INTERVIEW WITH RAY NORMAN
Ray Norman is a basket and wicker history enthusiast as well as a highly regarded collection
curator of Tasmanian woven wares. Ray’s work in the field inspired design centre CEO Karina
Clarke to launch a 3 month exhibition and events program at Design Tasmania around this
interesting and little explored pocket of Tasmanian history. Baskets hold not just our sundries
but also a longstanding place in our hearts, this enduring practice has a lot to offer our personal
environments, but also could hold the key to solving environmental concerns at large. Design
Tasmania interviewed Ray Norman to unlock some of the secrets of Wicker Wonderlust.
Design Tasmania: What sparked your initial interest in wickery?
Ray Norman: Since I was 16 I've made my way in the world as a maker of things - initially jewellery. As for 'wickery' – or as most people might understand a fair bit of it, basketry, I guess as a maker it's been there in the world with me as a kind of background reference, a bit like white noise! As a jeweller you become increasingly aware that the technologies you use are ancient or primordial, even if you are simultaneously playing high tech games. Wickery carries all kinds of narratives to do with place and it fulfils all manner of functions, even personal adornment and social identity, all in spite of ‘technical’ advances.
DT: What are some of the earliest examples of woven wares you have come across in Tasmania?
RN: The earliest would have to be Truganini's basket in the QVMAG's collections. It is a primary example of wickery in fact with a cultural history that is timeless and basically beyond comprehension. The pallawa examples of kelp baskets are, so far as I'm aware, unique to Tasmania. Apart from kelp being used in pallawa 'basketry' I'm not aware of kelp being woven into any other functional objects. In Australia there were over 500 different clan groups or 'nations' around the continent, many of which have distinctive cultures, beliefs and languages but all of which lived essentially in pre-ceramic cultural realities pre-colonisation. Similar circumstances exist in Asia and the Pacific. Thus, unlike Europe, Australian is geographically surround by primary wickery references.
DT: Basket weaving is described by as pre-ceramic or proto-ceramic ware, what does this mean exactly for the historical purpose of wickery and basket making?
RN: Wickery includes basket weaving, mat platting, string, cord and rope making, net making, etc that find a primordial purpose in food gathering and hunting. These are very sophisticated technologies that predate ceramic and metal technologies and vary little from one cultural reality to another. Key wicker plants include willow, bamboo, hemp, cane, banana, sisal, flax, etc./ Many such plants have parallel food values. These technologies are imagined as being primitive but typically practitioners required a high level of mathematical sensibilities in concert with a deep understanding of the plant's 'materiality'. This is anything but 'primitive'! When did colonial basket making reach Tasmania and how?
I believe colonial basket making surely arrived on the first convict ships. Between 1803 and
1853 approximately 75,000 convicts served time in Van Diemen's Land with 67,000 them
shipped from British and Irish ports. Among these convicts a great many would have been
drawn from the underclasses (tinkers, gypsies, rural labourers, semi-invalids, etc.), a significant
number of whom would have had basket making skills. It's known that Launceston's major
'basket making enterprises', the Ballard family, had a convict as a founder. Four generations of
this family remained in "the trade" into the 1970s. Similar circumstances played out in Hobart.
Until the industrial era displaced much 'basketry/wickery' it would have touched everybody's
lives in Launceston, and its hinterland, in some way or another.
DT: Was the introduction of willow weed more productive or destructive do you think?
RN: In so many ways the notion that "all willows are weeds in Tasmania" is contentious and contestable. Willows were introduced to Tasmania and elsewhere as a part of the colonial enterprise, in order that they might deliver the benefits of home. Clearly, willows are now a significant component of Australia's postcolonial cultural landscape. I believe that willow along with many other so-called 'woody weeds' in Australia represent an unmanaged resource as much as they might be "the wrong plants in the wrong place". New Zealand manages willows and poplars in their contemporary cultural; landscapes –and by most accounts productively and profitably. Moreover, as we get over the resistance to the growing of multi-use plants like hemp, willow along with bamboo, flax to provide materials 21st century wickery design product as yet unimagined.
DT: A lot of people have at least one woven basket in their homes, some multiple and many are at least vintage or antique. How could weaving practice be brought more into contemporary society as a solution in the face of destructive plastic waste?
RN: Wickery's organic status offers a way ahead given the the problems being posed by inorganic plastics which it turns out is less culturally durable than wickery. More and more we are, seemingly, increasingly aware of the narratives and storytelling that are invested in the wickery we have in our lives one way or another. We keep on keeping it around rather send it to landfill. Typically we repurpose it and when it ceases to be useful as originally intended, seemingly there always another use. So it's durable on multiple fronts given that it bounces rather than break and is more likely to bend than break. Plus it is aesthetically durable proven by the baskets we'd rather keep than discard. It may be that in a future cultural landscape, wickery's 'second/third/fourth life whatever' could be as a 'carbon sink' in a food productive field somewhere rather than an unwelcome addition to a 'rubbish dump'. ¶
DT: Was the introduction of willow weed more productive or destructive do you think?
RN: In so many ways the notion that "all willows are weeds in Tasmania" is contentious and contestable. Willows were introduced to Tasmania and elsewhere as a part of the colonial enterprise, in order that they might deliver the benefits of home. Clearly, willows are now a significant component of Australia's postcolonial cultural landscape. I believe that willow along with many other so-called 'woody weeds' in Australia represent an unmanaged resource as much as they might be "the wrong plants in the wrong place". New Zealand manages willows and poplars in their contemporary cultural; landscapes –and by most accounts productively and profitably. Moreover, as we get over the resistance to the growing of multi-use plants like hemp, willow along with bamboo, flax to provide materials 21st century wickery design product as yet unimagined.
DT: A lot of people have at least one woven basket in their homes, some multiple and many are at least vintage or antique. How could weaving practice be brought more into contemporary society as a solution in the face of destructive plastic waste?
RN: Wickery's organic status offers a way ahead given the the problems being posed by inorganic plastics which it turns out is less culturally durable than wickery. More and more we are, seemingly, increasingly aware of the narratives and storytelling that are invested in the wickery we have in our lives one way or another. We keep on keeping it around rather send it to landfill. Typically we repurpose it and when it ceases to be useful as originally intended, seemingly there always another use. So it's durable on multiple fronts given that it bounces rather than break and is more likely to bend than break. Plus it is aesthetically durable proven by the baskets we'd rather keep than discard. It may be that in a future cultural landscape, wickery's 'second/third/fourth life whatever' could be as a 'carbon sink' in a food productive field somewhere rather than an unwelcome addition to a 'rubbish dump'. ¶
Design Centre CEO, Karina Clarke, is available for interview regarding this exhibition and
event series, please contact Clementine Blackman for all related enquiries.
PRESS CONTACT–
clementineblackman@gmail.com
0432 264 369
PRESS CONTACT–
clementineblackman@gmail.com
0432 264 369
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