The Great Scottish Basket Cases

I am a willow basketmaker fully rooted in Angus NE Scotland with over 25 years of experience.

I enjoy creating strong and functional baskets – made to be used often and bring a little bit of pleasure to everyday life! I like to blend tradition with contemporary design, bringing a visual balance and harmony into my work using colour, pattern and form 

In 2024 I travelled to Denmark to learn from Anne Mette Hjornholm where I realised a long-held dream to recreate a frame basket using techniques that were unique to the Angus coastline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since then I’ve been developing ways to bring this lost tradition back into use through both making and teaching, and hope to inspire others to rediscover its place in modern-day basketry.

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Katy Bremer is a Fife-based basket maker and artist who blends a background in contemporary art with a deep respect for traditional heritage and design. Having trained with some of the UK’s leading master weavers, her work ranges from practical, sturdy bottle carriers to ambitious 7ft willow sculptures, with a particular passion for mask-making.

In her workshops, Katy encourages students to embrace the experimental. She focuses on providing the solid skills needed to start a basket, while giving you the permission to play with texture, colour, and form. As a reenactor of living medieval history, she delights in the interplay between ancient heritage and modern, unconventional making.

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I am based in Blanefield, Stirlingshire, weaving in a yurt at the foot of the Campsie hills. My work is centred around connecting with the ancient roots of basketry. This means foraging for materials in my local landscape, growing my own willow, and weaving baskets based on or inspired by historic designs but with contemporary lifestyles in mind. I am largely self-taught but have had tuition from Anna Liebmann, Virgil Bauzys and, more recently, yeoman basketmaker John Cowan. Teaching is also an important part of my practice, and one which I find inspiring and energising. For me, loads of the joy of being a basket-maker is getting to pass on traditional skills and see people's faces light up as they discover or deepen their knowledge of this ancient craft. This is especially the case when teaching the Celtic back creel, which is one of my favourite baskets.

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Anna is a basketweaver who lives and works by the sea in Edinburgh, Scotland. Nature and history pass through Anna’s hands as she weaves using willow she grows, cuts, sorts and prepares herself. She also uses willow that was grown elsewhere in Scotland organically or conventionally in Somerset. Anna grows eight types of willow in the patch, of different colours, hues and elasticity. Some of them are stout, making them ideal for a basket’s skeleton. Others are long and slender, and can be woven in and out of small spaces. Anna aims to contrast the dappled hues of the different willow barks within her work. Through the year, particularly as she is creating baskets and forms using her home grown willow, the affection for the material carries on through the work.

Anna started weaving in her late twenties. She grows a lot of her own willow in Lanarkshire, and is a land partner at Lauriston Farm in Edinburgh where she is planting new willow patches. Anna is a member of the Scottish Basketmakers’ Circle, Heritage Crafts Association, the Basketmakers Association and is certified with Scottish Working Wood.

Aurore is a basketmaker originally from France who is living on a croft in Skerray on the North coast with her husband Al. She grows willow on the croft and also uses occasional foraged materials. When she is not making baskets she can be found in her veg patch, catching up with members of her community or wandering in the woods.

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With qualifications in both gardening and arboriculture to his name, Paul is a skilled green woodworker and trainer with twenty years’ hands-on experience across a range of sectors.  As a founder and director of woodland groups, Paul combines his knowledge of rural practices with his interest in social wellbeing to help build stronger, more connected communities.

Never comfortable without a project on hand and a tool with which to shape it, Paul’s practical nature and love of the outdoors continuously drives his workshops in creative new directions.  He aims to continue passing on traditional green woodworking skills to anyone in earshot, inspiring and empowering the next generation of Scottish forestry workers.

Paul is committed to restore hazel coppicing across Scotland and reinvigorate coppice crafts.

Craig has been a green woodworker for the last decade or so, after he fell in love with the fact that with a few relatively basic tools and a fallen branch you can create a decorative or useful object that will be used and admired for a lifetime. Craig works at Green Aspirations delivering mental health programmes, skills workshops and our kids holiday club, all of which have encouraged him to explore more crafts. He started weaving with willow around two years ago, and has built this into his teaching repertoire, aimed at teaching beginners of all ages the basic techniques to get them started.

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Jo is one of the directors of Green Aspirations, looking after the day-to-day operations as well as charcoal production. In 2024, Jo trained as a blacksmith, completing the City & Guilds in Forgework and, since then, has been offering a range of workshops using traditional tools and techniques, including forging using charcoal made on site. The focus has been on developing engaging workshops where beginners and hobbyists can learn and hone techniques that can be used on a range of projects, to make blacksmithing more widely accessible. At the event, Jo will offer short workshops making bodkins.