Willow Weaving ~ by WoodlandsTV

Transcript

John Waller: My name's John Waller. I'm an underwoodsman, which basically means I work with underwood, coppiced wood, specifically with hazel and willow, but occasionally with chestnut and ash to make chairs. Today, I'm weaving willow on a hazel stick chair. I'm just weaving the back, and I've already done the seat here. I use the same willow to weave baskets - which you can see over there - and all sort of other bits and pieces. I do a lot of sculptural work, and living willow work, especially in schools. And I grow all the willow myself. I rent a workshop on an organic dairy farm called Bore Place. I look after the rest of the woodland there, which is about 40-60 acres in blocks; and that's coppice. So, that supplies me with things like hazel for hurdle making, ash for chair making, cherry for turning, and that sort of thing. So, the crafts that I do really have grown in response to the wood I have access to. So, I don't really have a great access to chestnut, and I don't know if we'll use a great deal of chestnut. I have to buy that anywhere I use it.

The willow itself is a selection of basketry willows, and they're all grown because they grow vigorously. They grow long, but at the same time, they stay very fine at their base. So, they're easy to weave, and they're not too stout. And obviously, in connection with all the other willows that are used for basketry, they have to be flexible, very long-fibered, and very easy to weave. And this particular willow is the most common and most popular basketry willow called 'Black Maul.' It's a variety of Salix triandra.

So, this is a piece of 'Black Maul' rod, and this is about a four-foot. Usually, if you were to buy rods, they're all graded by their length. So, when I cut my willow, generally, I grade it roughly into large, medium and small lengths. If you buy it commercially, you buy it by the foot. And this is a four-foot rod, anywhere between three- and four-foot.

And you can see the qualities that you'd be looking for are, firstly, no branches. So, you grow the willow very, very close together. I space my stalls only a foot apart in the rows, and the rows are two feet apart. So, you get an awful great harvest every year; it's an annual crop. Coppice it so you get a huge amount every.

It's very easy to grow. Its biggest enemies really are shade and weeds. I grow mine through plastic mulch, which comes from the silage at the dairy farm; and that's nice, cheap and easily available. So, that deals with the weeds, and I don't have to use any herbicides.

And as far as shade goes, you just site it away from other trees and other buildings. Other than that it takes very little looking after. It's just an annual cut to produce the pliable rods. And you do get some poor rods, and they're used for hurdle making. The branch rods, and also the larger rods are used for living willow structures.

With the chair making, I try to start off at the ends and trim them down. That way, you haven't got any little poky bits out in your back, when you lean back against it. Otherwise, in baskets, you start off all the butts on the inside, and then you trim off the outside, and they just tuck under the thicker pieces.

And there are many, many weaves in basketry. This particular weave is called 'two-rod slewing.' And 'slewing' is the common weave in basketry term to weave fast and fill in the baskets. It's the weave that most people are familiar with, but there are innumerable weaves in basket making.

It's probably the oldest craft there is. As long as people wanted to carry stuff around, they needed a basket. So, it's really very satisfying to be able to make something from just a heap of damp sticks in your hands. You literally need no tools, and you can make it as complex as you like. But, at the end of the day, it's a heap of damp sticks, and it's down to you just to mold them.

So, it's very cheap to set up and have a go. And you can use wild wood as well. You can use hedge-row wood. So, you don't even have to buy the willow if you don't have access to willow. Go along the hedge-rows, after asking the owner first, trimming off anything that bend over your thumb. And if it will bend over your thumb, generally, it's flexible enough to weave in a basket somewhere. So, it lends itself to a craft that's open to everybody, and it's very, very satisfying when you get to do it.

Well, I run courses in all this stuff. I've been doing it now for about 16 years. And I run courses in a range of coppice crafts, and you can access those by going to www.underwoodsman.co.uk. All the courses are listed there, and they run throughout the year. The prices are generally from about 40 a day. They range from basket making, hurdle making, whole lathe turning, chair making, trug making, and all sorts of coppice crafts.

The courses are run at Bore Place, where I have my workshop, which is a farm near Sevenoaks. So, it's fairly accessible from London and beyond. So, if you're interested, please look at the website. Or, get in contact by email at info@underwoodsman.co.uk, and we can send you a brochure. Thank you very much.