Put simply, a stroke can be caused by a bleed or a blockage to one of the three cerebral arteries supplying the brain with oxygen. It can damage a person’s ability to carry out specific cognitive functions (Bolte-Taylor 2009). It will usually damage one side of the brain, which can affect linked areas of the body, often on the other side. The result is that a person may not be able to move or control one side of their body, or may have no sensory feedback about it. They may have vision, mobility or speech problems. Strokes can also affect qualities such as paying attention, abstract thought, even insight, or reflection, judgement or self-awareness. See the work of cognitive neuroscientist Bolte-Taylor (My Stroke of Insight) for a clear explanation). 

Tim and Monique worked with people whose strokes had affected the left or right side of their bodies, and so could not walk or use their arms or legs well on one side. They also worked with patients whose strokes, or other brain injury, affected their ability to engage in some way, such as to have interests, or reflect, or have insight. We achieved good results as much in all kinds of cases, which sometimes surprised our specialists.

Basketry helps on many levels. Practically, basket-work can be broken down into steps or simple activities a person can learn so that they can slowly build up greater manual dexterity. Included could be weaving in and out, adding a new willow strand, telling right from left, focussing observation and imitating a teacher, or using word ‘slogans’ to sum up the activity, such as ‘tip to tip, butt to butt’, or ‘no over-taking’ (Palmer 2020).

Basket-work also give valuable physical exercise that may encourage the other side of the body to take part, even if with not much control. It can also help with skills such as concentration and problem-solving, and counting (Cannavacciuolo 2020). And, it helps with social skills, producing a real outcome, a basket, which a person can feel proud of, or use in their relationships with others, can give or share. 

Basket-work is also involves hand-to-eye coordination, encouraging mind and body to operate in an integrated way, on one spatial activity. Moving and working with the hands and eyes in this way, in three-dimensional space, we think aids neuro-plasticity, encouraging new neural pathways to develop. Crucially, the right hand helps the left, and vice versa, and attention moves across from right to left and back, ‘crossing the middle line’ (Bunn, 2020b). Craft activities like basketry in coordination with appropriate physiotherapy, can provide a cumulative effect which can help patients regain use of their limbs. Kate Davis, a scholar who experienced a stroke, writes about how another craft, knitting, helped her to regain her confidence and mobility and restart her life (Davis 2018).

Our successes have been as often with very withdrawn patients as with those with mobility problems. Each person is catered to to suit their needs, differently and staged exercises which both challenge and encourage them. You have no idea how difficult it is to make a basket with just one hand. One patient was literally working with just his finger and thumb. 

Some comments and feedback:

“This (the basketry) really helps; that is everything helps, hospital, physio, Everything, but the basketry really makes a difference. It helps you learn.” Patient 5. August 22^nd.

“Now P5 notes himself that he is more reflective and introspective and his insight is coming back. He has commented that the brain injury, and may be some input from the basketry, has made him reflect at the start of what he does and forced him to slow down.”

References

Bolte Taylor, J. 2009 My Stroke of Insight. Hodder

Bunn, SJ and Mitchell, V 2020 (eds) The Material Culture of Basketry. Bloomsbury

Bunn, SJ. 2020 Basketry, wellbeing and recovery: The story from Scotland. In Craft Research 2020 v11, no 1, pp39-56

Cannavacciuolo, F. 2020 Basketry as Therapeutic activity. In Bunn, SJ and Mitchell, V 2020 (eds) The Material Culture of Basketry. Bloomsbury

Davis, K. 2018 Handywoman. Kate Davis Designs

Palmer, T 2020 Basket making as an activity to enhance brain injury neurorehabilitation. In Bunn, SJ and Mitchell, V 2020 (eds) The Material Culture of Basketry. Bloomsbury.

Helen says: “The work that you and the other basket researchers have put into the Woven Communities website has been really useful in getting to know the basket collection here, especially when it comes to names and uses of particular types of baskets.  Rachael and I didn’t have any detailed knowledge of basketry before we started here, so it’s been great to make use of the online expertise related to the collection here.”

