Bread Basket

Size: 24" x 24"

A gift to my son Adrian and his wife Leah

A few years ago, an elderly neighbor invited me to join the class in caning that she taught at the Ashland Community Center for seniors (I'm not there yet, age-wise, but they let me come!) and I brought the chair that I wanted to repair, only to find that it required a different technique. So instead of working on my chair, I scavenged the pieces that the others were cutting out from theirs, and eventually made use of a piece that told me "I am a bread basket!"

The bread slices are like small pillows, then I added the bread sticks -- tubes of fabric that I had made originally to be tree trunks! I originally pictured the basket as sitting on a table which would come out of the background, with a table and fine tablecloth. But, you don't put a bread basket on a table corner, and I just couldn't find my fine tablecloth material. What I did finally locate was a square made for needlepoint, with a lovely lace edge. And when I put the two together, it wasn't as a tablecloth but a simple background, simple and elegant!

On a sad note, Grace Bunker, the teacher of the caning class, passed away the following summer, and never saw this work. Grace, this collage is dedicated to your memory.