Sunday Read: Wild Basketry by Ruby Taylor

Ruby Taylor’s new book ' Wild Basketry: Making baskets and natural cordage from foraged plants' doesn’t begin with reeds or rushes, but with bird nests. Not the tidy, rounded cocoons of storybooks, but the intricate, ingenious structures built twig by twig by our feathered neighbours - evidence, she suggests, that humans didn’t invent basketry so much as joined an ancient, ongoing dialogue with the natural world.

Wild Basketry reads like field notes from someone who has spent thirty years listening to that dialogue with quiet attentiveness. Taylor, who works under the name Native Hands, has built a life and community around turning roadside weeds into beautifully functional forms. Her Sussex workshops attract those craving the grounding joy of making something real - something that doesn’t buzz, ping, or glow.

Ruby Taylor, foraging in the forest for basketry material. From Wild Basketry by Ruby Taylor.

But this is no exercise in rustic fantasy. With a degree in 3-Dimensional Craft, teacher training, and a background in archaeological education, Taylor approaches basketry as both skilled craft and cultural archaeology. She has helped reconstruct prehistoric dwellings, taught ancient technologies in museums, and spent years studying how humans have worked with wild fibres since long before recorded history...

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Image Credits:

Lead: A variety of baskets made from grass, rush and wild rose, bramble, iris and honeysuckle, willow bark, ivy, pine needles and bindweed. From Wild Basketry by Ruby Taylor.

All other images as credited in captions.