Achievement unlocked: Cattail Basketry!*
Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2016 2:34 pm
As someone who does more than a fair amount of foraging and gathering throughout the year, I’ve been trying to think of artifacts that I could use for such purposes in a Beorning context. I keep some simple linen drawstring bags in the bottom of my pack, which are fine for leafy greens or roots, but I do a LOT of berrypicking in the summer, and would like to pick them with something other than a modern plastic pail…and squishy berries in a cloth bag is a fine way to extract berry-juice, but isn’t so good when I want whole berries!
So I needed some kind of rigid container that can hold a gallon or so, and I didn’t have any birchbark pieces that big. Then I thought—ah-ha, what about a basket? That would be perfect. Only one problem—I’d never made a basket before. Not that it matters, I’ve been making wattle hurdles for years, and my rawhide canoe (minus the skin cover) is basically a giant willow basket! So weaving things together is no problem, but I wanted to learn proper basketweaving techniques. To the library! I checked out a book of simple baskets for beginners and studied up.
Then the question became: what would a Beorning’s basket be made from? Modern basket ‘reed’ from suppliers is made from rattan, which is definitely not ancient Europe-appropriate (it comes from Indonesia!), and my willows were all coppiced this winter so their shoots are still too small.
Luckily where I work on the weekends has a big stand of narrow-leaf cattails, which I figured would be perfect for learning on. I gathered and dried a big bundle and then spent a few evenings this week trimming pieces to length, then soaking, weaving, twining, and folding until I wound up with something like this:
Surprise! Stealth headwear writeup!
I present my newest piece of handcrafted kit, a cattail hat for summer wear! This replaces my broad-brimmed ‘panama’ reed hat, which is modern, doesn’t look handmade, and doesn’t ventilate my noggin very well to boot.
As my first foray into basketry, it’s basically a wearable prototype, and I’m probably going to take another stab at it with the leaves I have leftover. But I’m still very pleased with how it turned out. And, like my cattail sleeping mat, I think it’s very justifiable in the cultural sphere, lent credence by Beorn’s furniture with “wide rush bottoms†(TH, Ch 7) and the proximity of the marshes at the confluence of the Gladden and Anduin.
The design is vaguely inspired by a hat I found in my stumblings through the Tolkien-reenacting side of the internet, worn by a fellow (Czech, naturally) in a group ostensibly depicting Beornings.
While the rest of the outfit didn’t read Beorning to me at all, I thought the hat was perfect, being reminiscent of a straw beehive, so I filed it away in my folder of reference pictures (of hats, made of cattails or otherwise).
The final baskethat wound up a bit large and crown-heavy with less of a brim than I had originally hoped, but it works well enough, and the shape vaguely reminds me of several old European headwears, like the hat of the Trindhoj Man.
This fellow’s ‘neolithic tea cozy’ hat was somewhat inspirational as well.
As it is now, the one drawback is that it sits a bit low on my head, which interferes with a horseshoe blanket roll on my shoulder, so I may wind up sewing up a linen liner to raise it up a bit, and provide some sweat absorption.
So I needed some kind of rigid container that can hold a gallon or so, and I didn’t have any birchbark pieces that big. Then I thought—ah-ha, what about a basket? That would be perfect. Only one problem—I’d never made a basket before. Not that it matters, I’ve been making wattle hurdles for years, and my rawhide canoe (minus the skin cover) is basically a giant willow basket! So weaving things together is no problem, but I wanted to learn proper basketweaving techniques. To the library! I checked out a book of simple baskets for beginners and studied up.
Then the question became: what would a Beorning’s basket be made from? Modern basket ‘reed’ from suppliers is made from rattan, which is definitely not ancient Europe-appropriate (it comes from Indonesia!), and my willows were all coppiced this winter so their shoots are still too small.
Luckily where I work on the weekends has a big stand of narrow-leaf cattails, which I figured would be perfect for learning on. I gathered and dried a big bundle and then spent a few evenings this week trimming pieces to length, then soaking, weaving, twining, and folding until I wound up with something like this:
Surprise! Stealth headwear writeup!
I present my newest piece of handcrafted kit, a cattail hat for summer wear! This replaces my broad-brimmed ‘panama’ reed hat, which is modern, doesn’t look handmade, and doesn’t ventilate my noggin very well to boot.
As my first foray into basketry, it’s basically a wearable prototype, and I’m probably going to take another stab at it with the leaves I have leftover. But I’m still very pleased with how it turned out. And, like my cattail sleeping mat, I think it’s very justifiable in the cultural sphere, lent credence by Beorn’s furniture with “wide rush bottoms†(TH, Ch 7) and the proximity of the marshes at the confluence of the Gladden and Anduin.
The design is vaguely inspired by a hat I found in my stumblings through the Tolkien-reenacting side of the internet, worn by a fellow (Czech, naturally) in a group ostensibly depicting Beornings.
While the rest of the outfit didn’t read Beorning to me at all, I thought the hat was perfect, being reminiscent of a straw beehive, so I filed it away in my folder of reference pictures (of hats, made of cattails or otherwise).
The final baskethat wound up a bit large and crown-heavy with less of a brim than I had originally hoped, but it works well enough, and the shape vaguely reminds me of several old European headwears, like the hat of the Trindhoj Man.
This fellow’s ‘neolithic tea cozy’ hat was somewhat inspirational as well.
As it is now, the one drawback is that it sits a bit low on my head, which interferes with a horseshoe blanket roll on my shoulder, so I may wind up sewing up a linen liner to raise it up a bit, and provide some sweat absorption.