by Bernadette Finnerty
She enjoyed the process of making the baskets and soon began teaching friends to make melon baskets in her home. At first her classes were more social than serious basket making, but it didn’t take long before the class filled up to its maximum of eight. Before she knew it, teaching basket making was filling up most of her time. She realized it was time for her to take her own basket making to another level. “I got caught up with teaching, and then I realized that there were other shapes out there, and lots of materials to experiment with.”
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| “Tower,” measuring 13x11.5x12 inches, made of Maine sweet grass, rayon ribbon and waxed Irish linen. |
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Photo by John Sterling Ruth
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Muhl started coiling with raffia and pine and worked on polishing her techniques in this area. It wasn’t until she met a basket maker who gave her some sweet grass grown along the coast of Maine, that she found the material that would help her take her basketry to new levels. The material itself inspired her. Maine sweet grass (hierochloe odorata) is also known as holy grass, vanilla grass, or Seneca grass. It’s hand gathered by Native Americans in Maine, combed, sorted and dried in small bundles. “Sweet grass is easy to work with and fragrant,” says Muhl, “I loved working with it right away.”
The one difficult aspect of working with Maine sweet grass is finding it. Many of the coastal areas where sweet grass grows wild are Native American tribal lands. Since the tribes earn their living fishing in the waters and crafting with native plant material, they’re very selective about whom they share their resources with. It took a long, patient journey all around Maine, and quite a bit of convincing, but Muhl finally made a connection with one of the tribes, who eventually agreed to supply her with sweet grass.
They really wanted to know what I was doing with the sweet grass. But once they saw my baskets, they understood that I had the same respect for the material that they had, and that helped me establish a connection.”
Given the circumstances — the effort she made to find her source and the journey she makes every year to restock it — Muhl remains somewhat private about the tribe that supplies her. The tribes don’t own the land they harvest from, but they have the legal right to harvest the land and fish in the waters there.
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| Untitled, measuring 11.5x10x2 inches, made of Maine sweet grass, nylon ribbon and waxed Irish linen. |
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Photo by John Sterling Ruth
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Several years into her basket-making career, Muhl says she was beginning to feel pulled in two different directions. She was teaching a full schedule of classes, but she longed to refine her techniques and work with her newfound source of material. She had already started experimenting with abstract forms and wanted to continue in that direction. In her classes, she taught the simple forms she had made when she first started. “A fellow teacher advised me once to never teach what I intended to sell,” says Muhl, who took the advice, but soon realized she wanted only to experiment with new forms, and that she had grown tired of teaching the old ones.
It was time for me to stop teaching. I’d always had a natural enthusiasm for teaching, and it just wasn’t there anymore. I was ready for something new,” says Muhl, who stopped teaching in 1997 to focus on more abstract forms with the eventual goal of selling them at high-end craft shows. (She sold her first basket in 1994 for $1,000.)
Muhl was thrilled when she got into some high-end shows, like Guilford Handcraft Expo, where she won two awards. She applied and got into the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, The Smithsonian Craft Show and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show. She exhibited at the American Craft Council show in Charlotte, N.C., and one of her baskets was purchased by the Mint Museum for its permanent collection. Her baskets sell anywhere from $350 for a 10-inch by 10-inch piece, to $7,800 for a very large piece.
Muhl says her favorite aspect of selling her work has been the “electricity that often happens between the person and the piece. You can’t put a dollar figure on that,” she adds, “it’s priceless.”
| For more information | ||
| Debora Muhl www.deboramuhl.com |
Most recently, Muhl has incorporated branches of “Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick,” a curly vine that is related to the filbert family, yet doesn’t produce nuts. Muhl found the wild-looking vine growing on her property and devised a way to incorporate the vines into her baskets for a sculptural effect. She has also recently started with a glass artist to explore collaborative opportunities. In addition to selling work at retail shows each year, Muhl has actively pursued private commissions. “Shows are slowing down a bit,” she says, “so it’s important for me to keep changing what I do and always look for new opportunities to sell my work and keep collectors interested. While she isn’t currently selling her work on the Internet, she finds it a useful and timesaving sales tool. “People rarely buy my work without having seen it in person, but there might be an occasion where they’ve seen it displayed somewhere and by looking at my Web site, they can get a better feel for my style and the body of my work.”
Muhl has also done well selling from her home. “I think people really like the idea of getting to know where an artist works, it helps them connect to the piece.”
Through the years, Muhl has been able to incorporate her work into her life as a mother of two (now grown) children. Her husband, who she says was always supportive, now has a new appreciation for her basketry. “He went from saying ‘What on earth is that’ to ‘maybe you should try this,’” she laughs.
Bernadette Finnerty is a contributing editor to The Crafts Report.