Helen has been updating the museum’s collections database, Adlib, with information about the baskets including provenance details from their written catalogues and records, materials, dimensions, physical descriptions, location of the objects, etc.  They have taken photos and are uploading these to the records too.  They’ve also added notes about the usage and any interesting information about the baskets, often sourced from the Woven Communities website.  The database isn’t available online at the moment, but the longer term plan is to have an online database although this is a good few years away yet.  In the meantime, Rachael and Helen are keeping a blog about their project as they progress through the year, which our visitors may find of interest:

https://www.highlifehighland.com/highlandfolkmuseum/baskets-bobbins-barvas-ware/

They’re  about to move on to the next part of the collection, the textile craft tools. Hopefully the ground work that they’ve done will facilitate future research by individuals and groups such as  Woven Communities, as the baskets are now audited, better organised and stored, and the records are in a more useable format.

Tinkering with Curves took the opposite approach to basketry and Maths from the Anthropology and Geometry session at the University of Aberdeen. Here we began with materials and improvisation, exploring curves as mathematical and material, and as abstract and anthropological, through hands-on basketwork. Participants were invited to “‘Make a curve in space”; “Explore how materials make decisions on their own”; “Plait in different planes.” “Work alone, or in pairs….” This was interspersed with sharing ideas and hands-on projects, discussion of papers, and simply engaging with the materials and the library in the workshop.

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This two-day ‘practorium’ took place at the Byre Theatre in the University of St Andrews. The Byre acted as our studio, a rich learning environment ofnatural, recycled and resourced materials, books – a library for individual research, drawing paper and pencils, charcoal, crayons, pens, paints. And tools. We worked independently and together – people said: “We worked in conversation with others.”

Broad themes that arose through the process included… ‘What are curves?’ ‘What is mathematics?’ and ‘What does anthropology have to do with all this?’

Specific discussions included; Continuities between mathematics and craft; Is mathematics everywhere? Patterns and rhythms; Singularities; Drawing and shadows.

Curves

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Our first activity, ‘Make a curve in space’, led to discussion about positive and negative aspects of curves – friendly; convoluted; learning curves…

Johanna Verbockhaven drew, and drew, and drew. She drew shadows, movement, colour. She said she let her hands move ‘into the shadows’ when she was beginning a curve. Michel Serres talks of how ‘nature’ is full of curves, there are no certainties. A pure circle, he says, does not exist. Nor is it possible to have a static curve. Generative processes have curves in them.

Looking at Johanna’s gestural drawings, we asked, Is there a difference between a finished curve and drawing it? For example, is drawing a curve representational, while curving a basketry material such as a willow rod something different? The willow curve is an outcome of a force, an expression of energy between material and maker. Yet the drawing is dynamic … Or is drawing, too, the force of a movement or gesture? Can there be a curve without movement?

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Perhaps there is a meeting point – a continuity as Ricardo might say – between drawing and making, between two activities of different orders? Both, after all are gestural…

And where do diagrams come in?……

Memory curves. In basketry, it would appear that curves have memory, in that the willow holds its form once bent into shape, even if it slightly unfolds. A curved willow form ‘expresses the memory of what has been done to it,’ said Victoria Mitchell. Yet, as Mary Crabb (see her thought pieces on looping and knotting below) commented, basketmakers use the varying strength of the curved inside and outside of a willow rod to give strength to a structure. Different curves give different strengths, so there is a meeting of forces in basket making where the outcome can be expressed in curves.

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Ricardo’s paper

Ricardo’s paper(full text below) addressed the theme of where the continuities between mathematics and craft practices might lie. He began discussion of the paper by suggesting that we treat mathematics as if it is somehow a more perfect, unperceivable expression of the world than we experience in our daily lives. As if ‘how things are’ is not even visible. As if there were an everyday world and a mathematical one, so that most bodily skills, from dance, to basketball, to basketry, all seem to be separate from maths.He proposed that such a perspective on mathematics rather parallels the notion of ‘mind-body split’, where mind links to the mathematics, and the body links to actions such as craftwork. – Yet, this perspective, he said, is a cultural invention.

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For example, we could ask the question… ‘When is a curve mathematical?’ – Or to consider whether a curve is, of its nature, mathematical?

