Baskets & Their Bountiful Uses

Baskets, how we have looked to you for domestic aid since humankind mastered the art of plaiting plant fibres as one. Fragments found in Egypt’s pyramids tell us that you were loved and used so very far back in time, transporting food and hammocking loaves of baked bread, with a bulrush basket said to have cradled baby Moses down the river to safety. So too did you aid in the discovery and making of pottery; baskets provided a mould for the earliest renditions of pots. The Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, historians note, basket-moulded pottery from 5,000-1,000 B.C. – as far back as basket heritage can be traced. Today, we stand by your side still and you at ours. You transport, you tidy, you soften a scheme, you store all and sundry. Here, we share some of the ways in which we appreciate you most of all…

Baskets as bread baskets

Daily bread – what a simple, sustaining pleasure. Ever more so when it arrives on the table in the embrace of a basket, inviting you to lean in and tuck in. We reserve not solely bread to this serving ritual, but seeded flatbread, toasted pitta bread, and we have even been known to upgrade nights in front of the television with popcorn decanted into the depths of one of our large Raffia Woven Baskets.

Baskets as utensils pots

Should you be the sort who prefers to keep their kitchen utensils within arm’s reach as opposed to laying them within a drawer, then a basket may serve as a welcome change to a clay or metal utensils jar. How we especially love the marriage of natural raffia and traditional wooden spoons resting, in a relaxed, informal manner, around the undulating basket rim.

Baskets as planters

Adore terracotta pots we do, yet we care to broaden our horizons by way of vessels in which we plant. Whether it may be our Raffia Woven Baskets or even our Linen Bray Bread Bags, they offer a place to conceal plastic plant pots and saucers so that your flora may thrive, ever more beautiful than before.

Baskets as cutlery holders

Whittled wooden spoons and salad servers need not be the only basket stowaway in the kitchen. How novel it is to select one of our smaller Raffia Woven Baskets and allow it to play host to occasional-use cutlery, like cake forks or sugar spoons. You might even like to place one upturned basket atop the other so that the contents are truly concealed from view and there is simple joy to be had in taking the top off when teatime calls.

Baskets as to-market bags

A basket conforms not to one, and one aesthetic alone, as our Cleeve market basket suggests. Here, observe seagrass, woven into a basket structure, though closer to a tote or shopper bag in form. A bag-for-life alternative it most certainly is, a bag for taking with you to the beach to transport with you shoreside essentials of a book and bottle of water, and a bag for leaving on display in your hallway, hung happily from a hook for all to admire.

Baskets as newspaper and magazine racks

Where to rest half-read newspapers? Where to lay magazines-to-be-read and weekend supplements that you wish to save, perhaps to try your hand at one of its recipes in Sundays to come? There shall always be the magazine rack, that typically supports your reads spine-up, but we most enjoy leaving ours strewn in our larger Palm Leaf Woven Basket – how laissez-faire they look rather than be regimentally stood upright. Prop it sofa side or beneath a coffee table to pull out as needed. 

Peruse our basket collection in its entirety.