Step-by-step through the techniques of plaiting, starting and shaping crowns and brims for a variety of baskets and hats.

Guide to the techniques of raffia hat making and basket making. Covers plaiting and shaping crowns and brims, hat decorations and instructions for a variety of baskets. Includes a list of suppliers of materials and an index. The author teaches hatmaking.

Basketry hat making alike are among the most widespread and ancient crafts - one that is highly satisfying to both craftspeople and collectors and appealing in utilitarian as well as esthetic terms. Over the centuries, basket-making techniques have been used to manufacture an amazing assortment of items: crab or lobster pots, eel traps, winnowing fans, horse collars, fish creels, seed-gathering baskets, portable stalls used by street vendors, huge "skeps" for sorting wood - even one-person boats (or coracles) and enormous crates for transporting prize livestock to shows. These items and many more are fully described in this profusely illustrated book of an authoritative classic.

The material - Basic techniques - General instructions - Decorations - Hats - Basketry - Suppliers.

THE twisting and weaving of Nature's materials, grasses, twigs, rushes and vines into useful and beautiful forms seems almost instinctive in man. Perhaps it came to him as the nest-weaving instinct comes to birds - for at first he used it as they do, in the building of his house. Later shields and boats were formed of wicker work but how long ago the first basket was made no one is wise enough to tell us. Today Indian tribes in South America weave baskets from their native palms, South African negroes use reeds and roots, while the Chinese and Japanese are wonderful workmen in this as in other arts and industries; but basketry has come down to us more directly through the American Indian...