Exhibition dates :
Hove Museum, 18th January - 27th April 2008
Nationaal Vlechtmuseum in the Netherlands,
9th May - 6th September 2008
Here is my review :
Gathered Thoughts
UK Basketmaker Tim Johnson writes about his experiences attending workshops with Hisako Sekijima, Noriko Takamiya and Kazue Honma alongside the touring East Weaves West exhibition.
Arriving at basketry workshops presents the participant with a heady mix of expectations, hopes, desires and a leap into the unknown hands of your tutor. Perhaps the student should also bring a willingness to let go of their expectations and be open to new experiences.
So it was for my most recent trio of basketry workshops, six days under the tutelage of three makers visiting the UK from Japan - Hisako Sekijima, Noriko Takamiya and Kazue Honma, all exhibiting in the inspiring touring exhibition East Weaves West curated by Mary Butcher and Laura Hamilton.
Working as a busy maker and teacher, my own practice is demanding, diverse and all consuming. Why then should I need or desire the diverse inputs of such different makers?
Any chance to learn in whatever context can lead to unknown and desirable creative pathways and new ventures for the imagination. The challenge of course is to give oneself post-workshop time to reflect, absorb and practice what one has learnt. Certainly these workshops were a demanding prospect and no doubt their influence will take some time to absorb and realise its impact on my practice. As time passes what is important becomes evident through our brains filtration - forgetfulness perhaps, but also distillation.
It is with these thoughts in mind that I now, several months later, reflect on the exercises, improvisations and suggestions of these Japanese basketmakers.
Noriko Takamiya’s presentation of traditional ways with Rice straw excited me greatly. While already familiar with a wide range of grasses, rush and straw native to the British Isles, I was quite unfamiliar with what at first seemed a quite unforgiving and tough material. Vigorous straw beating followed on the streets of Glasgow and must have presented a fascinating diversion for bemused passing pedestrians!
Through a variety of projects including cordage making and the twisting up of little creatures and figures Noriko revealed some of the subtle complexities and possibilities of ply. Dividing cordage elements to ply separately then recombine, lead us to the more complex rice harvesting knife sheath. This was a pleasing project and had me transpose its complexities to shiny sweet smelling willow bark at 6am the following morning as my homework! 
Participants made such a variety of objects over the two-day course including slippers, temple decorations and silkworm nesting ropes. I was most intrigued with the implications of working with a cordage’s ply in different ways to lead me in new directions and the extra details of tightening and burnishing cordage that my own practice and experimentation had not yet discovered.
Hisako Sekijima’s workshop presented a different array of challenges to Noriko’s – and perhaps as I am a maker rather than a writer - challenges and thought processes difficult to translate from practice to writing! Hisako’s approach was less to do with specifics of material, technique and tradition, and more concerned with experimentation, thought and analysis. 
Working through a process of mould making and then constructing a form around a mould, we focussed our attention more on the negative or interior space rather than the made form itself. This relationship between structure and its contained space is fascinating, and one that encourages us to be aware of the entire space occupied by our makings. Having practiced painting and drawing as part of my Fine Art training, positive and negative space are far from alien concepts, however to foreground them as a primary concern in basketmaking is certainly instructive.
One of the exciting features of this workshop was the variety of materials employed by the different students – willow rods, skeins and bark, paper, buttons, thread, plastic band, mono filament and wire. As Hisako made no demand on what we used, students were free to bring materials already familiar to each individual makers practice, these materials could then be creatively used and re-evaluated using new processes. The relationships and scales of these differing materials made huge implications on the final products.
Through the relatively simple process of making around a mould, Hisako enabled students to develop possibilities and move on to personally innovative projects.
The workshop stimulated thoughtfulness and calm that could benefit our future work as basketmakers during our planning, making and analysis.
My own experiments with Hisako involved the twisting up or cranking of stripped white willow and plying this around itself and thus enveloping the mould, an interesting and difficult application of this willow technique. Combining split bamboo with willow provided inspiration for my second less successful basket – giving me a challenge to combine them in more convincing ways in the future.
Kazue Honma’s workshop on the Isle of Wight lead us through a process of discovery with just one material – Somband, a twisted paper tape. Inspecting the process and details of knot making as a starting point, Kazue introduced this material – quite new to most participants. Once again the scale of the material in relation to the constructed form had a major influence on the product. Kazue’s wide array of drawings interpreting her knots provided us with many mental puzzles and demands on our dexterity.
Hexagonal plaiting in the form of a ball followed – immediately providing a pleasing outcome inspiring discussions of its application – for necklaces, community art projects and stitched and bound together to make baskets made of balls. Several workshop participants went away with specific makings in mind.
Having learnt some of the knotting and weaving potential in the first morning we were then challenged to re-inspect the material for the afternoon – changing its nature in as many ways as possible without weaving or knotting. Beating, soaking, cutting, scraping, scoring and folding by all the participants followed over a couple of hours, leading to a huge array of possibilities – creating a palette of variations that we could refer to for future projects. The principles and lessons of manipulation taught in this exercise provided us with inspiration to go home and attack our more familiar materials with increased vigour.
Day two of Kazue’s workshop gave us the freedom to pursue a larger project of our own choosing. Participants made a variety of mats and baskets, flat and round, symmetrical and not. My own challenge was to interpret a pair of traditional Finnish plaited shoes – originally made in Birch bark I hoped to understand the process of their construction and how they could be varied to allow for different foot sizes. Far from easy – working from traditional items provides a challenge and with Kazue’s help and patience we got closer to understanding their perfect design.
Having had the good fortune to attend these three workshops and be involved in a small way with the East Weaves West exhibition as an exhibitor, I feel honoured to have gained a small insight into the world of Japanese basketmaking. I hope that for a moment I can speak for all workshop participants and say how much we all enjoyed taking part and a big thankyou to Hisako Sekijima, Noriko Takamiya and Kazue Honma for their generosity with their knowledge and expertise.
Tim Johnson
December 2007
I just applied to a workshop in Maine with Hisako Sekijima this summer, fingers crossed that I'll get to go. Your description of her way of teaching helped me along, thanks.
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