Lorna Singleton makes beautiful oak or hazel spelk baskets using traditional swill basketry methods. She hand-crafts her baskets from Lake District timber grown in the woodland she manages, nestled in the Rusland Valley between Coniston Water and Windermere.
Lorna grew up in the Lake District, and was drawn back to basket-making after a three-year apprenticeship in coppicing and woodland crafts with the Bill Hogarth MBE Memorial Apprenticeship Trust. Lorna’s innovation has been applying traditional basketry styles to oak – creating a finer finish, while ensuring her baskets are still incredibly durable. Hand-crafting baskets in this way is hugely labour-intensive, as Lorna harvests her own raw materials as well as creating the final products.
Lorna sustainably manages her woodland through coppicing, which cycles through parts of the woodland in 25-year cycles. As one of only two full-time weavers left in the Lake District, Lorna’s passion for her raw materials and for the Cumbrian landscape is evident in each product. To purchase one of Lorna’s baskets is to purchase a piece of Cumbrian heritage, which can be used and passed down through generations.
