Caring for handwoven baskets

A woven basket is a bundle of dried plant fibre held in tension. It responds to the room the way a wooden instrument does: it takes on moisture, gives it back, and slowly settles into whatever shape you keep it in. Most damage people do to baskets is done with good intentions and water.

Cleaning, in order of how often you should do it

1. Dust it. A dry soft brush, weekly if it is out in the open. This is ninety per cent of basket care and almost nobody does it.

2. Vacuum it. Low suction, through a piece of muslin or a screen held over the nozzle so nothing loose gets pulled off. Monthly is plenty.

3. Wipe it. A barely damp cloth, wrung until it feels almost dry, then an immediate dry cloth behind it. Twice a year at most.

4. Never submerge it. Soaking swells the core, loosens every stitch as it dries unevenly, and lifts dye out of coloured fibre. A soaked basket rarely comes back.

Light is what actually kills them

Direct sun does two things at once: it bleaches dyed fibre unevenly, and it drives moisture out of the core until the fibres go brittle and start to snap under their own tension. A basket in a south-facing window will visibly fade in a season and become fragile within a couple of years. Bright indirect light is fine, indefinitely.

Humidity, and the mould question

Natural fibre wants somewhere between forty and sixty per cent relative humidity — roughly what a comfortable living room is. Below that it embrittles. Above it, and especially with poor airflow, you get mould. If you find a musty smell or grey bloom, take the basket outside on a dry day, brush the surface off in the open air rather than indoors, and let it sit in shade with air moving round it. Do not seal a damp basket in plastic, which is how a small problem becomes a total one.

Reshaping a basket that has gone out of true

A basket that has flattened on one side can usually be persuaded back. Introduce moisture slowly — a lightly steamy bathroom for an hour, not a spray bottle — then pack the inside firmly with soft cloth to hold the shape you want and leave it somewhere with moving air for a day or two. Fibre has a long memory and a short attention span; it will hold the new shape if you give it time to dry into it.

Storage

• Store baskets upright and unstacked, or the ones underneath deform permanently.

• Use cotton or paper, never plastic, if you must cover them.

• Keep them off concrete floors, which wick moisture upward all year round.

Baskets are not fragile. They are just honest — they show you exactly how they have been kept.

Using them, which you should

Baskets are objects made to hold things and they do better in use than in a display cabinet — handling redistributes stress and keeps the fibre supple. There are only three real restrictions.

• Nothing wet, unlined. Fruit, bread and anything that sweats will stain the interior and eventually rot the core. Use a cotton liner, not plastic.

• Nothing heavy and sharp. Point loads push individual stitches out of line permanently.

• Not as a permanent plant pot. Even with a liner, the humidity gradient is relentless. Drop the plant in for a photograph and take it out afterwards.

Dye that runs

Naturally dyed sisal can transfer colour when damp, particularly the darks. Before a coloured basket goes anywhere near a light-coloured surface it cares about, press a damp white cloth against the dyed area for a few seconds and look. If colour comes off, keep it away from painted shelves and upholstery, and never damp-wipe it at all.

Repairs worth attempting

1. A loose end poking out. Do not pull it. Thread it back along the coil with a blunt needle and leave it.

2. A single broken stitch. Stabilise it with a matching fibre or a fine linen thread in the same colour before the neighbouring stitches take up the slack and distort.

3. A separating rim. This is the one to take to someone who weaves. A rim comes apart because the tension behind it has gone, and stitching the visible symptom will not hold.

What a hundred years looks like

Well-kept baskets in museum collections are commonly a century old and still structurally sound. What ages is the colour: the darks warm, the brights soften, and the whole object drifts toward a narrower, gentler range. That is not deterioration. It is the same thing that happens to a good rug, and most people come to prefer it.