The Baskets of Southcentral Kentucky

The basketmakers of Southcentral Kentucky have always followed steadfast construction principles while developing their own unique styles and artistic visions. Most Kentucky makers learned hands on with a family member or a person in their community. Early learning also included harvesting and handling oak trees by learning to split, carve, and shave the timbers. Usually, a maker’s first works followed the traditional style and shape, but after they were more comfortable with their craft they could explore the more creative sides of their works.

 

 

Baskets were essential items used everyday in the house and on farms. They could be used to gather eggs, feed livestock, harvest vegetables, pack school lunches, take things to market, and could even be used as a unit of measurement. These uses helped develop the names and shapes of the baskets: the egg basket, the feed basket, the market basket, the peck or bushel basket, for example.

 

 

Sometime before the Civil War, local stores began accepting baskets as items of trade. Families with little money would trade baskets for goods. As store owners accumulated baskets, they sold them to traveling merchants, or peddlers, to be sold in the surrounding states. By the 1900s, this system transformed with the surge in automobile traffic. In Kentucky, Highway 31W brought in tourists who visited souvenir shops and basket stands in the Mammoth Cave area.

 

 

It was during these years the Basket Barn opened in Elizabethtown (known by E-Town to most of the locals) by Curtis Alvey. Curtis’ mom had run a local store in the Cub Run area, so he knew all about trading baskets. He also knew how to market them to folks outside the area. Curtis’ business kept several basketmakers active. Without his store, these folks would have had a hard time selling their work. The side that hung outside the Basket Barn is now part of our collection, donated by Curtis Alvey in 2019.

 

One of the baskets sold at the Basket Barn was this white oak flower basket, by an unknown maker likely from Hart County. Purchased in the 1990s, it is part of our recent acquisitions among the Hester-Gilbert Collection, which features regional and international baskets collected by Kentuckian basketmakers Beth Hester and Scott Gilbert.

 

 

The basket industry shifted dramatically with the opening of I-65, but the basket-making industry is alive and well in our region. You can see the new Hester-Gilbert Basket Collection and learn more about our region’s rich basket-making history in our new exhibit From Many Hands: The Hester-Gilbert Basket Story.