Stowe Basketry Festival

June 7-13, 2010

Following right on the heels of the post about my experience with Russian birch bark basketmaker Vladimir Yarish, comes the notice that Cass Schorsch, our American birch bark basketmaker, author and techer is retiring!

I don’t know how many of you subscribe to the various basketmaker newsletters from cane and basket suppliers and/or basket guilds or basketry schools, but I subscribe to a lot.

When I get these newsletters I comb through all of them and then post the relevant information about classes, exhibits and such to the Events Calendar of my domain website, WickerWoman.com.

So, as I was reading through Merry Vigneau’s Stowe Basketry email newsletter this morning and reading about her upcoming  Stowe Basketry Festival , I noticed the blurb that Cass was retiring! And that her three birch bark basket classes at Stowe would be the last time students would see her there!

I had the pleasure of taking a contemporary dyed and smoked rattan reed and bark class from Cass way back in the 1990s. The Iowa Basketweavers Guild offered a workshop and it was held at the Amana Colonies in Amana, Iowa. I still have that first bark basket that I made with her, although it’s packed away so I can’t show you a picture of it.

And I also have just about every basketry book she’s ever been published in. What a treasure Cass Schorsch has been to the basketry community for all these years. We’ll sure miss you Cass!

So get your reservation in if you’d like to experience weaving birch bark baskets with Cass. And don’t miss the other terrific line-up of teachers including Keilo Takeda from Tokyo, Japan with her new Eco-Craft paper strips, Jeremy Mitchell, Flo Hoppe, Karen Woods, Mary Smith-Stokes, Dianne Stanton, Deanna Savoy, Wendy Durfey and John Excell from England with a chair caning class.

Happy Weaving Everyone!
Enjoy the Stowe Basketry Festival.

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