ANTIplastic Italiano!!!

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Basketry In Launceston And CH Smith

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In a city the size of Launceston with the colonial and social histories it has, it's unsurprising that  businesses such as CH Smith might bump up against the full spectrum of enterprises operating in the city and region. It seems that the CH Smith enterprise was importing cane and other basketry materials from Asia and more than likely it stocked local baskets that they may well have sold on to fishermen and others. In 1972 Ivan Ballard was using imported cane and as likely as not he would have sourced that material either at or via CH Smith one of Launceston's iconic enterprises!

It's also little wonder that the redevelopment won the attention of Launcestonians given the myriad of histories and heritage issues attached to this site ... STORYlinks [1] [2] [3]

Rattan (from the Malay rotan) 
Rattan is the name for roughly 600 species of old world climbing palms belonging to subfamily Calamoideae. Rattan is also known as manila, or malacca, named after the ports of shipment Manila and Malacca City, and as manau (from the Malay rotan manau, the trade name for Calamus manan canes in Southeast Asia). The climbing habit is associated with the characteristics of its flexible woody stem, derived typically from a secondary growth, makes rattan a liana  rather than a true wood.

Cane
Cane are a group of perennial grasses with flexible, woody stalks from the family Poaceae that grow throughout the world. They are related to bamboo (same family) and may include some Species of bamboo. Cane is often considered thinner and more flexible compared to bamboo and therefore used less in construction, but more for decorative purposes or screens and weaving.

Pahang Cane at the Adelaide Moon Lantern Festival
Published at 2017-10-02 00:00:00
Pahang Cane from CH Smith Marine has been used at the Adelaide Moon Lantern Festival. Cane has long been renowned for its versatility, as it can be bent, shaped and woven for a variety of different uses. At CH Smith Marine they sell Cane in approximately 25kg bundles. Simply soak it in water for 12 hours, then you can bend and weave it into baskets or lobster pots, furniture and much more – even lanterns! Their Cane has also been used for Lemur Island at Melbourne Zoo.

For more information on our range of Cane and bamboo, give us a call on (03) 9403 4800 or contact us online at info@chsmith.com.au

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Wicker Collection Tasmania

These four baskets are a demonstration of the diversity of WICKERwork. Typically, ‘wicker’ is a class of products made from a range of plant materials – domestic items, industrial storage and handling units, furniture, etc.         

Typically woven, but sometimes constructed via other techniques, the work is made from any one of a variety of cane-like materials, including rattan, willow, reed and bamboo. Also, there are times when a variety materials are used together for aesthetic and/or functional reasons. .

Thus 'wicker' is not an any one material, but rather a technique and/or a class of work. The word wicker is believed to be of Scandinavian origin: vika which means to bend in Swedish, and vikker meaning willow. .

Wicker is traditionally made of material of plant origin, yet increasingly plastic and other fibres are also used and increasingly as making processes become industrialised and automated. 

By design, 'wicker' is light yet sturdy. This makes it suitable for products that need to be handled often, move and store smaller objects about – fruit, fish, component parts, etc. – and furniture that will be moved often. A variety of plants are used such as reeds, grasses (including bamboo), creepers (including rattan), and thin tree branches (especially willow). 

Rushwork and wickerwork are terms used in England and Anglo communities globally. Somewhat interestingly industrial processes employed a range of similar organic materials to produce equivalent product to those that are rooted in 'folk traditions'. Likewise, PLASTICtechnologies are increasingly overtaking WICKERwork as the production of the class of objects once produced 'by hand' and from organic materials

IVAN BALLARD 1974

Willow Not Plastic

Cultural paradigms lend meaning and value to the things that we typically employ in daily life without too much criticism and not a great deal of critique. Subliminal cultural paradigms lend meaning and value to the things that the so-called first world typically employ in daily life and without too much criticism nor a great deal of critical enquiry. At the same time cultural landscapes become the subject of discussion, sometimes the subject of disdain and division, and in a socio-political context the ‘placescaping’ that is ongoing is impacted upon by the social and cultural expectations that shape these landscapes. The materiality of that which is traded within our current and past cultural landscapes provide strong indicators of just what it is that is valued, that is shaping and that has shaped these landscapes. Here we see willow called-out as a weed and plastic, and the industries involved in its production, are similarly, and increasingly, disparaged.

