We tend to think of baskets as dreary
objects that we put things in, well people did in the 60's anyhow.
Baskets were always carried to the
shops by old spinsters who would buy strange things from another age.
They would put flowers and jam jars in them and there were even
stretchy covers to pull over the edges, some even had hinged flaps
that opened from the centre outwards.
They tended to be the same mass
manufactured type that became common place in the shopping centres
that sprung up through the 70's.
I first became aware of the beauty of
the basket weave of the Japanese by an antique dealer who became a
friend who, lived in Chicago. I would often meet him in France.
While staying with me here in Liverpool
we visited the Bluecoat Bookshop, which was then in the Bluecoat on
School Lane, where he found a small amount of books on the subject,
he bought the lot.
You see I love it when I am enlightened
by someone who knows more about a particular subject than I do. With
there being so many shows on the TV these days, that are full of so
called experts, it is easy to think that we all can just switch it on
and know about everything. But its not like that in real life, we can
only have a small amount of knowledge in reality on antiques in
general and then specialise off on a specific genre. I would like to
see more so called experts who say, “I don't know much about that”
or “You have opened up a subject that I did not know anything about
and therefore my life is richer for it”. An admission, is nothing
to be ashamed of, you cant know everything, its impossible, its not
wrong to own up to it, its right.
Steve had been collecting baskets for
a while and although new to me, when I glanced through the books he
had purchased, I was taken by the beauty of some of the simple
baskets, that turned them, in my mind, into works of art. In this
country basket making, though skilled, is thought of as a handicraft
practised in the country by people who will never make it pay.
Japan has a steep mountainous
environment and a lot of goods were transported by people. Some
baskets were made to shape into certain parts of the body. They could
be strapped to the waist carried on the back, and even strapped or
carried on the head. So baskets will require a different shape and a
different weave.
This makes the versatility of bamboo as
a ideal choice of material.
Its lightweight and its strength give
it such a versatility. And of course its beauty.
The baskets were made for flowers and
also utilitarian objects such as sieves and strainers.
Its quick growth means that the
material bamboo, is readily available and available for use within a
few years of planting.
The Japanese culture would, in my
opinion take the art of making a simple object into a piece of
beauty, this would run into all the elements of their existence.
So when the likes of William Morris was
proclaiming everything around you should be of functionality and of
beauty. (He was rich enough to say that)
The Japanese had been doing this for a
long time.
The chained country of Japan or SAKOKU
were the orders of the edicts of 1633-1639, in that it was laid down
that no foreigner could enter the country, or no Japanese could
leave. This remained in effect until 1853 when Black Ships of
Commodore Mathew Perry forcibly opened Japan.
In 1864 the Americans were preoccupied
with killing themselves in the American Civil War and trade was
relinquished to Great Britain who by this time controlled 90% of
Japanese trade with the western world.
When the Japanese trade borders were
forcibly opened in the1860's after what we now know as gunboat
diplomacy on the part of the western powers.
In 1865 nine foreign warships into Osake Harbour and demande that the Baufu pay, by the end of
1866, for the Choshu attackson their warships in the Shimonoseki
Straights.
This was only one incident of many that
kept the tension on the Japanese. The west wanted their goods ideas
and history and they would not stop until they had it.
It now made it easy to trade and the
explosion of art in Great Britain was to be influenced forever by the
mastery of design, and the customs that the Japanese had become to
take over them, as their existence.
So how did this object of such innocuous
piece become to be there at the back of an antique shop, languishing
lonely and forgotten and described as a Chinese basket, luckily for
me.
I couldn't leave it behind.
It needed me, or someone who could see
the skill and craftsmanship by which it was made.
And recognise the intrinsic value
contained within, what after all is a vessel that carried not only
flowers, but tradition.
But, more than all that, it has an
essence about it, that makes you want to hold it. Like a piece of
furniture you want to stroke it.
The bamboo has a patina making it look
like it was smoked, and the way the highlights of where it has been
touched, for probably a hundred years just shines through.
It was probably made quickly, with a
slight of hand. Though that slight would have taken decades to get
right.
You do have to be so careful our far
eastern friends have also become of forgery, but this is dead right.
Its mine now and its taken me on a
little journey that has heightened my understanding a little more of
ancient cultures and their influences, and on the British who then
showed the world the Arts and Crafts movement.
Christopher Dresser would visit Japan
and take design notes collecting samples for Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Despite the writing of Violet de Luc,
the French John Ruskin, It was the Japanese who would educate the
western world even Van Gough would physically touch a woodblock
print, of the Hokasai wave.
The Wave was used to adorn the music
for Claude Debussey's LA MER in 1905.
Both artists would have respective
disciplines of style over realism and would focus on brilliant colour
and energy. One with touch and grace of a brush, the other the keys
of a piano.
We owe a lot to the everyday symbolic
rituals of a nation that, 150 years ago, and not unlike China, was a
secret to the world.
That they turned an everyday object into
a glory.
