The ultimate illustrated guide for sourcing and harvesting foraged plants to make natural cordage and baskets.
More and more of us are seeking to craft with our hands, develop our connection with the natural world and reduce our ecological impact. As a counterbalance to our digitalised lives we desire a reconnection with the simple joy and satisfaction of creating beautiful and useful objects, tapping into ancestral skills and wisdom, taking care of our world. Wild Basketry brings all this together in a practical, accessible way.
This fully illustrated guide to using a wide variety of commonly found plants from the landscape for making baskets and natural cordage (string) offers a rich grounding in the fundamentals of these crafts. Beautiful photographs take you through a seasonal year of basketry projects, covering a range of techniques with suggestions for further exploration. This book is suitable for beginners as well as those wishing to expand their basketmaking skills and knowledge.
From identifying common, useful plants (from temperate regions of the northern hemisphere), understanding the ecosystems in which they grow, to guidelines and principles of harvesting, processing and prepping plant fibres, you’ll find step-by-step illustrated instructions for creating various baskets. With contextual information, including historical facts, build up your understanding of this universal human technology, and how it connects us with the whole earth community.