For Ricardo, explaining how one curve relates to another is what makes it mathematical, while for Tim (Ingold) it would help to specify a ‘mathematical take on a curve’.  For example, to consider whether the ‘mathematical take’ is to do with analogous thinking. See. for example, D’Arcy Thompson’s approach, where he identified common principles underneath structures such as skeletons and bridges, or different kinds of spiral, for example.

Ricardo’s view is that mathematicians are doing a craft. Diagrams, equations, are physical things, and there is mathematical making too. Maths is a creative instrument…

‘So, when I say that, for example, we all know that mathematicians are all the time working with diagrams, with equations, with symbolic expression. Well, all these diagrams are physical things, are things that are drawn also, are looked at from different angles. And the same drawings that you make for the shadow of the shape… Also, things that are in three dimensions, they do the diagrams in too. So, I am trying to say that (if) the work of craft consists of making curves, then this is mathematical making as well. So, I think that….For example, we think of how to use different materials, how to create different products. So, there is something mathematical about how to weave them together in a different way. So, the creation of something new, probably replicating something that exists and making a series productions is not necessarily mathematical But, mathematics, we can think of it as a creative instrument, or many instruments, that allow us to develop new ways of weaving, new ways of using materials.’

For Victoria, the question then arose as to whether mathematics was a form of basketry. As opposed to basketry being a kind of mathematics? For her, what was interesting was the way that mathematics uses words like ‘braid’ or ‘net,’ or probably ‘weave’, or ‘loop’.

This brought us back to Ricardo’s ‘continuities’, where one could not necessarily say, ‘Well at this moment basketry becomes mathematics’, but rather that mathematics works on a continuum, where specific kinds of entities or practices meet.

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Michelle questioned the notion of continuities further, by asking about arithmetic, and whether there was a difference between arithmetic and mathematics, or if is there a continuum between them too? This was an interesting question, producing an interesting response, linked to drumming and rhythm. For example, as Ricardo illustrated, – drummers need to be able to count in order to learn new rhythms. Counting up to 4 is easy, but counting the beat while you perform it is a whole new world. You might count on- and off-beats, repeating these, and so on… This has to do with arithmetic because arithmetic is counting to a large extent. But it is strikingly different (and difficult) trying to generate the rhythm and count it at the same time. So, counting may always be embedded in the continuum, as is music, butas a learning musician, one is always learning to discriminate aspects which make the output musical.

Pattern and reasoning

Our discussion about reason was short, but it brought up the question of pattern. For Lucie, mathematics was always a method… “It’s logical reasoning. Do you reason through touching things or can you just do it in the mind? “You get a good sensation through things that join which are correct…”

Or is there a problem with ‘correctness’, ie reasoning ‘correctly’, in that it can ‘finish’ things which stops exploration? And if maths is closed, then it’s limited…

 But then is it logical reasoning which allows us to see patterns?…

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This raised the question that a computer can reason, but it cannot grasp the infinite. Which perhaps makes the case for bringing feeling into mathematics?…or not separating reason from how something feels. Above everything, rhythm has to carry on or make connections.

Curves and singularities

There is a critical point, we learned, at which overall behavior changes from one side to the other, and in mathematical terms, this is known as ‘a singularity’. Elsewhere, slightly to one side, is a point of continuity. A lot of the mathematics of curves is concerned with identifying singularities. For example, a point of inflection is a kind of singularity. If you bend a piece of willow into an s-shape, if you curve a piece of willow from left to right and from up to down at the same time (see drawing), and hold the centre point still, the point of inflection is the point where the willow goes up in a curve and from the same point also goes down. 

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A singularity could also be a crease in a piece of paper…Or a Gothic window which is vertically straight, and then moves into a curve

Where does the anthropology come in?

Tim took us through this question which I, Stephanie, had been puzzling on, since people often say to me, that they can see where maths and basketry link, but it is not so obvious what is anthropological about their connection. For Tim, anthropology asks philosophical questions about the nature of the world by engaging in conversation with people. So, if mathematics and philosophy are closely related, then could we have a ‘mathematics with the people in it’?

But then mathematics has a parallel with arts, music, anthropology… it’s a vocation. So maybe it is generative, in that it generates forms and ideas. And maths is an aspect of the generation of forces, relations, growth. Maths is in the world we inhabit so there can’t be maths without movement, force, growth, tension and material. Stasis doesn’t work.

