For most of human history, the woven basket was among the most essential objects in daily life. Before the arrival of cheap plastic containers, baskets carried grain from the threshing floor, fish from the boat, and infants from the hearth to the field. Their materials - willow, hazel, rush, bamboo, pine root - reflected whatever grew locally, and their shapes reflected whatever needed to be carried. Yet in the course of the twentieth century the craft very nearly disappeared. By 1970, the number of working basket-makers in the United Kingdom had fallen to fewer than forty, and the situation across most of industrialised Europe was equally bleak.

The decline followed a predictable pattern. Once plastic crates became cheaper than handmade baskets, the rural workshops that had supplied farms and fisheries went out of business. The older generation of weavers retired without finding apprentices, and the knowledge of which willow cultivar was best for which purpose - information that was rarely written down - began to disappear with them. Museums collected the finished objects but seldom the skills that made them, and academic researchers tended to overlook basketry in favour of more visually striking crafts such as pottery and weaving on the loom.

The first signs of revival appeared in the 1980s, and they came from an unexpected source. Environmental organisations looking for sustainable alternatives to plastic began to commission baskets for picnic sets, garden equipment, and packaging. At about the same time, a small number of weavers from Japan and Korea began touring European craft centres, demonstrating techniques that were so different from those of the local tradition that they attracted attention beyond the usual craft audience. The British basket-maker Joanna Wright, who spent a year studying bamboo basketry in Kyoto, wrote an influential article arguing that the crafts of different regions should be treated as related branches of a single worldwide tradition rather than as isolated folk survivals.

Wright's arguments were taken up by a new generation of practitioners who combined respect for traditional methods with a willingness to use non-traditional materials. Their baskets were no longer strictly functional objects but often served as sculptural works for galleries and public spaces. Critics have sometimes complained that this shift has severed the link between basketry and the everyday life it once supported. In response, Wright has pointed out that many traditional weavers also produced decorative forms for weddings, harvest festivals, and religious offerings, and that the separation between use and ornament is not as clear-cut as it appears.

The revival has also depended on the restoration of raw materials. Willow, the dominant material of European basketry, must be cut annually from beds of coppiced rods. A willow bed that has been neglected for even a decade becomes too tall and coarse for fine work, and re-establishing it requires considerable labour. On the Somerset Levels in south-west England, a regional heritage trust has brought more than fifty hectares of willow beds back into productive use since 1995, supplying both local weavers and specialist buyers overseas. The project has had ecological benefits that were not initially anticipated, including the return of several wetland bird species that favour the particular structure of a managed willow bed.

Teaching is the most difficult problem faced by the craft. Because basket-making relies heavily on the feel of the material, it resists the kind of step-by-step written instruction that works well for, say, carpentry. A weaver must learn to judge the moisture content of a rod by bending it in the hand, to recognise when a base has been started too narrow or too wide, and to respond to the irregular lengths and thicknesses of natural material. Modern training courses therefore tend to emphasise long hours of practice under direct supervision. The Welsh weaver Dafydd Llewelyn has argued that no apprenticeship of less than three years can produce a reliably competent maker, though short introductory courses can usefully acquaint amateurs with the basic techniques.

The current state of the craft is unusual. Commercial demand remains limited, and few basket-makers can support themselves by sale of baskets alone. At the same time, the number of active weavers in the United Kingdom has risen from fewer than forty in 1970 to more than four hundred in 2022, and comparable recoveries have been documented in France, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries. Many of the new practitioners combine weaving with teaching, writing, or related design work, and the most successful workshops now operate as small schools as well as producing studios. Whether this model can survive the retirement of the present generation is the open question.

Wright has drawn a comparison with traditional sailing, which passed through a similar decline in the mid-twentieth century before re-emerging as a living skill supported by enthusiasts and preservation societies rather than by commercial shipping. The analogy is not perfect - baskets cannot be used for regattas - but it captures the way that a craft once valued for its utility may find a second life through its cultural meaning. The baskets of the twenty-first century will rarely carry fish or grain, but they may carry something equally important: a direct, physical link to a way of working with natural materials that industrial civilisation came close to losing.