BA Spring School 2025: Rush Docky Bag

Tickets available from 10am 11th January 2025

Our 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

The Rush Docky bag is inspired by the lunch bags of turf cutters from Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire circa late 1800’s.  It is a lidded basket made by plaiting fresh-water rush and then stitched in a spiral formation with waxed hemp cord. The lid is created with two separate plaits spiraling about each other with spaces for handles to be threaded through. The handles can be of leather or plaited rush.

The course will explore flat plaiting techniques with Cambridgeshire rush, approaches to stitching, waxing of the hemp, use of paper templates to guide Ashplaiting on a turn/curve, tacking plaits to create 3D vessel, judging scale, and planning for the lid and handle placement.

The word “Docky” references the wages docked when fenmen stopped to eat their lunch carried in their woven bags; we stop for Docky not packed lunch in Ely.

Suitability: for basketmakers of all abilities

Estimated cost of materials per student: £20-25 for one Docky Bag.  This includes half kilo rush, 2 leather straps, hemp cord and beeswax.  Large antique sacking needles will be available to borrow or purchase.

Your tutor

It is 29 years since I wove my first willow basket, it gripped me and became my obsessive hobby and  then my full-time job. I am mostly self-taught from books, with lots of short courses before more formal training at the City Lit with a Creative Basketry City & Guilds in 2002-2004.I have sold my work at many markets; craft shows and in galleries. Taught more workshops than I can remember. Created props and costume pieces for film production companies and full-sized Rush Green Men costumes for the Lord Mayors Show in 2017. Contributing a chapter to the BA Rush Book: Weaving with Eight Makers was a fabulous experience and serving on the BA committee as Course Coordinator for four years allowed me to give back to the supportive organisation that has nurtured me as a maker.

My small willow bed is growing abundantly, and harvesting wild freshwater Rush in waterways around Ely allows me to connect my practice fully with the place where I live. My daily work is mostly traditional in technique, with functionality at its heart, often with a nod to vernacular baskets of the Cambridgeshire Fens; willow Eel Traps, oval Potato baskets and plaited Rush Docky Bags. Other baskets more about form than function happen less often than I would like, and it is this aspect I plan to explore as often as I can.

This small-scale domestic practice is especially important to me and the integrity of my work. I hope the baskets tread lightly on this earth and bring joy to those that choose to own them.

Finally, I am humbled and honoured to be a part of The Traditional Basketry Project: Rescuing, Reviving and Retaining our intangible cultural heritage baskets and their techniques.