To have and to hold

IT was the supermarkets that did for stave baskets,’ says maker and forester John Williamson from his open-sided barn high above the Teign Valley, on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon. Not because they started selling cheaper plastic versions, but ‘because the potato pickers used to pinch their wire baskets to use instead’. This little nugget —gleaned from one of Mr Williamson’s customers, herself a former farmworker—is one of the fascinating pieces of social history that he has unearthed in his quest to revive the making of these beautiful wooden baskets.

The son of a woodsman, Mr Williamson grew up in Devon and has a keen appreciation for rural crafts and traditions, but he never set out to make baskets. After studying product design