The Worshipful Company of Basketmakers

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Among the primitive crafts, basketmaking is one of the oldest known. Older than the weaving of cloth, more ancient than the early ceramic art, the interlacing of twigs into wickerwork is in all probability contemporary with first clipping of flint into arrow-heads. .......... One of the oldest complete Baskets in the world by courtesy of the British Museum (3000 BC). Basketmaking has been called the mother of pottery, as a potter used a basket mould long before the invention of the wheel. Pieces of Neolithic Age pottery show that the clay had been moulded around a basket structure. Stone Age pots often were ornamented with basketwork patterns. The picture in the slide show above shows one of the oldest complete Baskets in the world (3000BC), courtesy of the British Museum. .......... Although basketwork is of a more perishable nature than pottery, due to the extremely dry atmosphere and the preserving sand, it is chiefly in Egypt that ancient baskets in a good state of preservation have been brought to light after being buried for many centuries. .......... The Basketmakers' Company possesses a small Egyptian "shabti" basket made of fibre, belonging to the XIth Dynasty and dated 2000 B.C. These rare baskets, found in mummy cases, contained food for the "shabti", little figures who accompanied members of the royal household in the after-life. The Company also possesses a fragment of pre-history coiled basketry lining dated about 4000 B.C. .......... Moving through history, we encounter houses built of wattle, shields fashioned of wickerwork, coracles or very large baskets covered with hide which the Romans saw on the Thames when they first came to this land. .......... The first Christian church in Britain, in Glastonbury in Somerset, had a roof of straw constructed on a structure of wickerwork. Relics from this Church dated first century A.D. have been found preserved in the mud deposits of ancient fenland. The first monastery of Iona founded in 563 A.D. by St. Columba was made of wickerwork as the early chroniclers have written "sent forth the monks to gather twigs to build their hospice". .......... Thomas Birch, a basket-maker in 1776, erected a scaffold of wickerwork around Islington Church steeple so the ascent to repair the steeple was rendered safe. Some two thousand Londoners paid sixpence for admission to the wicker staircase. .......... Formation and early records of Basketmaking in the City .......... The Basketmakers' Company was established by an Order of the Court of Aldermen on 22nd September 1569, and is fifty-second in order of precedence among the Livery Companies. There are, however, earlier references to basketmaking in the City, particularly in the records of the Brewers' Company for 1422. .......... By ancient custom, only persons free of the City were allowed to sell any wares by retail, or occupy a shop within the City or the Liberties thereof; a privilege which had been confirmed by several Acts of Parliament. Edward III encouraged the settlement of foreign artificers in London although Edward IV limited the number of apprentices and restricted foreigners again.