Can there be a curve without music? Or a maths without tension? It is hard is to have maths without some kind of force. Maths entails a sense of enquiry, a relationship between the intellectual and intuitive, in this regard it is very close to music,  something which is lost if you try to pin it down. We want to keep it open-ended.

So, asking ‘Where’s the anthropology?’ is like posing a false problem. Like asking whether skills are more creative than improvisation. A false problem has a solution already in it. Real problems are generative and produce new answers.

Those attending Tinkering with Curvesincluded Stephanie Bunn, Ricardo Nemirovsky, Geraldine Jones, Mary Crabb, Hilary Burns, Victoria Mitchell, Tim Johnson, Michelle Feder-Nadoff, students from the University of St Andrews anthropology department, students from MMU and members of the University of Aberdeen KFI Project. Thanks to the University of St Andrews KE&I fund and the University of Aberdeen KFI Project for supporting this event.

The KFI project aimed “to reconfigure the relation between practices of inquiry in the human sciences and the forms of knowledge to which they give rise. Its fundamental premise is that knowledge is not created through an encounter between minds furnished with concepts and theories, and a material world already populated with objects, but grows from the crucible of our practical and observational engagement with the world around us.”^[1]

Art and craft practice and its anthropological relevance was at the heart of this project, which aimed to establish and trial “an experimental and speculative mode of anthropological inquiry”, exploring the relationship between people and materials alongside the conditions and possibilities of sustainable living.

There was a core team of 6 postgraduates and 4 PhD students, along with an additional 6 associates and many visiting scholars. One of the project offshoots was the Anthropology and Geometry Research Groupwhich met three times during the project’s last two years, and it was here that the first experimental collaborations between basketmakers and anthropologists took place in Aberdeen, in January 2018. 

The Anthropology and Geometry Research Grouphad all been drawn to the interface between geometry, maths in general, and anthropology. The open nature of the KFI project enabled this interest to develop. ‘Geo’ plus ‘metry’ literally means ‘the measure of the earth’, and this highlighted the fact that geometry, a subject which may seem very abstract today, had its roots in a practice which was both material and necessary – literally measuring the earth in the process of  building. Ray Lucas, one member, raised some additional money, and so we held the first Anthropology and Geometrymeeting in Manchester, follow six months later by the second meeting at the KFI HQ in Aberdeen.

For the second meeting, Stephanie persuaded the group to have a hands-on session on basketry and maths. Mary Crabb, Geraldine Jones, and Hilary Burns were invited to introduce a session on plaiting and looping. Coming from craft backgrounds and not usually working with such large groups (around 30), the basketmakers all produced detailed worksheets to enable the group to work without the full attention of 1 to 1 assistance.

The outcome was fascinating. The strain of following the worksheets was almost palpable among the thirtyfold participants (mainly anthropologists). Everyone seemed to focus on the point of action, the hands in relation to materials. The tension, strain, force and effort all seemed to be condensed here. Our bodies were, in the main, quite still. Worksheets, we have come to realise since, can lead to a very linear approach to craftwork. It is sometimes hard to follow the steps and keep a sense of the whole and the outcome, when one is learning a skill for the first time from a worksheet. 

^[1]KFI Project report

In the Woven CommunitiesProject, our intention was to learn about Scottish history through the lens of Scottish basketry by using practical basketry skills and working in a hands-on way with the public in museums and local schools. Yet when we focussed on what it was we were actually learning while ostensibly ‘doing basketmaking’, we realised that a lot more than basketry or history was happening, and mathematics came pretty closely into focus.

An intergenerational research week at Iochdar School in South Uist illustrates this well. It began with the intention of learning the process of ciosan-making^[1] from marram, ‘From plant to basket’ and plaiting the murran, or marram grass, into a traditional Uist horse collar. – The Gaelic name for South Uist, Tir a Murrain, literally means the Land of the Marram Grass.  We sailed to the island of Cealasaigh to cut the murran. Having dried the grass in an unorthodox way (by laying it around the house of An Lanntair project leader, Jon MacLeod, while he was away), our plan was to begin by using it to make murranrope, with the children at the school, and move on to baler twine rope, from hand-palming to twining, to using pencils as a windlass, from which we could make the ciosans.

