Have we reached peak screen time? Maybe so, judging by New Yorkers’ sudden hankering to come together to craft. “Basket weaving is like a personality test,” says Erin Pollard of watching friends, designers, architects, and even children during her classes. “Some people follow the rules and you see first-time weavers walk out with this perfect basket, but extroverts end up having fun and talking and I usually help them finish their baskets myself.”
Count me one of the chatters: When I stopped by designer Maria McManus’s Tribeca home to sit in on a weaving circle with McManus’s daughters and a group of editors, socializing took precedence. It helped that I’d encountered Pollard, and the practice of basket weaving, before, having attended her class in support of Gigi Burris’s Closely Crafted nonprofit. That event proved so popular, many guests at the SoHo Roll Hill showroom had to sit on the floor. What I’m saying is, basket weaving is now a thing—whether you’re in it for the craft or the companionship.
Pollard learned to weave from her mother in ’90s rural Maine. Not long ago, her five-year-old son found a pile of reed under her bed, and when they started weaving together, it all came back. “I was hooked,” she says. Soon, friends started showing interest. “The first class that I taught was because Jessie Loeffler Randall and I were having breakfast and we were like, we want to just do crafts,” Pollard laughs of gathering “cool Brooklyn women neighbors” like Flower Psycho’s April Johnson and Goop’s Megan O Neill together. “I was like, my mom used to do this… I don’t really know how to teach 15 people how to do it, but let’s see if it works. Then everyone was on top of each other chatting in the kitchen, weaving and helping each other out.”
There’s a sense of camaraderie to a weaving circle, Pollard says, that’s very welcome in our often lonely, tech-mediated age. Likewise, people are looking for a way to reclaim their hands. “The illusion of progress has us using plastic bowls for everything,” says Pollard. “But I think our hands were made to this. We made baskets to gather berries, women and communities made baskets to survive. We don’t have that anymore.” During weaving lessons at a Mother’s Day fundraiser picnic to benefit Little Essentials, consultant Anja Tyson appreciated “the age-old tradition of women crafting and creating together as a community,” and the bond it created. “I think these days we spend a lot of time near each other but not necessarily with each other, and weaving with Erin felt very with, not just near.” Poonam Khanna, founder of Union Works who commissioned Pollard’s “one-of-a-kind-and-where-are-these-from” baskets for a client’s home, agrees. “I feel that in the context of life in New York, it’s a wonderful way to understand and enjoy the connective tissue of hands that have made the same weaving motions for centuries.”
When Ulla Johnson held a weaving event at her Bleecker store, kids were welcome, though adults took almost every spot. “It filled up within 10 minutes–and a couple of kids did come with their moms, which was nice,” says Pollard, who likes to include children in the process.
“They’re good weavers.” McManus was so inspired by the baskets her daughters dreamed up, they walked her next runway. “To sit with my daughters and friends and create baskets, an ancient craft, was not only fun but meditative, and a way to truly disconnect from technology,” she says.
At a recent event at Orior held with One/Of founder Patricia Voto, the baskets incorporated ribbons and bows with vintage materials. “Patricia makes timeless, one-of-a-kind dresses from the vestiges of heritage brands, so guests chose vintage fabrics and ribbons curated by Patricia to adorn their finished baskets—think French floral jacquard and Swiss guipure lace,” says Pollard, noting that guests sprinted to the fabric station and started interpreting the assignment in their own ways. “Each basket was unique and personal.” Another Tomorrow’s Elizabeth Giardina, for example, wrapped a handled creation with black ribbon as a “phone basket” for gathering devices before dinnertime. Pollard, meanwhile, is a big fan of bows. “There is a sense of humor in big bows, in the same way it exists in baskets: The brand is called Underwater Weaving, a reference to seemly useless university courses. There’s a bit of fun in it all.”
Now, Pollard is working on DIY kits and brainstorming her own collection with her mom. “I can draw a design and she’s fast and accurate at producing it,” she says. “We’re a little atelier.” Her next class, slated for January 18th, will be at Blank Studio in SoHo. On the menu? “We’ll be making a baby Jane Birkin wicker handbasket,” says Pollard of the OG queen of baskets. “She’s forever on my mood board.”
