Basket Weaver

Michael Schofield

My Philosophy...
I view basketmaking and other traditional crafts as practices that can weave people back into the more-than-human world. I believe echos of these relationships and practices still reside in all of us on some level. I love playing my small part in facilitating a reconnection to this heritage.
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My Story...
I am a plant tender, willow farmer, and weaver of baskets and caskets based in Dexter, Michigan. I stumbled upon wicker basketry while touring green burial cemeteries with a family member preplanning their eventual funeral. I saw a photo of a willow casket at one of the cemeteries we visited, and suddenly found myself strongly pulled to learn to weave one of these gorgeous baskets for my loved one. What followed was a bit of a quirky mutli-year journey involving a forever growing collection of out-of-print text books, long road trips for rather hard-to-find in-person learning opportunities, and finally an amazing apprenticeship with an established funerary artisan. We finally gathered as a family in the Autumn of 2023 to collectively weave the casket that began my basketry journey. It is being utilized as a rather gorgeous but eccentric bookshelf until it's time to return to the soil.

Outside of basketmaking and growing willow, I have a deep love of other plants with longstanding relationships with humankind. I grow many such plants on our farmstead and enjoy trying to better understand their history in food, medicine, craft, and beyond. I always grow extra to share each season at markets and gatherings around our wider area.

More recently, I've also begun weaving my love of ethnobotany into invasive species management and land stewardship. I think reestablishing relationships with these overabundant and controversial plant species can improve ecosystem health, deepen our relationship with the living world, and make a lot of crafts more easily accessible.