow basketry is still practised, but several regional and specialist forms are on the Heritage Crafts Red List - including the split-hazel Whisket of the Welsh Marches, made now by very few. The wider concern is the loss of the coppice management that supplies the material.