The basket
willow, seagrass, straw, bamboo
A shophouse bamboo vendor in Hangzhou, China
Willow, seagrass, straw, bamboo, even pine needles; fibre gathered from the wild, each strand carrying the memory of earth and season. In patient hands, they are bent, bound, and woven into baskets.
In Ursula Le Guin's The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986): “the basket is not only a container that allows but also narratives.” Narratives that do not privilege the usual single heroic storyline, but instead accommodate multiple parallel realities which is practical, domestic, collective, and often invisible.
Basket making is almost a universal craft that exists worldwide. People have been making baskets for centuries. Baskets are among the oldest and most widespread objects humans have created from natural materials—and they remain one of the crafts that has resisted mechanisation.
Every basket you encounter is still made by hand.
