69/26

Southport boat,

This basket is a ‘Southport boat’, a basket designed originally for marketing butter and eggs. It is a rectangular basket, with a lid, made of buff willow on a frame of ash spelk and with an ash spelk handle. The Southport boat was designed in 1830 by Mr Cobham of Mawdesley and the manufacture was developed by Thomas Cowley, a local basketmaking firm.

1 basket: willow, ash

'This is one of the few baskets to which we can give date and inventor, but because a basket cannot be patented and the design was first-class, the Southport boat has been copied all over the world. Few people today, however, know that it originally had a lid and a band of ash spale running underneath from end to end. // The basket was designed about 1830 by Mr Cobham of Mawdesley, a few miles from Southport in Lancashire. It was taken partly from the Morecambe Bay cockle basket and from other ribbed baskets made by gypsies in the area. The manufacture was developed by a local basketmaking firm, Thomas Cowley, whose men made it in all sizes. The willows were always buffed and there is a tradition that the famous local osier known as Dicky Meadowes, a variety of Salix purpurea, was the only willow that would make it. Since some ‘boats’ were large enough for a child to sit in (for advertisement) this is not likely, but the little willows must have been excellent for the smaller ones, some so tiny that they had to be finished off with a crochet hook. // The handle and the band were made of ash, boiled and then cut thin with a cleaver or billhook. This made the ‘boat’ a great weight-carrier, designed originally for taking butt or eggs to market. // Other baskets made in Mawdesley on the ‘boat’ principle include clothes whiskets, butchers’ baskets, satchel boats and round boats for shopping. The principle itself is peculiar neither to Mawdesley nor to Britain, but there is no doubt that it was never better applied than in Lancashire.’ (Wright, Dorothy. ‘The Complete Book of Basketry’. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1992. p.120), The basket was displayed in an exhibition at MERL in January 1969, Catalogue No. 157., MERL 'Handwritten catalogue' form – ‘BASKET (Southport boat) // 69/26 // … // (BASKET EXHIBITION JAN. 1960 Cat. No. 157)

1830 - 1969

Basket, butter, Basket, egg

Wood, ash, Wood, willow