“There’s always been murranhere,” said the thatcher from North Uist. “Our murranis very fine…. It takes an area of murranthe size of a football pitch to thatch a house.” As well as for thatching, ropes were made for stacks^[2], although these ropes are made from straw. The murranisn’t so good now, we were told, there’s a lot of grass in it, because it’s no longer grazed (meaning the horses no longer eat the grass and leave the murranpure). Along with creels, men also made baskets from coloured twine in the 1950s and 60s.

As everyone worked making rope, Jon Macleod told the children the Gaelic love story about Scearmaghreit, (the name of a rock) and plaiting. There were two sisters on the shore collecting shellfish. Both loved the same man. One girl fell asleep with her head on the rock. The other girl plaited her sister’s hair to the seaweed to attach it to the rock, so she drowned.

Comments after working with the school…

“ All these things are so cool,” said one lad.

“You haven’t got enough tension in that, you need to pull it out. Move back.”

“I just hate it when the murranis dry, could you get me some of that murran that has been soaked?’

 “I want to join your club” said one boy. “What club is that?” “The marram grass and rope making club.

“Your gang’s art is excellent.” (Two thumbs up).

We talked about it afterwards in the car. The activity brought inventiveness and adaptability, self-directed learning. The children learned rope-making and then they tried to think of ways to develop it. Changing colour, material. How fast they could go in comparison with their friends. Challenging each other, measuring things, testing the strength of the rope and how much it could hold, decorating it, having tugs of war, skipping, weighing things.

Opening up the big rope to see how the big rope is made of smaller ropes. And problem-solving. For example, “Why is there a big stitch across the bottom?” – “Think why.” There was problem solving, reflection, and patience. They learned most from the natural materials – they learned it had more give, it could be moulded, and would hold itself in place. 

And they transferred the skills once learned from one medium or technology to another. 

The children made bracelets out of grass and plaited their own hair while waiting to plait the grass…

And there was talk. Paula commented that the girls tended to want to know the details of how to do it. For the lads, there was conversation about survival, “Could it save your life? Could you make a basket to catch flatfish from it?” This led to conversations about how we came to be doing the jobs we were doing. For the lads this was an insight, talking to Jon, finding out the nuts and bolts of how he had got to where he was, where he had travelled to, what made him decide to do this for work, and ‘Did he do it all day?’ Dawn was also asked if she “did it all day?”

This was truly an intergenerational project. It inspired children about the past. When we visited a care home, and showed them what we had done, one lad said “Why don’t we go and cut some grass and make simmanshere?” They took the ropes into the care home. They wanted to share the joy of it. One boy came up to a lady from Eriskay and said “I think you’re my great aunt.”

It also inspired elders in a positive sort of way. It was not voyeuristic or romantic, it was a “This is where we are all from,” sort of way and the past was a valuable, resourceful time, a sort of place for reminiscence. People often mapped genealogies when they met others in Uist and Lewis. They were always interested in where others come from. Reflecting on how people make connections with others, the Gaelic for “Who are you?” literally means “To whom do you belong?” If you come from somewhere such as Kent, the response will likely be “And why are you so far from your mother?”

“I arrived around 11.30 during the first pupil workshop. During the second workshop where I was assisting I heard many comments from the pupils who had quickly learned to use a natural material they had never handled before…

…Testing the newly made rope two boys were towing one of the classroom tables across the room. Very impressed with the strength of it one said, ‘They should sell this in the shops.’ 

The two boys exchanged looks and one said, ‘Of course they don’t sell it in the shops.’ I encouraged them by saying that perhaps they could make some and the shop may sell it. 

This class were very industrious, interested and engrossed. I looked around the room at one stage and all five adults were observing with no need to say a word or do anything. The children and their enthusiasm were leading the workshop.” (Maggie Smith, Gaelic translator, SGOIL AN IOCHDAR)

Stephanie Bunn, November 2016

^[1]A meal-measure basket

^[2]Hay stacks

 The Everyday Lives at War project, based at the University of Hertfordshire, contacted us early on in our project, and asked if we would be interested in conducting the Scottish element of the research into the different roles basketry played in World War 1. We accepted and found that this basketry pushed us to learn and think about the role of baskets in war, both in terms of the kinds of baskets needed, for example, shell cases, aeroplane seats, pigeon baskets, baskets for use in health (dressings and bandages) and hot air balloons for surveillance. It also pushed us to do more research into the use of basketry (and net-mending) in the rehabilitation and healing of injured soldiers, both physically and psychologically.

