Well this might mean that this enterprise just does not cut it as a "cottage industry" but there we go we'll probably just have to go with 'local landscape enterprise' as a relevant description of this 'business' and others like it when and if we are contextualising them.
Interestingly, while the product mix at 'The Ballards Enterprise' in Launceston over time and up until the 1970s might well have been somewhat different – and likewise changing over time. Nonetheless, it too might be understood as a 'local landscape enterprise' even if:
- The 'cultural landscapes' in colonial Launceston, New Norfolk and Port Arthur (and other places?) were modified in a short space of time to make them fit for 'wickery production' in a 'foreign place' far from 'home';
- That it appears as if the histories played out in these 'new' cultural landscapes go unacknowledged, and uncelebrated, notwithstanding the fact the imperatives driving the 'wickery placescaping' touched most people's lives in multiple ways – as did the cultural placescaping;
- The people working in 'wickery enterprises' seem to be, and to have been, regarded in various ways as members of an 'underclass' or as 'outsiders' in some way – the rural poor, Indigenous people, itinerant workers, invalids and the disabled, migrants, convicts, et al .
- The celebrated histories in the 'colonial aftermath' are all too often the smoothed over histories that all too often tend to sideline the 'underclasses'.
Basketmaking is ancient and will always be done somewhere, but "basket technology" changes with the culture that surrounds it.
ReplyDeleteIt's hardly surprising that 19th century Tasmanian basketmaking was a bigger enterprise than today's and touched many more people. The same is true for the wooden ship and seafaring trades and the world of horse power. Tasmanian harbours were formerly full of wooden boats and ships of varying sizes and purposes, and Tasmanian roads and streets were formerly busy with riding horses, carriage horses and wagon horses, not to mention the many horses that lived and worked on farms. Blacksmithing was once a community necessity. Today it's quaint.
In the 19th and early 20th century, Tasmanian kids would walk along the railway tracks picking up lumps of coal, fallen from passing trains. They'd carry the lumps home in coarsely woven bags or wooden buckets. The coal, the bags and the buckets are no longer commonplace. They also picked up discarded bottles and took them home, but not to put in the recycling bin.
Your historical diggings into Tasmanian basketmaking will be too narrowly focused if they don't encompass as well the trades and industries with which they were connected, many of which are obsolete or diminished, like saddlery, ropemaking and coopering.
Another cultural shift has been towards ready-made. A 19th century Tasmanian basketmaker could make forms and strengths to suit a trade or a particular customer, on request. Today we buy ready-made natural-fibre baskets from caneware outlets. The makers are separated from their customers by many middlemen. All that is also true for the other marine, farm and land-transport trades.
Basketmaking today isn't lost so much as misdirected. We now have synthetic materials superior in every way to natural ones. A basketmaker today is no longer constrained by the lengths, cross-sections, textures, colours and strengths of materials made by Nature. Using composite rod I can make a basket for in-oven baking that will last hundreds of years. Using aluminium tubing I can make a fireside log basket that will keep its shape and strength for generations. Neither of these designs, though, are suited to a world of manufactures designed to be replaced quickly. That's the hole into which today's baskets have fallen: baskets bought to be thrown away later, and replaced at the shop.
Best wishes,
Bob
--
Dr Robert Mesibov
As I’m now reminded basketmaking [wickery] as a technology is so “ancient” it predates ceramics and unevenly through time. Indeed, it is evident in Aboriginal and Polynesian ‘cultural production’ – neither of which developed a ceramic technology albeit other nearby cultural realities did. However, globalisation has swallowed all that up except for isolated enclaves here and there. As you say, [wickery] will always be done somewhere, but "basket technology changes with the culture that surrounds it”. Yet, for me at least, I’m somewhat more interested in the ’cultural landscapes’ that reflect the cultural paradigm that does not rely upon ceramic, metal, industrial, cultural realities that exist/existed POSTceramics.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly it seems that there is a limited number of options for manipulating wicker/fibre/ in order to construct a ‘wicker object/tool/utensil’. What seems to matter most is ‘the geography’ and then comes the eternal question…. Does place shape culture or does culture shape place?
If we look at the histories that inform current cultural realities, plus the ones that are ignored/overlooked, there is quite a bit to be learned/discovered. My “diggings” are more to do with ‘cultural geography’ but hey as you would know research takes one everywhere, all the time and all at once. The trades/industries you point to are/were a product of the cultural realities that shaped place … gave it its ‘placedness’! Well that’s an idea I’m testing.
‘Wickery users’ are indeed separated from the makers for much the same reasons as the users of STOREbought goods are separated from the industries that produce them – and that’s socially, culturally and geographically. MIDDLEmen have a part to play but I wonder about the politics embedded in all this.
As you say ‘wickery’ isn’t lost! I think via WICKERY WONDERLUST we might be discovering that this ‘stuff’ hangs about because of the storied embedded in it and it unlikely durability. Baskets bounce, crockery breaks as does glass, many plastics and of course eggs!
Wickery’s ‘methodology’ can be applied, and has been applied, to other materials but is it ‘appropriate technology’ to weave carbon fibre when other methodologies offer other ‘cost benefits? Technology has afforded the industrialisation of the weaving processes but DIGITALprinting offer yet another paradigm shift. As you say wickery methodologies do not seem to offer the “world of manufactures designed to be replaced quickly” a way forward. So, do we need a serendipitous paradigm shift? As a ‘goldsmith/jeweller’ I’m alert to the eclecticism of the traditions that informs my foundations as a ‘maker’. Goldsmiths borrow from everyone, all the time and ‘jeweller’ will and have used EVERYthing to make a ‘jewel/treasure’.
I and others are starting to ponder these questions and there’re probably a dozen or so PhDs here … but there we go.