Alexander Edward

Willow weaving is an integral part of our cultural heritage and I am a proud willow grower and weaver based in beautiful County Down. I grow and harvest my willow without pesticides and do so on the deep, clay banks alongside the Strangford Lough shoreline. Once collected, I weave it in my urban Belfast workshop, at classes and out on people's gardens. I've always worked land in different ways over the years, so have an affinity to that, and see us growers as holding a lot in common with market gardeners, crofters and small holding farmers. 

I came to weaving through initial classes with the hugely talented Sabine Wolniczak a couple of years ago but didn't really return to embrace it until recent months owing to managing sudden, permanent, hearing loss. I was always very musical but then with weaving, I have been able to redefine the relevance of rhythm, movement and structure to my new reality. I find a great calm and purpose in weaving and know the therapeutic value in the craft goes beyond disabled folks like me and really is for anyone who has ever woven. 

Like so many of us, I enjoy thinking how willow can be redefined to be more appealing for young people and reclaiming it as an art for all, and not something that is twee and conservative. I think that helps to keep the craft accessible and keeps me, as someone with a creative background in punk and the circus, interested to make! I enjoy playing around with unusual willow combinations that divert from usual flow and also with weird turns on traditional forms such as with a graffiti basket inspired by traditional wine carriers (as who can afford multiple bottles of wine to carry around anymore?).

I do fencing and structural work, having done some work with a designer this last year on garden furniture and wattle wickets. It is fun to be doing that in Ireland where there is far less of a culture and knowledge of East Anglian style fencing. It's been a great way to learn more about how thicker willow works and to relate the work to my established copse which mostly produces very thick willow. I suppose I am then connecting the work I do with fencing to the reality of my copse and ensuring that what I make is tied to product I am harvesting.

I am working through a series called Baskets of the Apocalypse this year that will see four baskets made using forever materials in line with how our copses are under threat by the climate crisis via flash floods, fires, accessibility and an unknown future and then also by our own aptitude to harvest and work in an ecologically devastated world. The first one is a Moses basket which you can see below, using bicycle tubes to replace around 60 rods of willow. 

• Basketry
• Contemporary
• Garden Structures
• Hedgerow
• Living Willow
• Recycled Materials
• Traditional
• Willow (Basketry)
• Willow Sculpture