shashasha

“To make baskets is to bring the world into being.”

"Basket of Dreams” explores the beauty of handmade baskets through photography. Made by weaving bamboo into intricate shapes and patterns, the traditional basket represents much more than practical function. Both natural and man-made, they possess a strange allure, expressing centuries of aesthetic sensibility, knowledge and experience. In "Basket of Dreams," Kyoto-based human-environmental geographer Daniel Niles captures the beauty of basketry in photographs and explores the underlying traditions, approaches and wisdom in essays and poetry.

“Baskets are always about something else.
In the world of tea, the basket holds the flowers, and the flowers describe the moment in time.
Graspjing the moment in time is, in the end, the purpose of the gathering and the reason for the basket. The people, the tea or the meal, the room, tea bowl or cup, the vessel and the flowers: they are also of the moment, part of the full presence, as are the practices and pocesses involved in their creation and stretching out behind them, linking to other people, places, plants, soils, landscapes.”
― both quotes by Daniel Niles