Willow Shopping Baskets

Shopping baskets used to be a familiar sight on the high street of every small town.  Now we’re more used to pushing shopping trolleys down the supermarket isle and we find them being used as a picnic basket or knitting basket or as a decorative kitchen item overflowing with dried flowers.

If you don’t see exactly what you need, we also custom make baskets so get in touch via WhatsApp using the chat with us button below or email us 

 There are several traditional weaves available to the basketmaker.  For our shopping baskets, we mainly use randed weave and slewed weave.

Both weaves make a good durable basket.  Randed weave gives a finer finish – slewed weave a more chunky finish.  Most of the shopping baskets above are made using randed weave. Only the Ashfield Shopping Basket is made using slewed weave.

Interestingly slewed weave seems to be the invention of British basketmakers; it’s not often found in baskets made elsewhere (though we haven’t done extensive research).  It is quicker to make the basket with slewed weave, especially with large baskets, so perhaps when time became money, the British basketmaking industry moved to a faster way of constructing a basket.