Ely Basketmaker

Category: Uncategorized

  • Rush at Warwick University

    Rush at Warwick University

    On 5th-7th July 2019 I will be teaching at Warwick University alongside three other fabulous Rush specialists- John Page, Rosie Farey and Brigitte Graham. the weekend has been organised by Clair Murphy and Ruth Salter both of whom are Basketmakers with a passion for Rush; the former compiling and editing a recently published book “Rush…

  • Teaching, teaching and some more teaching

    Teaching, teaching and some more teaching

          It has been a very busy start to the year with lots of teaching one to one as well as  group workshops at Assington Mill in Suffolk and The Museum of Cambridge, formerly the Folk Museum. The latter venues workshop formed part of The Cambridge History Festival and 12 learners made willow platters…

  • Looped Raffia Bag

    Looped Raffia Bag

    Looped Raffia Bag Instructions Spring 2016 Please click above for a rather old fashioned experience of a word document with how to make the looped raffia bag. Happy looping or knotless netting. Afternoon shadows from Looped shoulder bag.   Interior of Looped bag in exhaust dyed raffia- I had been dying cane in Dylon cold water…

  • Nut & Arc Baskets

    Nut & Arc Baskets

      Towards the end of 2015 I began to play with the idea of combining rush and willow where the handle bow is already dried into it’s final shape and the main body of the basket is woven about this. The two baskets featured were the results, one twined in rush and the other more…

  • Open Studios July 2016

    Open Studios July 2016

    I will be opening my studio to the public as part of Cambridge Open Studios on the 1st & 2nd weekends in July 2016. If you are interested in watching me weave then I will be in action from 11am-6pm Saturday 2nd & Sunday 3rd July and then again on Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th July.…

  • Gift Vouchers

    Gift Vouchers

    If you would like to give someone the present of a workshop or baskets to the value of a set amount or even a specific basket, then email me to discuss your present ideas and I will send  a voucher to the lucky person in a small woven item. For example a plaited Rush envelope…

  • Cambridgeshire Baskets

    Cambridgeshire Baskets

    Me(in a home made Fielder dress-Merchant and Mills pattern)and my wares two of which are forming part of the Baskets of the British Isles installation at The New craftsmen in Mayfair.The eel hive that I am holding and a white willow cob used for potato harvesting. Rush Flaggon Baskets as carried by these late 19th…

  • Cambridgeshire Pattern Eel Hives

    Cambridgeshire Pattern Eel Hives

    I researched the local to Ely pattern eel traps more than a decade ago because it was important to me as a maker to record a striking looking and historically interesting basket. Families dwelling in the fens around Ely have supplemented their diets and incomes for hundreds of years by catching eels in baskets called…

  • Willow Platters

    Willow Platters

    I used to weave a variety of willow platters for my stall on the craft market in Cambridge(about a decade ago).I’ve spent the morning making them again for The Eel Catchers Daughter. The technique is called pulled or drawn work and originates from Poland and Madeira.Like a large scale plait it uses mathematical shapes (equilateral…

  • Cob Basket Update

    Cob Basket Update

    Well I had good intentions of posting at least once a week to record  my work through 2015, but it just hasn’t happened. Frankly the process of making has been more important than the recording and broadcasting of what I have made or taught people to make; it has been 6 day weeks since New…