In Scotland, basket maker Tim Palmer had reconstructed two aeroplane seats which provided a wealth of information for this project.

Liz Balfour and Steph Bunn began by visiting the Scottish War Blinded institution and the Lindburn Centre to learn more about the role of basketry in work with blinded soldiers.

We developed this, through learning about the very knowledgeable Dr Irene Paterson, who had founded the Department of Occupational Therapy at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Irene has written a book specifically about the history of occupational therapy in Scotland, and has a wealth of knowledge about the value of craft skills in rehabilitation, for people with physical injuries, strokes, brain injuries, learning difficulties, and even TB.

We visited Irene Paterson and were able to talk to her first-hand about the extensive research she’d done in occupational therapy and craft. This was invaluable, it links so clearly with the work we have been been doing with An Lanntair on the use of work with both hands in encouraging hand memories. It also links to the work we have been doing with children on the role of using both hands in learning complex, dextrous construction skills in mathematical and constructive kinds of thinking, and with our work on basketry and maths, and basketry and robotics.

We also visited Joyce Laing, who lives locally to St Andrews, in Pittenwheem. Joyce had coincidentally worked with Angus McPhee, a well-known soldier from South Uist who had been badly affected by World War II and had spent much of his life weaving grass artefacts, a process which drew on skills he had learned as a child on Uist, and which helped him come to terms with his experience.

Most recently and still ongoing, is the work that Tim Palmer is doing in Raigmore Hospital, working with a consultant there to develop practical basket-work activities with people with brain damage to see how this helps their rehabilitation. Tim is himself, both a retired consultant and an expert basket-maker, so is eminently suited to this proect. There is still more to report on this.

The Anthropology and Geometry Research Group, Manchester Metropolitan University

The Anthropology and Geometry research group has been working at MMU to explore the meeting points of maths and anthropology. Steph gave a paper there, Forces in Translation, which addressed the bodily mathematical understandings that emerge through practical skills such as basketwork. The paper discussed how through engaging our bodies with our environment in making and building, we come to understand form, force, and measurement, and how these factors come to work together. With baskets, bags and nets, we are dealing with different materials, and hand skills, where one hand ‘crosses over’ to help the other; we learn what makes an integral structure; about proportion; planes and surfaces; and how the knowledge at the point of making translates into mathematical understanding.

University of Aarhus, research into handskills and robotics

In Denmark, and also later at Nottingham Trent University, Steph gave lectures which  explored the rich context that hand-skills such as basketry provide for learning new skills and understandings, and for helping develop new and innovative ideas. The University of Aarhus’s Department of Education, led by Cathrine Hasse has become a key partner in our research and with whom we would like to develop future research into the importance of handwork such as basketry for cognition. This has led to a mutual interest in how some new contexts for learning and working may be less rich and stimulating, and a concern to explore the ongoing potential of handskills in the creative human production of ideas.

Shetland Museum has a unique collection of local baskets from crofting life on the islands, all well documented and linked to material in its local archive. Its collection shows the importance of local materials, the knolwedge of material properties, and the need for baskets in every aspect of life.

What we did

Because of the knowledge already available in Shetland museum records and archives, along with the work done by makers such as Ewen Balfour, Lise Bech and Lois Walpole, and  the museum’s access to recent semi-professional makers such as Lowrie Copland and Jimmy Work, we all considered that our knowledge, skills and experience could contribute best to exploring future skills, intergenerational relationships, and to public engagement.

With Shetland’s very comprehensive and extensive collection of baskets, it would have been easy to simply look at heritage. However, curator Ian Tait wanted to ensure that not only did we look at the past but that we looked to the future, and brought out the question of how, why and if basketry is relevant today, and to the life of future generations.

