“I’m waiting for a snake to come up out of there,” the man said as I hauled my outlandishly large straw basket from one room to another at the auction house. I had just won the bid for this basket – and was outbid on several other beautiful ones – a few minutes before.
The man was kidding, but he was pulling from memory the image of an Indian snake charmer coaxing a cobra from a straw basket with the sound of the music from his flute.
This man, however, was not the only one amused by my basket, which I hoisted over my head and everyone else’s because the crowd was too thick for me to carry it low. Because of that, eyes fixed on this overhead display as I made my way to the next room.
“You could send a baby down river in that,” another man said, referring to the Biblical story of the baby Moses.
That’s the way it went on a Sunday morning when throngs of people came out to buy or just get out of the house (I didn’t have anything else to do, two auction-goers actually told me) hours before they’d be sitting in front of their TVs watching the Super Bowl. It was also a nice day to spend a few hours at an auction with harsh weather in the forecast.
The big basket was one of several on a table in the box-lot room at the auction house, an unusual spot because they were obviously well made and would likely have gotten higher bids in the second-best room. Box lots usually go for only a few bucks; most of the items are tchotchkes that aren’t likely to produce much income.
But here were the baskets, big and small, long and short; some tightly woven, others not. The loveliest of them were a lot of four baskets: a huge utility/laundry basket with three oval trays inside. I was outbid on those, and someone pointed out later that one of the handles was broken on the large basket. I had totally missed it.
“They probably would have gone for more if it wasn’t for that,” he said. I had checked out the price of the laundry basket on eBay, and someone had paid $319 for an undamaged one.
These were Nantucket baskets, which evolved from splint baskets made by Native Americans in the early 1800s, and are similar to farm baskets with wooden bases made in New Hampshire. By the 1830s they were being made as lightship baskets used on whaling ships, incorporating the elements of the earlier baskets.
At auction, I previewed the baskets before the sale, turning them over to look for a maker’s name. The bottom held a paper label: Designed in Hancock, NH. Handwoven in Suzhou, China.
The baskets were made by a company called Hancock Baskets. It was founded in 1984 by Heather Dalrymple, a counselor who wanted to be a stay-at-home mother with her daughter, according to the company website. Her peanut basket, with a side to hold peanuts and another to hold the shells, was an instant hit.
The demand for her baskets was so high that she sought her father’s help to branch overseas, where her baskets are made. The basket I bought was made in a town in eastern China, not far from Shanghai. Pronounced “Soochow,” it is a tourist destination known for its silk and Song brocade, its sandlewood fans, and especially its gardens.
I found my basket on the Hancock website in the Shaker category, where it was called a kettle basket because it looked like a large cooking kettle with a swing handle. The company noted that it could be used for kindling, floor pillows and toys.
This basket was my second choice. I wasn’t sure how I’d use it, but I just wanted it in my house. I have a thing for baskets and old wooden boxes. I have two woven half-moon baskets that I bought years ago at a shop in New England, and a few boxes on my porch, two of which hold firewood.
I tend to bid on the wooden boxes – which usually bear some advertising on the sides – quite often. Like the baskets, they are very popular among auction-goers, and I usually lose out on the bidding.
