Clyde Jenkins, Basketmaker


Sunlight peeks in the wooden farm outbuilding in the Shenandoah Valley where I find Clyde Jenkins, white oak basketmaker for Colonial Williamsburg. Weaving his splits of wood, there are calluses on top of his sore hands and scars are everywhere but his smile is infectious as he sits and “works the wood.”

“Every tree is different,” he tells me. “It has to be grown just right to become a basket.” White oaks, free from knots, about 10 inches in diameter are what he seeks – hundreds a year to make his literally thousands of baskets – just he and brother Jim, in his tiny shed… the ceiling covered with hanging baskets of all shapes and sizes.

He doesn’t like to “fight” the wood. It’s more like “what the wood will let you do.” Every tree is different and he makes whatever the tree allows. Trees work differently from one side to the next. Some trees are good
for splits (the body of the basket – strips), others, only for rims and handles.

“A blind person could tell what is inside a tree if they learned how to feel the bark – soft, flaky bark is just right. If it grows nice and slow the bark has fine flakes.”

You have to work it green and there is only a limited window of time to work it once it’s split apart. This isn’t just a craft but a lost art.

Even though Clyde learned to make the baskets as a child, this stonemason by trade only decided to take the plunge and go into full time 12 years ago. He made an entire truckload of the very hardest baskets and drove them to Williamsburg’s museum, requesting an appointment. They were extremely impressed, and he got the contract.

He doesn’t just “stand by his work” but stands on it to prove its strength and durability!

Clyde teaches the art of split white oak basket weaving in Luray, Va. and at Big Meadows and Skyland in the Shenandoah National Park.


—Cindy Ross

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