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A beautiful Solution to a Utilitarian Need

By Dan Harshman

Split baskets in this area were usually made to provide a container for a chore around the home or farm; they could have been made from strips of hickory, oak, or ash from a felled tree. We are lucky to have examples of baskets on exhibit at the Edinburg Mill’s Museum that have definitely seen years of service. 

I’m going to focus on the oak split baskets for this article. We are also lucky enough to have a local master of white oak basket making who provides baskets for sale at the Museum’s gift shop; I will tell you more about him later.

The traditional skill of making baskets from white oaks is hundreds of years old and it requires an in-depth study of the grain structure of the tree. Each white oak tree behaves differently, so the basket maker must work with hundreds of trees to learn the nuances of the wood.

White oak is an exceptionally tough, hard wood when dried, and baskets made from it will last for decades of rough use. Throughout the years, oak split basket weavers have usually been male. This is likely because preparing the splits and ribs required the use of an axe, a splitting wedge and a bench called a “schnitzelbank”. The last item is German and defined literally as a “scrap bench” or “chip bench”.  Many of the earlier basket makers were farmers or tradesmen who practiced the craft in the off season or when the weather was bad.   

 Strong hands and considerable skill is required to prepare the splits and ribs from a piece of white oak, as well as the actual weaving of the basket. I’m not going to attempt to explain all that is involved in making a basket. But I will try to give you a quick overview of what is involved.

A younger tree is needed, perfectly straight with no knots or branches for the first eight to ten feet. It is best to cut it down before the sap goes down for the fall. Once it is felled it is kept moist until you are ready to use it.

To get started making the splits and ribs you first remove the bark and then split the log in half, then quartered it. The quarters are then quartered again until you end up with a piece about 1 inch to 2 inches wide. A knife is then inserted into the end of the piece between the growth rings and strips are peeled off. Green white oak has the quality of delaminating at the growth rings, so each strip amounts to one year’s growth. These strips can then be easily split to the desired width. 

Seated at the “schnitzelbank” the basket maker smoothes the long thin strips with a razor sharp draw knife. Splits might be a quarter to a half inch wide and ribs can be as much as two inches wide and gradually tapered to a point on each end.

The points are tucked into the weavings where the handle will join the rim of the basket. The splits are then laced around the ribs to bind the whole creation together. Easy-peasy; right?

Oak split baskets might be made with or without a handle. The more common style handle starts with a frame made of two long, more or less round strips of oak which are tapered at each end. These are bent into circles with the tapered ends overlapped and fixed together to create two equal sized hoops.

These hoops are assembled at right angles to each other and fixed together at the point where they touch. The one hoop makes the basket’s rim; the other is the handle and center frame for the weaving of the basket.

While oak split baskets were first made for the chores around the house and farm, they have attracted folks with their beauty and craftsmanship. What was a tool to be used to complete a task eventually began to be bought simply for how it looked and what it represented. Basket making became a cottage industry with whole families sometimes getting involved in the basket trade. 

An example of this is found with the gentleman that allows us to sell his white oak split baskets at the Edinburg Mill’s Museum gift shop. Clyde Jenkins learned his skills from watching his grandfather and father work as a child, and has continued to pass on these traditions to the next generation. 

Clyde was the primary basket supplier for Colonial Williamsburg for many years, and you can catch him at work every year at the Edinburg Ole Time Festival in September. He is joined then by a group of younger men that represent that next generation as they work to create baskets of all sizes and shapes.

We try to keep a good selection of Clyde’s baskets on hand year-round. A basket that we had recently was one of two that he had made in a particular style. We had one to sell and the other one is owned by Michelle Obama. It was our first time to carry one of Clyde’s larger baskets and we were pleasantly surprised by how quickly it sold. Please plan on stopping in to check out the well used older baskets we have on exhibit as well as the ones destined to be future family heirlooms.