Soft launching. More makers all summer.Soft launching with our founding makers. More arriving through the summer.
Soft launching. More makers all summer.Soft launching with our founding makers. More arriving through the summer.
These stars are the offcuts of the basket work. When Simon trims the strips of coppiced oak down to weave a swill basket, the ends go into a separate pile. The stars are made from that pile, threaded on coloured cord in red, black, yellow, or green.
Each star is a slightly different shape. Some are fatter, some thinner, some closer to symmetrical. That is the geometry of working with hand-split wood: it does what the grain allows.
Oak swill basket making is a long, laborious process: splitting wood along the grain, cleaving, dressing, weaving each piece by hand. These stars are born from that work and save the offcut from the bin.
Simon is the only oak swill basket maker remaining in Scotland. The craft sits on the Heritage Crafts Red List as critically endangered. The stars are the small entry point to it.
These stars are the offcuts of the basket work. When Simon trims the strips of coppiced oak down to weave a swill basket, the ends go into a separate pile. The stars are made from that pile, threaded on coloured cord in red, black, yellow, or green.
Each star is a slightly different shape. Some are fatter, some thinner, some closer to symmetrical. That is the geometry of working with hand-split wood: it does what the grain allows.
Oak swill basket making is a long, laborious process: splitting wood along the grain, cleaving, dressing, weaving each piece by hand. These stars are born from that work and save the offcut from the bin.
Simon is the only oak swill basket maker remaining in Scotland. The craft sits on the Heritage Crafts Red List as critically endangered. The stars are the small entry point to it.
Simon Cooper is the only oak swill basket maker left in Scotland. He works from a single room in Crieff, splitting coppiced oak with a cleaver, soaking the strips, weaving them while still wet, the same way the form has been built for four hundred years.
