No. 10: Tulip basket — #madesomethingtoday

Basket No. 9 was completed on Tuesday, October 4, 2016, sometime in the early morning. This was my second attempt working from a basket I bought at green fish (http://greenfishtrading.com/) in Santa Rosa, California. That basket was from the 19th century, and looks to be Japanese. Please see basket No. 8 for more detail on that form and why it interested me. I'm calling it a tulip basket because it has that shape of a tulip bulb. And I suppose you could put flowers in it.

This basket clearly demonstrated to me that doing something again has huge benefits. I know I teach iteration to my students, and I mentally understand that practice does indeed make things better, but in this basket I really experienced it. In basket No. 8 I had some serious issues with the overall form, as well as the tightness of the weavers. So with this basket I was very conscious of the form as I was weaving. And I am very happy with the Final results. I felt much more in control of the curve starting from the base through the middle into the top. Especially helpful in achieving this success were small pencil markings along the one of the standards to indicate when I should be making changes in the curvature of the basket.

This was also the first time I used round reed for the standards. These were No. 3 rounds I believe, and I was very interested in using them because of the slight line that shows up between them in their pairing. The weavers are 11/32 inches wide and are a continuous wave. This is achieved by splitting one of the paired standards.

The top rim is the real disappointment for me. Although the solution I have isn't altogether bad, I miscalculated and should've left an additional 3 to 4 inches on each Standard so that it could have been folded over and under like the previous basket. This was a primary goal of the basket to begin with. What I did in the end was required as a result of a failure to plan. To my eye the rim makes the basket feel a country-ish, And therefore lacks the Japanese basket I was trying to emulate. At some point I may take off this rim and do something different. Maybe add a base to it as well.

Next steps: would like to try this base again, as well as the proper rim I was trying to achieve. Also, see the last photograph, the effect this has on the light is very interesting. Might lead to a possible lamp shade or something along those lines.

View of the inside of the basket. My son was especially excited by the fact of light this produced.