Galego | English

Non fiction

Cestería de los pueblos de Galicia

By Carlos Fontales

About this book

Basket making in Galician villages and towns is the basis for this study, in which three aspects are analysed:

  • First, to explain the environment in which this activity was traditionally undertaken;
  • Second, to report the type of baskets and the materials used in them;
  • Third, to present models of baskets and objects produced and to describe the most important production techniques for those objects.

Book fragment

Limiting the use of almost exclusively two types of straw for basket making, wheat and barley, and the methods of “spiral sewing and braiding” is suddenly superseded by the widespread use of a great diversity of species and techniques. Wicker is one of them, but there are others such as wild willow, laburnum, mimosa, myrtle, elm… These are all materials whose structure –they are flexible, stretchable, of different lengths and thicknesses -- facilitates the development of different materials, and though they tend to be simple in rural basket making, they have the capacity to surprise.

Something similar happens with the models – they are designed for daily rural and sea activities, they are only sometimes rejected for tasks such grape collection or the use of grains or flour, due to the characteristics of their mesh that leave gaps, thus making them inappropriate for such tasks.

Related to technical variation, materials and types, as if it was the root of a tree, there is another manifestation that grows towards the inside and yields fruit in the opposite direction, a manifestation that affects especially but not only, poles – recreation.