Because of this we worked with a variety of local schools, and with two basket makers: Ewen Balfour, a great expert on local basketry techniques with straw, having learnt from the last Shetland semi-professional kishiemaker, Lowrie Copeland; and Lois Walpole, a contemporary fibre artist and basket-maker from the islands, who works with reclaimed and recycled materials, mainly discarded netting and rope washed up by the sea.

Who we met

We worked almost entirely with local schools, bringing in local elders and community groups wherever possible to share their knowledge. The schools we worked with were Baltasound, Urafirth, and Whalsay.

What we learned

In my view (Stephanie), working with children was an act of great insight by Shetland Museum curator Ian Tait. There is always the danger of treating heritage in a retrospective way. Working with children and young people showed us that not only do young people have an interest in the past, so that the skills we taught them encouraged them to ask their families about family histories and local heritage, but also that the children simply loved tradition, they loved to work with skilful people such as Ewen and Lois, they enjoyed having local elders in the sessions to discuss and show their work to, and they really enjoyed having a great expert, a museum professional, Ian Tait, to explain to them about their heritage and to bring in museum objects. All these activities and values also contributed to how they saw their futures, which as young people they felt very strongly, and with care. While this is in some ways a unique situation, in that the islands are a smaller, more contained and integrated community, which promotes such values,  nevertheless we feel that this situation enabled us to see the value of handwork, skill and learning about heritage across the generations, and more generally, very clearly.

By bringing in elders to the sessions, the project revealed how much young people could respect the knowledge developed overtime in their community. Their concern for the environment, reflected in the work they did with Lois, was also palpable.

We brought what we had learned from this part of the project to the final part of our project work with An Lanntair and it was of great use in helping us working with school children there, and in developing intergenerational relationships.

These kinds of intangible response to hand skills –  pleasure in skilfulness, care for the past and future, are rarely voiced, and difficult to quantify, but nevertheless, they form an important strand of how our project has been working, most especially in Shetland and also with An Lanntair on Uist and Lewis.

Liz Balfour and I (Stephanie Bunn) were able to point to the subtle changes of style in both creels and sculls from north to south along the east coast. And there were clearly makers across the region whom one could identify with specific basket styles. Peter Lindsay was one such maker from Arbroath, a great expert whose work was displayed in the1950s Living Traditions exhibition. But there are definitely one or two other basket styles from further north, around Peterhead and possibly around Cromarty, where baskets were obviously made all by one skilled man or workshop in a particular style. This might be seen in the use of laminated wood for the frame, or the use of skids under a creel, or bands of weaving across the sides to protect a creel. This also clearly linked to an aesthetic aspect. These baskets were made well, and were both functional and made to suit the aesthetic of a particular maker.

What did we do?

Aside from demonstrating and reminiscence events, we also held three special activity days. These were:

A fender making workshop led by Liz Balfour;

A netting-bee led by Liz, Steph and Julie Gurr;

And a Skills-Gathering workshop, where a general invitation went out to all Scottish basket makers in the Scottish Basket-makers Circle. We invited anyone who was interested in coming to work with the old baskets no longer being made, and which no-one knew how to make anymore, and to work out the skills to read make them. This was a basketry renewal!

Finally, the wonderful Linda Fitzpatrick, the museum curator up, helped us put on a very special exhibition of fishing basketwork during the time the project was working at the museum.

Who did we meet?

We met retired fisherman, and it was here that we realised we needed to extend our expertise to nets as well as baskets. We also met the great granddaughter of a Fife basket-maker, famously portrayed in a painting in the museum gallery. And we met a very helpful re-enactor who made it his new ambition to both make a line basket in the Peter Lindsay style, and to use it in fishing.

Finally at a talk given following the exhibition, we also met local people who had stories to tell of washing line baskets in the local burn.

What did we learn?

Most fishermen didn’t make their own baskets on the east coast, these are made by experts, either in their spare time or fully professionally. However, fishermen used baskets, and they also mended nets. Often they learned this as children coming home from school, helping their mother in the evenings, whether it was simply winding mending twine around the netting needles or developing more complex skills. ‘My mother would leave me the needles in a bucket ready to wind each day.’ Unlike baskets, nets have been made by machine for a long time, but they’re still very valuable and needed frequent mending, unless they were severely damaged. Today, the temptation is to cut of the offending piece and throw it in the sea, which causes more plastic pollution in the oceans.