TO READ & SEE MORE CLICK HERE: 

The Weed Idea and Willows

http://environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/biodiversity/invasive/weeds/weeddetails.pl?taxon_id=68497

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https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/weeds/publications/guidelines/wons/pubs/salix.pdf

Interesting link concerning weed willows. Another angle on willows in Tasmania is that the Horticultural Society (who laid out Launceston's City Park) imported many exotic tree species which they also supplied to their Members for their new estates such as W E Lawrence who planted a Napoleon Willow (cutting from where Napoleon died at Elba?) at his townhouse garden “Sunnybanks” 15 Brisbane St Launceston. Napoleon willow cuttings  were transported all across the world.  and seemingly escape the attention of weed managers.   ... (pers. com L Morrell)

http://launcestondistillery.com.au/history-of-whisky-in-launceston/

Distilling in Van Diemen’s Land was a difficult business, but Launceston’s first whisky distillery, the Caledonian Distillery, survived as one of the Colony’s foremost distilleries. It was established in 1824 by James Towers at his property “Ravenswood”, about 2 miles from Launceston on the banks of Distillery Creek. This waterway carries many colonial histories. Reportedly, Ballards sourced willow for their basket production from willows planted along this creek and the creek was the source of the city's first reticulated water supply constructed in 1857 still serves the CBD. It turns out that in the late 20th C it was also imagined as the source of the city's 'willow weed problem'.

Leandro Di Lullo WILLOWbasket #6

Almost entirely due to FACEbook networking the sixth Leandro Di Lullo Basket #6 has emerged from its previous hiding place where its importance is all to do with family and neighbourly associations. It  is likely that as more is know about Leandro Di Lullo's basket making all manner of interesting information will come to our attention in terms of Launcestonian cultural contexts.

There must be more of these baskets out there and its likely that they are valued for all kinds of reasons and that there'll be all kinds of stories attached to them.

Leandro Di Lullo Basket #6 : Private Collection     

WILLOW: Weed Assessment

Go to: http://www.weeds.asn.au/tasmanian-weeds/view-by-common-name/crack-willow/

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Description: Salix fragilis is a medium-sized to large deciduous tree, which grows rapidly to 10–20 m (33–66 ft) (rarely to 29 m (95 ft)) tall, with a trunk up to 1 m (3.3 ft) diameter, often multi-trunked, and an irregular, often leaning crown. The bark is dark grey-brown, coarsely fissured in older trees. The lanceolate leaves are bright green, 9–15 cm long and 1.5–3 cm wide, with a finely serrated margin; they are very finely hairy at first in spring, but soon become hairless. The flowers are produced in catkins in early spring, and pollinated by insects. They are dioecious, with male and female catkins on separate trees; the male catkins are 4–6 cm long, the female catkins are also 4–6 cm long, with the individual flowers having either one or two nectaries. In late spring fruit capsules release numerous small cotton-tufted seeds. They are easily distributed by wind and moving water, and germinate immediately after soil contact.

Go to Wild Pussy Willow – A Ticking Time Bomb ... CLICK HERE

Scientific Name:  Salix cinerea L. .... Synonyms Salix atrocinerea Brot. ... Salix caprea L. (misapplied) ... Salix cinerea L. subsp. cinerea ... Salix cinerea L. subsp. oleifolia (Sm.) Macreight Family Salicaceae ... Common Names common sallow, gray sallow, gray willow, grey sallow, grey willow, grey-leaved sallow, large gray willow, pussy willow, rusty sallow ... Origin Native to most of Europe, Russia and western Asia (i.e. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan). Cultivation Grey sallow (Salix cinerea) has been widely planted around waterbodies and along waterways in the temperate regions of Australia, mainly to prevent soil erosion.... Naturalised Distribution Widely naturalised in south-eastern Australia (i.e. in many parts of eastern New South Wales, in the ACT, in Victoria and Tasmania, and in south-eastern South Australia). Also sparingly naturalised in the sub-coastal districts of south-eastern Queensland. Naturalised overseas in North America (i.e. eastern Canada and eastern USA) and New Zealand.... Habitat A weed of waterways, riparian vegetation, lake edges, billabongs, swamps and wetlands in wetter temperate regions.

