Heather, Coconut and Fish

I have to admit I don't stray very far from willow, maybe the odd bit of field rush when I am working with groups, but on the whole I am a willow man. So how did I end up driving all the way to Thurso to attend a heather Creel making course.
It may have started with Patrick McGlinchey of the Backwoods Survival School, www.backwoodsurvival.co.uk, who I have been teaching basket making. Well that's not quite right, it would be better to say I have been helping Patrick improve his willow basketry. He makes some pretty nifty birch bark containers, and his cordage is second to none. Yet his desire to use locally sourced naturally occurring materials can be infectious and maybe it has started rubbing off on me.

I make creels from willow and I love the weaves such as the mouth wale and what Joe Hogan calls the 'Irish Twist'. In fact the latter turns up in most of my baskets as a sort of signature. There is a feeling of connecting to something very ancient when using these weaves and I feel they are worth preserving. So maybe this is another reason I found myself heading north up the A9.
The course was held at the Castletown Heritage Centre and was run by Tim Johnson, artist, photographer, and weaver of natural materials. The whole thing had been instigated by Joanne B Karr a local artist specialising in paper making and also weaving natural materials. She has been involved in some fascinating projects and even hosted a recent international papermaking conference, take a look at her blog.
Their inspiration had come from a local lady Sheila Moir who had donated a heather creel to the Castletown Centre. The creel is probably over a hundred years old and thought to have been last used in the 1930's. It belonged to a local crofter Sinclair Mac Donald who used it to carry fish back to his croft following his fishing trips. We all handled this creel and were obviously not the first to do so, it had just been left in an outhouse following Sinclair's death, apart from some new cord around the border of the creel no conservation work had been carried out. Yet the heather still provided a substantial structure for this creel. Oh and the coconut, well not literally but in the form of coir which provides the cordage which binds the heather together.

The story is in the material and for a willow head such as myself this is what struck me. Heather and dockens (dock stems), locally found with no food value. Heather is strong and durable, it can be used as rope, thatch, matting, dye and creels, and probably many other uses. It defines the landscape, provides colour to the season and pollen to insects; place, people, products. Coir is not local but is an abundant material from a far away place. Its  link is the sea, those that live by it, the product of one coastline intermingled with another far distant. I wonder if one of those creels ever made a trip to far off lands? No matter, the link is in the coir.

Heather, fish and coconut. Oh and Patrick Mc Glinchey, he and I have been looking at the construction of fish traps, but that is another story.