Norwegian Vedemis Basket with Ty Scheaffer (In-Person)

In this class, you will learn to make a split-wood basket in the traditional style utilized by Norwegian farmers for storing and carrying wood, hay, and wool. Among the steep slopes of Norway, rural people couldn’t afford to cultivate willow or other basketry materials on the limited fertile and flat land where crops could be grown. Instead, they turned to the abundance of the forests. A unique technique was developed to make thin, strong splints from wild willow, hazel, birch, bird cherry, and juniper by ingeniously splitting them with a specialized brake.

You will learn to make splints with both traditional Norwegian and adapted modern techniques from regionally appropriate trees including willow, maple, and ash. Additionally, you will learn about harvesting and processing roots and producing willow skeins for lashing the rim. 

We will have the unique opportunity in this class to study an excellent historical example of a Norwegian split-wood basket from the Vesterheim collection, which will inform the design of our baskets. 

Ty Sheaffer (they, them) is a basket maker, woodworker, and hand tool aficionado. They are passionate about hand-made culture and nonindustrial ways of living, including the basketry traditions of Scandinavia. Ty believes working with materials gathered from the natural world is both a sacred and political act, and has the potential to draw us into more intimate and meaningful relationships with the places we live.

Vesterheim offers a 60% discount for in-person class tuition on a space-available standby basis to any resident living within 50 miles of Vesterheim. Students will be notified about the availability of an opening in the class 21 days before the starting date of the class period. Discounts do not include materials fees. If local area residents want a guaranteed place in a class, they must pay regular class tuition.