Here you can find one-of-a-kind hand-woven vessels and home decors made from completely natural materials - platters, bowls, treasury cases, hanging ornaments, coasters and egg cups: all from wooden sallow/willow wickers created in ethnic Latvian handcraft technique - root-weaving. 

I am open for custom orders and can make a woven specially for you. You can take a look in sold items to get the ideas for your special item, but please remember, that owing to natural materials, your woven may slightly differ from sample in picture by coloring and size.

Enjoy the nature colors! Make your lifestyle more eco-friendly! 

TECHNIQUE:

This method of wicker-works is based on root weaving manner. It is more time-consuming than others for its way of preparing materials and creating the vessel from wooden wickers and strips - the main wicker (barked or un-barked) is coiled with thin wooden strip planed from barked wicker. Each of gradually rising curve is coiled to the previous curve, making different patterns like spirals, criss-cross design, wheat ears, ferns, fish, bones etc. 

Wickers for sewing are split into 4 parts and then sliced by pulling them through the hand-plane: small and very sharp bladed tool. In almost every step wickers and strips must be soaken to keep flexibility and avoid breakage.

MATERIALS:

In general I collect all materials before forest bursts into leaf. I love these long walks around dunes and forest glades together with my four-legged companion. That is one of my favorite parts in this handcraft – to be so close to nature and to bring home that wonderful smell of wood and moss.

That’s amazing, that wickers collected from one bush in different season will differ in color. Wicker coloring also depends from how long material is soaked before weaving. Soaking into water is necessary to avoid main wicker breaking. Therefore that is slightly difficult to make two or more identical in color items.

To make my designs more expressive, in few works I use strips which are dyed in the same manner as home textiles or wool is dyed - by natural substances like wood peel or floral decoction, though my woven is pure eco-friendly and natural product. But in common I like to play with natural wood color brought by willow, shadberry, plum or different type of sallow (there are more than 200 of sallow subtypes here in Latvia).