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BA Spring School 2025: Ash Basket – Round Bottom, Round Top, Steam-Bent Handle

By Michelle Mateo
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Harrogate Ladies' College, Clarence Drive, Harrogate, UK

Tickets available from 10am 11th January 2025

Spring School at Harrogate Ladies’ College offers four full days to immerse yourself in basketry with top-class tutors. There is also plenty of opportunity to relax and get to know fellow basketmakers from all around the UK and beyond.

Both residential (single-occupancy room, shared bathroom, all meals) and non-residential (includes lunches and Sunday evening meal) options will be available. In 2025 the ticket prices are:
• Residential: £575
• Non-residential: £335

Only one ticket is available per BA member, and material costs are payable directly to tutors at the end of the week.

By purchasing a  ticket you are agreeing to the cancellation policy as detailed in the Basketmakers’ Associations Terms and Conditions

In this class students will weave a round ash splint basket with a steam-bent ash handle. The techniques used today have their roots in traditional basket making of North America.

Each ash splint used to weave the basket starts as a section of the tree’s growth ring and is created through pounding an ash log. A large percentage of the splints will be prepared for you in advance, but you will learn about the whole process and tools used to do this.

There will also be an ash log available for you to pound extra material for you to take home or use if you have time to spare on the course. You will also carve and make your own handle. 

The skills learnt over the course will give you the foundation to adapt future baskets to your own design and it will give you a new appreciation of the mighty ash: its durability, flexibility, strengths and weaknesses. These will include how to ‘harvest’ ash splints, preparing ash splints for weaving, woodworking and knife techniques and the use of different tools, basic weave and steam-bent handles. 

Suitability : this four-day workshop is an advanced class but is suitable for beginners with a little weaving experience and for those at a more intermediate level.

Cost of materials:  £45 per person; this includes the weaving materials and handle for each basket  and the log for pounding all of which are prepared in advance by the tutor.

Your tutor

Michelle Mateo

I’m a greenwood worker and ash splint basket maker based in Usk, Wales. Most of my work focuses on ash splint basketry, which started ten years ago, and I have recently expanded knowledge to oak and hazel splints. I work from log to basket using locally sourced timber, from sustainably managed woodlands as part of a natural thinning and woodland regeneration process.

My passion for craft began in 2013 when I was introduced to green woodworking whilst volunteering with a woodland community called the Cherrywood Project. I began volunteering a year before completing my degree in Environmental Management at the University of the West of England, as the main focus of my studies was ecological conservation and the growing need for people to reconnect to their environment, understand it and to protect it.

From the beginning of this journey, I have helped to build cob houses, cob ovens, timber framed cabins, yurts, outdoor structures, and compost toilets; admiring the use of local resources intertwined with sustainable forestry and land use. Over the years I have had the privilege to learn from the best craftspeople who encouraged me to push my craft further, and my main passion lies in making ash splint baskets, bowl turning and leather work.

I enjoy working off-grid with hand tools, using only hardwood that is locally sourced, from sustainably managed woodlands as part of a natural thinning and woodland regeneration process. It comes either from the outskirts of Bristol, Gloucestershire, or the South/East of Wales, and is naturally air dried or solar kiln dried.

On top of selling my crafts, I am a freelance teacher of both ash splint basketry and pole-lathe bowl turning.

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