Good morning and we hope you are enjoying a good start to the week! Tumbleweeds blow down Columbia Road and we miss you!
And just a reminder: you can still order on our website and have things shipped from our warehouse in Bristol.
In the meantime, we thought you might be interested in learning a little more about our coloured baskets.
We originally began selling baskets in 2006, when Tom saw some he liked in a gallery in San Miguel de Allende, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. They were made of polythene and galvanised wire, in bright colours and stripes, and came in a range of shapes and sizes: wide, handled ironing baskets, lidded laundry baskets, or very modern, tapered wastepaper baskets. He’d never seen anything like them before in Mexico. Tracing them back to source, he discovered that they were made in the workshop of San Miguel’s prison.
In Mexico, basket-making has been a prison industry for some time, undertaken by male prisoners to give give themselves a better quality of life while imprisoned, and to help support the families that they have left behind. Often, the families of incarcerated men buy the materials for the baskets, take them into the prisons, and then pick up the finished baskets to then sell back to the people who supplied the materials! (This is how Milagros acquires the somewhat more traditional, woven plastic shopping baskets (“canastas de abuelas”) in Oaxaca.) All the baskets are completely handmade, adapting the traditional techniques of split cane weaving to the more modern materials of polythene fibre and galvanised wire. To make these baskets well – with a tight, even weave and a regular shape – requires a great deal of skill. Many prisoners learn how to make baskets while in prison and find it is a useful skill to have upon their release, when their criminal record might otherwise inhibit them finding new employment. The best basket-makers are often long-term prisoners who have had time to learn the craft.
This system of prison workshops is distinct from the prison labour of the United States’ private prisons. The Mexican prison workshop system is set up to assist the incarcerated with learning new skills and having an income over the course of their sentence.
Originally, Tom was introduced to Nivardo Rocha by the prison workshop manager. For 10 years, until Nivardo was released in 2016, Tom worked directly with him in the prison, driving the materials in himself and picking up the finished baskets. These days this is managed on our behalf by the family-run packing/shipping business we work with in San Miguel, La Union.
Following Nivardo’s release, Milagros continued to work with him. When the orders were too large for him to handle in his workshop, he collaborated with prison inmates to make them. Sadly, Nivardo had a severe stroke at the beginning of this year, and died just over a month ago. Alvaro Patiño has now taken over the basket-making operation: Alvaro was Nivardo’s star apprentice in the prison and they worked together on Milagros orders for many years. Alvaro was released at the end of last year and Milagros is now helping him set up a workshop in the community where his family live.
And, in an unexpected and rather happy turn of events, our baskets caught the eye of Philippe Starck, French architect and lead designer of Mama Shelter hotels. Working with Mama Shelter , Milagros has made basket trays for a number of their hotels, including those in Istanbul, Belgrade, Los Angeles and most recently Luxembourg (the Luxembourg hotel having just opened at the beginning of 2020 – we wish them luck in these tough times!). Milagros has also worked for many years with Wahaca producing bespoke oval taco baskets for their restaurants (one to bear in mind when we’re all allowed out again!).
We hope you are all safe and well.
Buena Salud,
Milagros
