Basque ethnography at a glance

Display of baskets. Akaitze Kamiruaga. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

Taking up where we left off in the previous post, we shall proceed to detail certain particulars about the art of basketry in the Basque Country, starting with the selection of raw materials and continuing with the manufacturing technique.

Chestnut was the preferred wood by Basque basketmakers, other types of trees being also used, depending on the piece. For instance: ash was more suitable for weaving chair seats, alder and pine for chair legs, and labrusca or wild grapevine —known as txori-mahatsa, literally ‘bird grape’— for fish traps.

Former generations of basketmakers in Bizkaia, and more particularly in Lezama and Mungia, were provided with trees from neighbouring woods; in the days of our informants, however, they travelled to locations in Gipuzkoa, such as Azkoitia, Beasain, and others, for their raw material: namely, eight-to-ten-year-old chestnut shoots, no matter how straight or warped, but unfailingly free of knots, and harvested with a waning moon in winter.

The poles —gaztaina-paluak or egur-paluak— were submerged in water, organized by length and thickness, and soaked for two to three years. Next they were introduced in the oven, on some iron supports, and kept there for hours until the wood softened, thus avoiding splintering.

After removing them from the oven, each stick would first be divided in two using a hatchet, or aihotza, and a small hoe. Each half would then be divided again into various rods, called zimintzak, with the help of a foot.

Determined by the part of the branch it proceeded from, the resulting strip of wood, once duly shaved on the bench, or horse, with a drawknife —lantzeko kutxilloa—, served different uses and received different names: plantoiak ‘spokes, rods’, josgarriak ‘weavers’ or zotzak ‘smaller strips’.

Elgezabal brothers. Akaitze Kamiruaga. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

A basket is built from the ground up. Its base or bottom —azpikaldea or eperdia— is made by weaving a series of spokes together; strips from the inner part of the branch, which are the broadest, most flexible and resistant, are used for that. The sides of the basket, aldamenak, are formed by interweaving narrower and more rigid weavers over and under the long spokes, to reach the desired height.

The ends of the spokes are woven in and out of each other to finish the top edge of the basket with a thin rim made out of chestnut, named karela, and turned down into the inside with an awl. A pair of handles can be threaded on into the sides of the basket if necessary.

The whole process of manufacturing a basket, from the sourcing of materials in the mountain to the selling of the end product, is accomplished by the artisan himself, usually without intermediaries and maintaining direct contact with the client.

Baskets and basketmakers have been relegated to oblivion, but their memory lives on, resurging in unexpected and surprising ways, as evidenced by an old Basque saying — Zaran bat dagianak, bi dai—, and its Spanish equivalent —El que hace un cesto hace ciento—. Indeed, if you know how to do a certain task once, you can do it again, and you might do it again, in a pejorative sense, that is: Once a thief, always a thief.

To conclude, here follows a popular verse which praises the skill of the basketmaker to make a living out of his craft:

Errementari baino
hoba da zesteru,
lepo bete egurregaz,
kolko bete diru.

(Better than a blacksmith / to be a basketmaker, / for he only needs a load of wood / to stuff his purse with money.)

Akaitze Kamiruaga – Cultural Popular Heritage Department – Labayru Fundazioa

Translated by Jaione Bilbao – Ethnography Department – Labayru Fundazioa

The above-mentioned are field data gathered by the author; we shall likewise mention, as further references, La cestería del castaño en Durangaldea. Juan Unzueta [The weaving of chestnut wood strips in the region of Durango] by Xabier Amoros, edited by Arbaso (Association for the Promotion of Traditional Basque Basketry), Durango, 1998; and a remarkable research work on “Basketry in the Basque Country” presented by Karmele Goñi in a conference on ethnography celebrated in Portugal in 1966.