Pine Needle Baskets

During my time in America, I was captured by the ingenuity of the Native American people, who made pine needle baskets, covering them with pine pitch, to make them waterproof and thus suitable for water vessels or jars as they were sometimes called. Exquisitely tightly woven, using long needled pines and grasses for stitching, they were both sacred and secular.

I noted a copse of long needled pines near my home and decided to teach myself how to make them. The process of collecting them, sorting them into bundles, washing them and laying them in the sun to dry is to recycle nature, and the gentle rhythm of stitching the forms is akin to meditation.

Image 1:  Collection of pine needle baskets (pine needles, raffia) from 1100 mm high to 120 mm high.

Image 2: Oval basket – 600 mm long x 250 mm wide x 250 mm high.

Image 3 Oval basket with guinea fowl feathers – 400 mm wide x 250 mm deep  x 150 mm high.

Image 4: Round basket with lid – 180 mm wide x 180 mm diameter x 180 mm high.

Image 5: Spiral basket (seagrass stitched with raffia) – 140mm diameter x 350 mm high.

Image 6: Pot with lid – 100 mm diameter x 140 mm high.

Image 7: Teapot with lid – 180 mm diameter x 180 mm high.

Image 8: Long necked basket with feathers – 130 mm diameter x 380 mm high.