White Oak Baskets with Tom and Pam Thompson

The White Oak Tree was important to the early Americans, providing wood for such uses as chair building, wooden tools, and baskets, which were a necessity to an Early American family. The baskets were used for unlimited chores, such as gathering eggs, cheese making, shopping, gathering the fruits of the harvest, and for carrying food to the farm animals.

    After the crops were harvested and cold weather set in, many farm families would use their winter months making baskets, as they sat around the fireplace at night. All members of the family participated in pulling oak splints, and in the actual weaving of the baskets.

The Thompsons, like the early American families, go to the woods and select a sapling White Oak which would be suitable for baskets. We split our own saplings, pull our own white oak splints, and weave the splints into baskets.

    The Thompsons use no wire, nails, glue, or molds in our baskets--they are all wood--and are made as they were constructed a hundred years earlier.  Pam and Tom believe in making a quality basket, and put their heart into each basket which they make, taking the time to smooth the strips by scraping them with a knife, as is shown at right by Tom. Over the years, they have been recognized for their quality, rather than by quantity, and also by their innovative creations in the White Oak Basket Building field.  Tom and Pam have also trained their children Alicia 20, and Thomas 18, in the art and craft of White Oak Basketry.  Their children have grown mentally in their basket work, and have found that to have pride in their work, they have to put forth effort in their endeavors.

    When the Thompsons started trying to learn how to make White Oak Baskets, they found that it was almost impossible to find anyone with the knowledge of the old time basket works.  Upon realizing that this was an endangered craft, as well as an art, they began teaching what they had learned to those with a thirst for White Oak Basket making.

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White Oak Baskets, Ole Timey Lye Soap, Corn Husk Dolls, Old Timey Dough Bowls, Bark Berry Baskets, Granny's Crazy Shirts and Bonnets, Ole Timey Sticks & Hoops, and all the advice you ever needed from Storyteller, Uncle Tom.