Nantucket Lightship Basket

The earliest form of basket made by white settlers on Nantucket, originated on whaleships in the early 1800s.

The utilization of rattan in basket making is most likely due to whalers picking up the material while sailing in the South Pacific.

The first Lightship Station on the Nantucket Island Shoal was established in June 1854 and crewed by six men.

The first purse style basket with a lid was made by Lightship Captain Charles Ray (1798–1884), and is relatively similar to the type sold today.

According to the Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum, some of these early Lightship Basket makers included: “Captain Davis Hall, Captain Andrew Sandsbury, Roland Folger, Thomas W. Barrallay, William D. Appleton, George W. Ray, Charles F. Ray, Joe Fisher, Charlie Sylvia, SB Raymond and Isaac Hamblin.”[6] Lightship Baskets stopped being made on board the Nantucket lightships in 1900, when the government stopped allowing crewmembers to spend time doing so.

Charlie Sayles, Sr. is credited with creating the original Ivory Whale adornment for a basket top in the 1940s, a practice that is ubiquitous today.

True Nantucket Lightship baskets currently start at about $500 and can cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Due to this fact they tend to be less common than round or oval baskets, but are still seen relatively frequently.

Astronaut Daniel W. Bursch wove a set of miniature nesting baskets while at the International Space Station.

Poorly made fake lightship baskets are produced in China and sell for often as little as a hundred dollars.

These fake baskets are made on an assembly line and utilize plastic rather than ivory as well as lower quality hollow wood.

[8] Lightship Baskets are woven from the bottom to the top and start with a solid wooden base that has a groove cut around the outside.

The base is carved, sanded, and polished then attached to the top of a solid wood mould.

At the beginning it is more difficult as the stave must be carefully pulled from the rubber band and re-inserted without damage.

At this point a handle (if used) can be attached by riveting directly to the rim, or to a wooden ear, which would have been inserted during weaving as a type of stave.