Sculptural Weaving and Basketry - Retreat & Workshop
My love for natural fibres and basketry stems from what I did before I moved to France.
I used to have an urban flower farm in L.A.. I grew all kinds of pretty flowers, grasses and delicate wispy things. It's how I developed a loving fascination for hand-crafted “utilitaria” (I made that word up).
Flowers look more beautiful around anything handmade. It’s a symbiotic relationship. And I needed useful things to carry and display my flowers. But I always wanted them to be handmade.
Sidebar: That's how I came to collaborate with artisans like Beth Katz at Mount Washington Pottery. She made me custom vases. Claudio Banzer welded steel holders for me.
Finally, I Weave.
As I said, I've always loved fibres and weaving. But if you’ve ever worked on or owned a flower farm, you know it’s pretty intensive work. There's little time for pursuing hobbies. So I never tried basketry or any type of natural fibre craft.
Until I moved to France.
I took a basketry class and loved it. I visited the teacher’s atelier and she took me to one of France’s last basketry cooperatives in nearby Villaines-les-Rochers.
Hermès commissions this very same co-op to make handbags, trays and other luxury items. I love that they do that.
Some of the items retail for tens of thousands of euros. I found an Hermès 2011 preloved wicker Kelly 20 bag for 98,000€ online. Yeah. No kidding.
Basketry Workshop Retreat
After my foray into basketry, I decided to create a 10-day retreat/workshop around it. Makes total sense to me.
Mill on the Rock's retreats are all about guests disconnecting, relaxing and recharging. And our makers workshop retreats do exactly that. You work with your hands, spend time in nature and experience new things. A curated layer cake of workshops, chilling and sight-seeing.
Btw, one of the day trips includes visiting the Villaines-les-Rochers cooperative that produces for Hermès. And we stop at the fabulous Château d'Azay-le-Rideau on the way.
Is Working with your Hands Relaxing?
Not everyone’s idea of relaxing involves a pool or a beach. I mean, I find gardening meditative. So to me, it’s not a far stretch to imagine that basket weaving and working with your hands achieves the same result.
Myriam Roux agrees.
Myriam is a well-known natural fibre artist who's teaching our basketry retreat from May 9 - 19, 2022.
“There’s a focused concentration when you work with your hands," she says. "You go quiet. It’s technical work - more so than you think. So you have to concentrate. Your fingers can hurt sometimes at the end of the day. But my students are always astonished by what they end up creating. It's incredibly rewarding.”
During the 10-day workshop retreat, Myriam spends 33 hours teaching different weaving techniques. Every day you make something new. She adapts to beginners and more experienced weavers.
The lessons take place over 5.5 days and involve a variety of plant materials - many foraged. Myriam's favorites: brambles, chestnut, willow, bark, clematis, anything she can weave.
When she works with willow, Myriam prefers it freshly cut. The colors are more vivid. There are over 150 types of willow in color categories such as "blue", red, yellow, orange, brown, black and green.
Who is Myriam Roux?
Myriam specializes in creating installations both permanent and temporary, living and still. Most of her work is in the Vendée.
She began willow basketry in 2000, learning traditional weaving techniques from elders. Elders aren't teachers per se. They share information because the craft is in their blood. Handing down knowledge gained from previous generations is a tradition of the craft.
Elders know their savoir-faire is dying. So Myriam learned from them. Apart from weaving, they also taught her how to prepare the willow, store, cut and sort it. She'd soak up everything they taught her and then go home and practice.
Then she started getting creative. Her curiosity and love for the craft led her on a path of exploration. She learned techniques from Spain and Burkina Faso. She did research and started experimenting with foraged materials, going beyond traditional basket-making.
The more she followed her heart, the more sculptural and aesthetic her work became.
As Myriam's installation work became known, she received more and more commissions and teaching assignments. As she traveled, her tool kit expanded, so she made a leather case to transport them. Today, she’s a teacher and an artist.
Want to immerse yourself in sculptural basketry and natural fibre art? Sign up for the Basket Weaving Workshop May 9 - 19, 2022 with Myriam Roux. This is a rare opportunity to learn from a master. She teaches all levels, so don’t worry if you’ve never done it before.
After learning from her, if you want to go further, there's only one school in France for learning willow and wicker at a certified level of education. It's called the École Nationale D'osiériculture et de Vannerie and it's in Fayl-Billot. This is a little north of Dijon, about 3 hours south east of Paris.
