Large Low Leaf Basket

Look at it from above and you'll see the whole basket springs from one point at the center — every strand of honeysuckle fanning out from there like the veins of a leaf. This is Anne Scarpa McCauley's Low Leaf Basket, and at nineteen inches across it's the largest she makes: low and wide, with an open weave and two woven leaves resting near the rim. The vine is left natural — pale skinned strands crossed over darker russet, no dye anywhere in it, the color warming toward gold the longer it sits in the light. The low profile is the whole point. It's a basket for the middle of a table, piled with heirloom tomatoes or summer fruit, where you can see everything at once. Anne has woven wild honeysuckle by hand for over forty years, self-taught, to a pattern she's kept since she was a girl. A piece this size is slow to make — and built to sit out and be used.