Combining Styles

Japanese/Penland Style Basket

I haven’t posted anything in so long. I was invited to put my baskets in a consignment store in Bristol, TN. so I was very busy with preparing for that. I’m very excited about it and hope to sell some. I am also preparing for a craft fair in June and have been feverishly making more baskets for that!

This particular basket, shown above, is a combination of an old Japanese basket pinned on Pinterest and a basket made by Billy Ruth Sudduth. (I’ll be taking a class with her in July!) The Japanese style uses all ’round’ reed. I have used ‘rattan’ flat reed for the curls as does Sudduth but I added a handle and the basket is tall like the Japanese one.

It was not particularly hard to make but needed a lot of measuring and adjusting of the round reed spaces. There are 100 individual curls and each curl is inserted into each space. When the basic form of the basket was finished I gave it a dark Rosewood stain and the rim is a very light Rosewood.

The handle is made from reed strips and wrapped with a topknot to finish it off. I’m very pleased with it and hope you are too.