• WIKIPEDIA tells us that there is something like 350 species of 'willow' so the question arises in regard to which species could be safely planted in Tasmania for WILLOWweaving use and 'wetlands management'. 
• SEE LIST OF SPECIES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Salix_species

FOOTNOTE FROM A TASMANIAN WILLOWweaver

"For what it is worth, I believe that the weeds people have not proven the case that willows are a major weed problem. Crack willow (Salix fragilis) largely has a widespread distribution because it was consciously planted for basketry. It is an excellent willow for 'green' rough basketry. It deserves to be controlled but not eliminated entirely. 

I grow osier willow, black willow, golden upright willow, pussy willow and a small Japanese willow for different aspects of basketry. Crack willow I harvest from roadsides and other public places. My willows are pollarded so the wallabies do not eat them and I harvest one year old rods so they do not reproduce by seed. 

It is a hobby not a business so I do not achieve the quality of the Ballards or Mr DiLullo." 

Willow Weaving At Sydney's Powerhouse Museum

Click on the image to enlargeFrom the Powerhouse Record ... Click here to access this object at the Powerhouse Museum & more detailed reading

"Display case and contents for Gold Medal Wicker Works

Made by Corbett, Neville in Leichhardt, New South Wales, 1981.

This acquisition documents the craft of wicker work and the gradual development during the second half of the 19th century of an Australian wicker industry manufacturing furniture, baskets, perambulators and other household items. Its significance comes from its association with Ralph Gottliebsen’s family company Gold Medal Wicker Works between 1867 and 1996. 

Tiodor Gottliebsen emigrated from Germany in 1867 bringing with him his family’s wicker making skills and tools and established a business making baskets, furniture and perambulators in Carlton, as part of a growing local industry. He also exhibited his work, winning a gold medal at the 1885 Melbourne Jubilee Exhibition for cane baby prams and furniture. His son Emil Gottliebsen (1879-1966) established a successful business in Norwood Adelaide and won a gold medal for wicker furniture at the 1910 South Australian Exhibition of Manufactures, Arts, Products and Industries. After winning this award Emil Gottliebsen renamed his firm Gold Medal Wicker Works. 

Emil’s sons, Lance, Norman, Paul and Ralph all worked in the wicker business. In the 1930s Ralph moved to Sydney where he continued to use the name Gold Medal Wicker Works. In 1965 Gottliebsen opened a new shop called Wicker Wonderland. The shop was presented as a showroom and family museum. Gottliebsen decorated the walls with tools, wicker work and photographs illustrating his company’s long family history. In 1981, some of these items were incorporated into a display case in the new showroom. A sign proclaimed, ‘We are the Oldest Wicker Works in Australia, since 1867 Look Here’. Ralph Gottliebsen’s carefully constructed historical display case and photograph album are useful interpretative presentations of the family’s business history. Importantly, they are also material evidence of his sense of identity, history and pride in his family’s working heritage that extended back before his grandfather Tiodor emigrated from Germany.

Gottliebsen’s emphasis on tradition and history in the Leichhardt shop was a clear statement of pride in an identity grounded in a long familial craft tradition. But it was also a marketing strategy. By proclaiming the longevity of the company and the two exhibition awards of 1885 and 1910, Gottliebsen was attempting to compete with the growing influx of cheap Asian imported wicker products.

The collection also documents the transfer of crafts and skills by European migrants to Australia in the nineteenth century.

Summary

Object No. 2005/100/3

PhysicalDescription: This is a professionally made display case used to exhibit material from the craft history of the Gottliebsen family. A label at the top reads "Gold Medal Wicker Works founded 1867". The case contains 18 captioned photographs tracing the history of Gold Medal Wicker Works from 1885, with an image of Tiodor Gottliebsen outside his Carlton workshop, to the 1960s with a station wagon laden with baskets outside the Gold Medal Wicker Works Petersham shop. 

In the centre is the original certificate awarded to Emil Gottliebsen in 1910 for wicker furniture exhibited at the South Australian Exhibition of Manufactures, Arts, Products and Industries.

At the bottom is labelled display of wicker working tools some of which are said to have belonged to Tiodor Gottliebsen. These are comprised of a drill, a wicker workers cross jig, a basket makers awl, a cane knife and a commander for bending and shaping cane.In the lower right of the case is a short history of the craft entitled "Canework the oldest craft". This text and the captions of the photographs and tools were almost certainly drafted by Ralph Gottliebsen.

