Words Deborah Needleman Photography Carlton Davis

Published in No 11

Last summer, Jonathan Kline went into his neighbor’s woods about a ¼ mile from his house in Trumansburg, near Cayuga Lake, and, as he had been for the last 30 years, felled a black ash using a chainsaw. Native to the northeast of North America (found up into Canada and down to about Northern Virginia), black ash is uniquely suited for the kind of wood splint baskets Kline has been making since 1980. That was when he spent a month being introduced to the craft by one of its few practitioners, Newt Washburn, a 4th generation basketmaker in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. At the time, Kline was a classically trained violinist in his 20’s looking for a different way of life. It wasn’t so much about baskets, as about wanting to live with nature and learn to make things with his hands. Anyway, today’s tree, of rare specimen quality, was deep in the woods and as he couldn’t just carry it out, he attached it to a winch on his truck and skidded it out. (Kline used to have a friend with workhorses that skidded the trees from the woods for him, in a far more ye olde fashion.) This tree was large, about 22” in diameter, and he cut it into three 9-foot logs, loaded them onto his truck, and drove home. 

 Years ago, Kline would cut trees as needed, but for the past decade, ashes, once so abundant in wet areas of the Northeast, have been succumbing to the deadly Emerald Ash Borer. Since then, he cuts a few at a time, preserving the ones he can’t get to quickly enough in a neighbor’s pond, so they don’t dry out. 

Today’s haul might yield about a year’s worth of material, lending itself to somewhere between 50 and 75 of Kline’s baskets. This will depend on both the size of the baskets Kline will make and on the life the tree lived. If, over the span of its 75 or so years, there had been periods in which the tree suffered, whether through competition from other trees, drought, or just the decline of vigor at the end of its life, the annual growth rings from those years won’t yield the healthy thick strips of inner wood that make this ash so prized for basketry.

“I’m taking a tree apart, year by year, and then weaving it back together”

Kline left two of the three logs outside his shop and brought one in. He set it on a wooden horse made of crossed pieces of wood, to elevate it. Using a draw knife, Kline set about shaving the bark from the tree, using his body strength to turn the cumbersome log, weighing hundreds of pounds, as he works. This bark, not used in basket making, can be composted or used as mulch. Then using the flat side of a four-pound blacksmith’s cross pein hammer — the same kind Newt Washburn used — he began pounding on the log. This is difficult work and Kline pounds for hours at a time. All ash trees can yield wood splints ‑— strips of wood pried from the inner layers of the tree, lengthwise along its annual growth rings, but black ash is unique in the way that each year’s growth begins to lift up, separating itself when pounded. This is due to a spongy, fibrous layer that separates each year’s growth and which breaks down when pounded, cleanly releasing a length of wood. Each length represents a year of the tree’s life. Kline then pulls these strips of inner layers of wood — in swaths about 2-3” wide — up the length of the entire log. He repeats this process again and again around the log’s circumference. He rolls these lengths into loose coils so that he can access them later. Kline thinks of what he does as, “taking a tree apart, year by year, and then weaving it back together.”

Kline’s work falls into two camps — functional vessels or sculptural work. Some of his pieces, despite their rarely being made or sold for utilitarian purposes, are highly traditional in form. He makes tightly woven baskets like ones once used in this region to collect apples or potatoes and flat, loosely woven trays like those used to dry herbs or tobacco. The two basketry traditions practiced for hundreds of years in this region that Kline has made himself heir to, and which were nearly lost by the early 1980’s, are the Shaker and the Taghkanic. Shaker baskets, while similar to Taghkanic, are more refined looking as they were made as an industry, prizing efficiency and uniformity, distinct from the more one-off look of the Taghkanic work. Kline was especially enamored of the Taghkanic baskets as they only used what material was on hand. “Their baskets fascinated me, especially the simple process of taking a tree and making a thing,” he told me.

Even Kline’s works that are not based in functional forms, but that are purely decorative or artistic in intent, like his long undulating vessels that can reach 5 or 6 feet high or his abstract open form grids meant to hang on walls, are entirely grounded in the techniques and processes of these ancient, local basketry traditions. 

For Kline’s trays and other flat work, he selects knottier, more contoured, or less perfect strips that come from higher up the tree. Often he will want to weave with narrow strips of about 2 inches, and so to cut the original wider lengths, he lays them flat on his bench and, using razor blade cutters, pulls the tool over the surface of the wood, using quite a lot of pressure to work through the wood. These pieces and this work reveal a sense of the material’s history as a tree. “Trees are all quite different. I let the wood express itself in a way,” he says. 

For the rounded basketwork, he uses more highly refined strips of wood. The more detailed the shape of a basket, the thinner the weaving strips must be. The Shaker tradition with these baskets is for the strips to be super smooth, almost looking as if they were machine-planed. But of course, they are not. There is a rough, fuzzy layer still adhering to the strips, and so Kline laboriously pulls each strip under the blade of an angled knife held against his knee, one piece at a time, to remove it. 

Baskets are made with uprights secured into place, and weavers, comprised of thinner strips, that are worked over and under them, just as a textile is composed of secure upright warp threads with weft ones woven horizontally through them. The round baskets are begun by overlapping individual strips like the spokes of a wheel, which he weaves around to create a base, and then builds up along the sides. The Shakers would weave over wooden molds to ensure their shapes’ uniformity. The Tagkanic baskets however were more simply functional — the wabi-sabi aspect of which Kline says appeals to him, and so despite his own sense of perfectionism, he works by eye without the aid of a form. 

When a basket’s weaving is complete, Kline allows it to thoroughly dry. He then tightens the weaving by going around the outside of the basket packing down the dried, shrunken weavers with a flat-head screwdriver. To complete the basket, Kline carves and bends two rims of Hickory, which he will lash to the top of the basket both inside and out. Hickory is both strong and pliable and abundant on Kline’s property and one 8’’ diameter Hickory tree will usually supply him with enough rim and handle wood for a year. The hickory logs are split first with wedges and a mallet then split into smaller sections with a froe and mallet. Black ash strips lash the rims in an X pattern to the top of the basket. Secured with a sturdy handle and rims, the basket is complete.

Inspired by American folk-art baskets of the past, often painted later in their lives to enhance their appearance and extend their longevity, Kline sometimes paints his baskets, using casein mixed with natural mineral pigments, applying the color in layers. When he paints a basket, he first paints the uprights before weaving, he then weaves the horizontal elements and paints them, and finally finishes the completed basket with linseed oil, creating a mellow patina.

Somehow, after nearly 40 years, Kline still has, he says sounding a bit shocked even to himself, “a sense of appreciation and wonder at all the various steps. Most people when they look at a basket, they have no idea how it’s made.” 

Annual Layers Sculpture by Jonathan Kline is on view July 19 - August 19, ‘24 at Marymacgill.com Germantown, NY

Deborah Needleman is the former Editor-in-Chief of T Magazine (2012-2016). Previously, she was Editor-in-Chief of WSJ. @deborahneedleman

Carlton Davis is a regular contributor to UD. He is represented by CLM-Agency.com @carltond