Jenny Crisp is describing the hairlike flagella sprouting from a huge model of a salmonella pathogen she wove for sculptor Angela Palmer, for a recent exhibition about the six deadliest viruses at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The effect involved splitting only a portion of each willow rod into ribbons. “We had never seen anyone do that before,” she says.
It’s perhaps not the most typical of Crisp’s woven work, but it illustrates its ambition and scope. From a converted pig unit in the Worcestershire countryside, Crisp and her daughter Issy Wilkes work as Willow with Roots. Together, they are shedding new light on woven willow, stretching a venerable craft to make distinctive, sculptural lampshades and homewares.
Crisp has a deep understanding of the material, honed over 40 years’ experience growing willow and practising, writing about and teaching basket making. Wilkes adds a dramatic element that comes from her previous work in theatre design and set making.
The first commission they worked on together was in 2018 — a set of seven lampshades to hang above diners at the Michelin-starred Pensons restaurant near their farmyard studio on the Netherwood Estate. Six of them shared the same 3.5ft-long gourd-shaped form but with colour variations and eccentricities in the weaving. The final one was a sinuous 39ft woven helictical band winding around a cluster of pendant bulbs.
These set the pattern for the combination of ambition and meticulous making that sets the pair’s work apart. They take pleasure in challenging expectations of weaving, both in scale — evidenced by their 7ft-tall spherical garden pods — and in trying novel variations on old techniques.
The best illuminance for a space remains a clear goal. “You can have big, open shades that throw all the shadows up on the ceiling,” says Wilkes. “But if you use white or buff willow, and your weaving is tight and your bulb dim, you get a soft glow.”
The pair grow almost all their own willow less than 10 miles from the studio, at Wilkes’s partner’s family farm in the Teme Valley. On a fold in the land, sheep graze between the apple trees on the west-facing slopes. Below, vertical stands of slender willow are tightly planted around a sequence of run-off ponds filtering waste water from cider making. The bright yellow of a bed of Dicky Meadows willow pops against the deep red stripe of Nancy Saunders. The rods, which can grow up to 14ft in a year, must be cut before the spring brings them back into bud, sorted for length and dried.
The sustainability and traceability of their feedstock is the decor equivalent of farm-to-fork food production. “Woven materials are part of the zeitgeist of how we dress our houses now, in an eco, green way,” says Wilkes. “But there’s a whole journey there; a journey in how you keep a willow crop alive throughout the year, a journey of how you prepare that willow to weave it for your basket or lampshade.”
Prices start from £500; commissions take from 12 weeks to 12 months; willowwithroots.co.uk
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