Willows defy wind at Coopers Creek

Press, 22 August 1989, Page 21

Willows defy wind at Coopers Creek

By

GARRY ARTHUR

(story and photographs)

Most craftspeople have some guru of their craft whom they would dearly love to meet and watch at work. Mike Gillooly, of Coopers Creek, near Oxford, has a whole village of basket-makers in France that he is determined to see some day. For the last four years he has been making every conceivable kind of basket out of willow wands, and the craftsmen he wants to meet now are the basket-makers of Villains, near Tours. When his New Zealand mentor, David Kelly of Wairarapa, visited Villains, all 40 craftsmen turned out to see this curious New Zealander who had travelled half-way around the world to meet them.

It was to David Kelly, now crippled with arthritis, that Mike Gillooly went for instruction inmaking willow furniture as distinct from baskets. “But I had to prove my worth to him first,” he says. He has now started making the typical Villains basket chair, which is based on a circle rather than' the more usual square, and has no “elbows” for resting the arms. There is a couch in the same style, and the design is proving very popular for conservatories.

Willow basketry is a French, and English tradition. In Britain it used to be a trade with a fouryear apprenticeship. About a dozen of the 250 varieties of willow are used for basketry. Mike Gillooly has

planted a small plantation of black willow from Villains on his acre of land at Coopers Creek, but he gets his supplies for basketry from the Cooperite Christian community at Cust, who have five varieties growing on six acres of land.

“I’m tempted to plant more willow,” he says, “but they’re two different trades. I’m happy with the Cust people; they do a good job. I go through a ton and a half a year.” He uses several kinds of willow for different purposes and effects. White willow is willow that has been sripped of its bark in the spring; buff willow (“the French sneer at it”) has been stripped of bark and then boiled for eight hours so that the tannin reaches out of the bark and dyes the wood; brown willow has the bark left on. “You can use two different varieties in the bark for different colours," says Mr Gillooly. “It also gives off a nice scent, like incense, for years after — it will flavour a whole room.”

Mike Gillooly was a postie for 12 years in Christchurch and Wellington, so that he could be a father at home while his wife, Annemarie, went to work. Always keen to work with his hands, he found himself strongly attracted to basketry because of the beauty of the work, the long tradition of the craft, and the durability of willow basketry. They moved from Christchurch to an old cottage at Coopers Creek. The newspapers

behind the wallpaper showed that it began life in 1873. Mike Gillooly has renovated the house, and added to it. He does his basketry in the cool gloom of a small galvanised iron garage. The willow wands have to be kept moist and supple, and out of the sunlight. “A lot of basket-makers are really fat and pallid because they sit all day,” he says. “At Villains, they work in damp, dark caves in the side of hills. Heat and sunlight are the enemies of basketry. On nor’west days the wands will break in 10 minutes. I have to cover them with wet sacks. Because of the fierce nor’westers of the Oxford region, he calls his business Wind Willow. To avoid getting fat and pallid, ■Mike Gillooly goes for a run every day and follows a healthy lifestyle.

English basket workshops are small, with five or six workers each. “A lot closed down after the war because of the appearance of wire baskets' and plastic baskets in place of the willow baskets that had been used on fishing boats and in orchards. They’re coming back now because people want beauty as well as use — form and function.” Mike Gillooly is self-taught. He feels that he has “arrived” now that old-time basket-makers are praising his work when they see him demonstrating and selling his basketry at A. and P. shows throughout Canterbury. “I’ve done it seven days a week for the last four years,” he says. “Days off? No, I feel like it’s a day off when I’m there working. Application and perseverance are the things' when you’re teaching yourself a skill. I feel that I’m a good craftsman;

I’ll be a master when I can do dashboards for antique cars. It’s infinite what you can do in willow — it’s been used for everything from car cases to coffins.” His own range of work falls in between — washing baskets, shoping baskets, pet baskets, hampers, trays, flower trays, Ali Baba laundry baskets, and “Winchesters” to hold half a dozen bottles of wine. Now he is well on the way with furniture, but it was hard to learn the techniques. “The few that know the secrets of furniture won’t tell,” he says. “They’re like the old shoemakers who used to burn their lasts rather than pass them on. You can teach yourself, but there’s no substitute for getting someone to show you who already knows the tricks.” Nearly all of Mike Gillooly’s

basketry is sold at A. and P. shows and country craft fairs. He finds that country people are his best customers; they seem to recognise and appreciate the skills involved. “Old women come up to me at shows and say, ‘Why, that’s the old baker’s basket!’, or the ‘shearer’s basket,” or whatever they recognise from the old days. I did a grocer boy’s bike basket once for the Heron Steam Museum at Rangiora.” Handles are the weak ppint of any basket, Mike Gillooly says. He does this the traditional way, locking them in place with tightly bound wands of willow, and guarantees his work. One of the basic skills, he says, is pinpointing when the willow is right for working. “If you work against willow, it’s hopeless,” he says. “But if you’ve got it nice and mellow, it’s magic.”