Short URL https://ma.as/319046 Click on this link  to access this object in the collection

POWERHOSE LINK TO THIS OBJECT

POWERHOSE LINK TO THIS OBJECT

BASKETS IN POWERHOSE COLLECTION

• The Catalogue .... CLICK HERE  (Basket search)
• Children's Baskets .... CLICK HERE  ... Bread Basket (cane).... CLICK HERE   
• Basketmaker's Ion/Maul .... CLICK HERE ... Picnic Basket (cane?) .... CLICK HERE .
• Mail Basket (cane) .... CLICK HERE .... Wicker Works Album .... CLICK HERE .
• Gottliebsen’s wicker display .... CLICK HERE .... .Basketmaker's bodkin.... CLICK HERE .
• Basketmaker's picking knife.... CLICK HERE ... Basketmaker's shears.... CLICK HERE   
• Shopping basket(cane).... CLICK HERE ... Child's Basket 9cane) .... CLICK HERE

Willow In Perspective

Baskets can be woven with any one of hundreds of plant species, depending on whatever was available. In more tropical climates people used cane or raffia, while in temperate areas like Europe a wide variety of branches and plants were available: dogwood, privet, larch, blackthorn and chestnut branches; broom, jasmine and periwinkle twigs; elm, and linden shoots; ivy, clematis, honeysuckle and rose vines; rushes and other reeds, and straw.

Perhaps the most popular, however, was willow -- sallies or silver-sticks here in Ireland, osiers in Britain, vikker in Old Norse, the last of which became our word “wicker.” They are highly pliable when young or wet, lightweight and tough when dried, and grow so quickly that a new crop of branches up to three metres long can be harvested each year. As one of the earliest trees to grow back after an old tree falls and leaves a gap of sunlight in the forest, or after a forest fire razes an area, they are perhaps the tree closest to a weed in behaviour.

Their roots spread rapidly under the surface of the soil, making them an ideal crop to halt erosion. Their fast growth makes an excellent windbreak, the basis of most hedgerows, and makes them particularly useful in our era for sequestering carbon and combating climate change. In addition, the bark of the white willow (Salix alba) can be boiled to form acetecylic acid, or aspirin.

Cleaning the soil

In addition, the common variety Salix viminalis or “basket willow,” has been shown to be a hyper-accumulator of heavy metals. Many plants help “clean” the soil by soaking up disproportionate levels of normally toxic materials, either as a quirk of their metabolism or as a way of protecting themselves against predators by making themselves poisonous. Many plants soak up only a single toxin, others only a few; Viminalis, it turned out, soaked up a broad range, including lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, zinc, fossil-fuel hydrocarbons, uranium, selenium, potassium ferro-cyanide and silver. (8) (9) (10)

Many hardwood trees can be coppiced, cut through at the base, or pollarded, cut at head-height, and regrow shoots on a five-to-twenty-year time scale. Willows, however, do not need to grow to maturity, and continue to thicken at the base and grow a fresh crop of shoots each year. Basket-weavers here harvested willow as a winter ritual – ten tonnes to the acre – from fields of large century-old stumps that had never been mature trees. (11)

Once the willow is cut it could be dried with the bark on, or the bark could be stripped off. Stripping was a tedious task but it made the willow easier to quickly prepare and use, reduced the risk of decay, and it gave the willow a valued white colour. To strip the bark a large willow branch was cut partway down its length, with metal strips attached to the inside of the cut; the weaver could hold the branch between their legs and use it as we would use a wire-stripping tool to remove insulation. When cuttings were too thick to manipulate, a special tool called a cleve was used to cut them three ways down their length.

Withies were typically dried for several months and kept indefinitely before soaking again for use. Willow can be woven straight from the tree, but as it dries it loosens and the weave shifts and rattles, which is seldom desirable. To a novice, preparing the materials presents as much of a challenge as the actual weaving, as the willow must be dried but re-soaked, kept wet without rotting, and used before becoming dry and brittle again..... Click here to go to source

Willow Species ... CLICK HERE

VIDEOS
ABOUT Salix viminalis - Common Osier - Basket Willow ... CLICK HERE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp-rHATIMeE ... Planting willow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeYrhus2lwU ... About willow growing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4pnrJ5QW-U ... Growing willow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYsNIIWkIe4 ... Growing willow