LONEPOTATO BASKET

10 March 2000




LONEPOTATO BASKET

MANSTILLPLYING

OLDCRAFT

An old craft is in the safe

hands of Owen Jones the

only man in Britain still making

Oak Swill Baskets. Paul Felix

visited his workshop

Oak swill or potato baskets were once used by farmers in the southern Lake District and parts of Wales and Yorkshire. They are oval-shaped, constructed by weaving strips of thinly riven oak onto a hazel rim. Once a large cottage industry employing many families in the Furness area, the craft has dwindled rapidly over the last century. Owen is the last full-time swill basket maker around the lakes.

"I think I may be the last in the country," says Owen. "I learned the craft from an old man, John Barker, in the Lake District. The sort of things I learned you could never get from books." The baskets are very strong and durable, farmers used them in the potato harvesting.

After cleaving the green oak, Owen boils the strips for a short spell to render them pliable. Then he weaves the strips of oak around a hazel frame. The swill is left to dry overnight.

Now 39, he left the Army after working as a helicopter engineer. "It was from hi-tech with high stress to low-tech and an ancient craft," he says "Some farmers still use the swills, but plastic has taken most of the trade. I sell at shows around the country". He works from a small workshop at Nibthwaite near Ulverston (01229-885664), and the oak and hazel comes from the local woods in the Lake District, just as it did in the hey-day of this beautiful craft.


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