Two-Tone Painted Basket

via Instagram https://ift.tt/2zDD5nd


I love this beautiful two-toned painted white oak basket. One of my Dad's pickers found in and thought I would want to add it to my collection. He was right!

This basket is a nice smallish size, maybe 13” L x 7” W x 13” H (without handle).

It is always hard to describe the relative size of a basket as there really aren't standard sizes to use as a basis. At first I was going to call this a "small basket", but that makes it sound like it is miniature or something you could hold in the palm of your hand. I think it is easier to describe baskets on either end of the size scale. I think most people would understand and picture the correct scale of a particular basket if you called it "miniature" or "big/large". Even though are still relative terms, but at least you know somebody is getting the gist of what you are try to describe. Now "medium" or "small" start getting into a really gray area. In comparison to a basket you would take to market, this basket is small, but in relative to a basket you would go pick blackberries in, this would be large. If you were comparing this to a basket you wanted to hold magazines, then it would be "medium". I honestly don't think I have cleared anything up here with my explanation...

Baskets, baskets and more baskets.

via Instagram https://ift.tt/2pwlaJu

I need to find a better place to display my Aaron Yakim and Cynthia Taylor white oak ribbed baskets than just stacking them.

Egg Basket with Side Handles, #98-18

15" x 13" x 6"

Cynthia Taylor

Like many baskets this one has had an interesting journey. Cynthia Taylor wove this incredible white oak ribbed basket in 1998, it was the 18th she had made that year (#98-18). The following year it was exhibited in the 1999 West Virginia Juried Exhibition and received a Merit Award. Not long after it was purchased by a collector from Boston, MA. Flash forward to April of 2006, while clicking around ebay I came across an estate sale auction. As soon as I saw the basket I knew it was one of Cynthia's. Fortunately I won the auction and it is one of my prize finds. And finally to complete the odd series of events surrounding this basket, a few months after receiving the basket Cynthia Taylor contacted me out of the blue to say she and Aaron Yakim were going to be in St. Louis visiting family and would I want to meet. Of course I said "yes" and took the basket with me, where to all of our surprise we pieced together the journey of this basket.

Kentucky Egg Basket
13" x 9"
Aaron Yakim

This basket is from West Virginia fiber artist Aaron Yakim. Aaron and his partner Cynthia Taylor work in white oak and give a new twist to traditional Appalachian basket forms. Aaron learned to make white oak baskets in the late 1970's from a fifth generation white oak basketmaker. He is credited with making over 2,000 baskets in the past 20 years. I have hardly made 200 in the past 20!

What I am making

via Instagram https://ift.tt/2MhdEeo

Make some basket tags this weekend using a custom Archival Distress Vintage Photo ink pad and my MISTI. I found these cute little craft paper tags on my trip to the John C. Campbell Folk School this summer. We stopped for the night in Nashville so we could go to the huge Nashville flea market. Of course now I wish I would have bought more, but isn't that the way it always goes?