Basket twining
SOFT TOOLS / Twining
For many years it was believed that stone were the first tools. Recently, the focus has shifted towards basketry. The technique lies not only at the basis of the first tools, but humanization also developed with and through the basket. Until today, basketwork is an enormously extensive and varied craft that is both exercised by local craftsmen and contemporary designers. Archeological evidence shows that it was already globally practiced during Neolithic times by indigenous people. In Europe, almost the whole range of basketry techniques is used, chiefly in making utilitarian objects but also in making objects primarily for decorative use.
Soft Connection Lab explores different techniques, which fit under the umbrella of basketry. As the research has led towards an alternative classification of the techniques – based on their primordial gestures, you’ll find basketry techniques in the three different categories. Basket twining can be found under the Soft Tool Twining, coiling can be found under the Soft Tool Winding and basket plaiting is categorized as part of our Soft Tool Crossing.
Basketry is classified into four types: coiling, plaiting, wicker and twining. The term basketry refers at the same time to the craft of basket weaving, the fabrication of the objects and the objects themselves. The latter are characterized by a great variety in terms of production, one that is not limited to baskets. Lastly, basketry in architecture is defined as a type of ornamentation that imitates wickerwork.
Roots
Almost all human cultures have made twined baskets among other basketry techniques. For tens of thousands of years, people may have slept in basket huts, kept predators away with basket fences, and caught fish in basket traps collected while paddling down a river in a basket boat. They may have carried their babies in basket carriers and been buried in wicker coffins. According to anthropologist M.K. Anderson, some of the first agriculture might have been to grow basketry crops, such as willow shoots, not food crops.
The exact origins of basket twining are challenging to pinpoint due to the perishable nature of the materials used. However, archaeological findings suggest that twining was among the earliest basketry techniques. In ancient Egypt, for instance, coiling, twining, and mat weaving were predominant methods. Twined baskets served multiple purposes, from storing food and clothing to crafting coffins and sandals.
The oldest known baskets were unearthed in the Fayoum Governorate, about 100 kilometers southwest of Cairo. These remarkable artifacts, carbon-dated to the Neolithic era between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, predate the earliest pottery vessels. Unlike pottery, which was too heavy and fragile for the needs of far-traveling hunter-gatherers, baskets offered lightweight and practical solutions for carrying and storage. While baskets were invaluable to the societies that used them, they present significant challenges for historians and archaeologists. Made entirely of natural fibers, baskets typically decayed over time unless intentionally preserved, resulting in the loss of much of their history. This means that our understanding of ancient basketry is often speculative, relying on indirect evidence and informed interpretation.
The earliest American baskets were twined; fiber got wound around a row of rigid elements like sticks – wrapped around one, twisted, wrapped around the next one and twisted again. The sticks would seem to limit this approach to flat surfaces like mats, but bending and shaping the sticks allows twining to create a variety of containers and shapes.
Twining is a two-systems technique in two directions, in which the active element consists of two strands moving spirally around the passive elements.
Traditional Applications
Twining can be used to make a wide range of different objects: from more flexible objects such as mats or bags to more sturdy objects such as baskets or fish traps.
Kris de Decker – Low Tech Magazine:
The craft of basketry, (..), might be one of our species most important and diverse technologies, creating homes, boats, animals traps, armour, tools, cages, hats, chariots, weirs, beehives. Shelters and furniture, as well as all manner of containers.
Fish traps
Kris de Decker from Low Tech Magazine: “Some of the first agriculture might have been to grow basketry crops, not food crops.”
Willow baskets
According to Steen Madsen in his video conference about Historical Baskets, people were growing 200 different species of willows to make baskets during the Roman empire. About 2.000 years ago, people used to have a strong scientific knowledge about how to grow willows.
Cherokee traditional twining
It is known that American southeast indigenous people, including the Cherokee, used twining as a technique for centuries to make utilitarian bags for hunting and gathering. They also used it to make shoes and clothing. They used thread or cordage from bison wool, bear hair, possu, hair, fibers from tree bark such as paw paw, basswood and mulberry or plants such as milkweed, nettle and dogbane.
Donkey saddle
This donkey saddle is made of twined date palm leaf strings. It’s a good example in which the alternation of S and Z twining results in V-shapes.
Coastal and river defense
Wearable goods
Part of these Japanese snow boots are made with the technique of twining. Where you see the V-shaped forms, you can recognize the technique.
Household items
Mats
Mats were probably used to sit on or sleep on and were often woven out of organic materials such as grass, palm leaves or bark. W. Wendrich writes in her book The world according to basketry about basketry in Egypt that the production of matting is depicted regularly in tomb paintings and that shepherds who work in the papyrus fields were often represented. The illustration shows a mat making scene from the tomb of Ti in Saqqara, Egypt. A man is laying out strands of papyrus while the scene below shows men working on a finished mat with what appears to be tools that could be brushes. This indicates that they had already finished twining the mat and were pounding the fibers or cleaning the finished mat from loose fibers.
Brushes
Twining can also just be used in a single row to hold together bundles. Doing so, a brush sees life.
Architectural applications
A bed frame for a high sleeper from France: the back part seems to be done with some twining basketry.
In Belgium, twined walls (it could also be that they were wickered,, see below) were used to strengthen walls of houses. A typical house was built in 1905 for Fiekes Jan (an itinerant mussel vendor living in Tremelo) as follows: five to six wheelbarrow loads of clay (‘leem’) were dug from a local hill, the Baleberg. This was mixed with short lengths of straw and enough soil at the building site to yield twenty-five to thirty wheelbarrow loads of the basic clay-soil construction material. The mixture, reinforced with alder- and willow-branches, was used as the building material for the walls. This method of wall construction, wattle-and-daub, has been in use since prehistoric days.
Wicker
Although wicker does strictly spoken not belong to the category of twining basketry, we would like to integrate it briefly. Different to twined objects, the active elements of whickered objects do not spiral around each other, they are rather woven into the passive elements. The illustrations show the difference. Apart from that, wicker is one of the most common used techniques in basketry. It can be used to make fences, walls, animal traps, furniture and baskets.
Watch & Learn
The basic basket twining
Learn to create a simple twined basket with a plaited bottom.
Twining fabrics
Instead of making 3D objects, it is also possible to twine more flexible flat surfaces, fabrics or mats. In this tutorial they build an easy to remake twining frame on which they twine fabrics strap into mats. It is an easy way of recycling fabric into rag rugs. This way of twining is very suitable if you would like to make a small rug or potholders. In the past, it was used to make mats from date palm fiber or other organic materials.
Triple Twine Arrow
By twining a basket with three twines, you can create beautiful patterns. This rattan basket is twined with three twines in three different colors.
Twining a Cherokee Bag
Twining has been used for thousands of years to create bags, clothing, and other items. In this video you can see Lauren Grayson as she discusses the history and craft behind this art form in this new episode of Cherokee Traditions. The video shows how you can twine a bag or even shoes.