Again, this museum attracted a national audience, and we had visitors who could tell us about basketry across Scotland, from fishing in the Western Isles, to life in World War II using baskets in the Highlands – ‘we had nothing then, nothing.’ And local fisherman you could talk to us about fishing nets and knots.

In terms of practical basketry and skill, we also learned that people love handwork. People who joined in our workshops send gatherings had constant conversations about the work and these activities generated an ideal environment to learn more and encourage people more talk about past family memories. We found this through making nets with students and with the general public, people were enlivened and entirely absorbed. Mending was also an important feature of making and this was crucial to be proficient at this, it was an act of care in one’s work and care was part of working. Just like basketry these netting hands skills used both hands, required dexterity, completely becoming second nature, so that the net mending was a part of life, and triggered very basic hand memories.

Our ‘Skills Gathering’ revealed two contrasting approaches to learning the intangible skills encorprated into a basket. Two makers in particular stood out as exemplifying these approaches, John Cowan and Tim Palmer. Whether this was just the particular skills each basket required or two different personal approaches is difficult to tell, Tim chose to make one of most challenging baskets in the collection a beautiful line scull of the type made by Peter Lindsay. This required immense forward planning and preparation, including steam-bending wood in advance and a great many measurements. John made a grtlin basket of the kind that is probably half a cran in size, ie a ‘stake and strand basket’. He had learnt to make quarter crans from the last professional quarter cran maker, Colin Manthorpe, and had made many, selling them at the New Craftsman in London. John’s approach, other than generally measuring the basket and gathering the materials, was to star  by saying, ‘I think this would take me about five hours’. From this point, there was very little reference to any plan or measurements.

Dawn found it very poignant that these baskets are here when there are so few on the islands themselves, yet it is also very remarkable that they are here at all, since without having been collected by Isobel Grant, they probably would have been long thrown away, since people in the past were ashamed of their rustic culture, so Grant reported.

The other part of the basketry collection from the Highlands included Traveller-made artefacts – frame baskets and small brushes made from heather, woodies or horse halters and bridles made from twisted or cranked willow. There were artefacts for Highland sports– trout fishing baskets, salmon creels and grouse panniers. There was a great multitude of thraw-crooks here and a huge quantity of rope. I visited a second time to work with volunteers to learn how to use a three-strand rope twister, that was great! Amidst the jumble of rope, I came across a wonderful thing. A horsehair rope for guga (baby gannet) hunting on St Kilda. And a puffin snare hidden away in a box just marked ‘rope’. Written inside was a note saying that at the time of writing, 1920, this was probably one of only three in existence.

What did we do here?

Again we demonstrated. Dawn made a beautiful creel, and donated it to the museum for the outdoor displays in the township. Steph made a long rope with a thraw-crook with one of the reminiscence groups. Lucie helped everybody. And we held a workshop in Traveller frame basket-making, not as easy as it looked, since the ribs were positioned down the side of the vertical frame rather than radiating from where the handle meets the horizontal frame.

Who did we meet?

Travellers, the visit was organised by the inimitable Michelle from MECOPP. Five Traveller women came and of these only one, the older called Isa, had made baskets herself., along with making wooden flowers, which she had sold door to door. All the others had also seen them being made, however, and the father of one had ‘basket-maker’ registered on his marriage certificate.

What did we learn?

This was mainly historical information. We gained some insight into Traveller life and to their ideas about baskets, and made some good friendships. This included that baskets are very rarely made now by Travellers, and that Traveller knowledge of baskets is held in the hands of elders. When they work it, they have a respect for willow, and thank the tree. They also respect the skills that people have and they pass this on this orally. They told us of boiling willow to dye it with the skin of the bark, and how twining rope double strengthens it, which is important in making snares.

Other than meeting the Travellers, we found no one who really remembered the use of baskets in the Highlands. There may be paintings of Highland women wearing creels in museums and galleries, but there was no tell of it from people who visited us this time. This is a museum which attracts a national audience, however, so there were less local people, and visitors came from all over Scotland. Thus we also learned as much about life in the east coast fishing villages, as we did of the local area.