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Jeffrey Gale
Jeffrey Gale (born April 14, 1952 Huntington, New York) is an American craftsman, known for his white-ash basketry. His work is found in private collections[1] and in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery.[2] His craft derives both from research into past techniques and from his own innovations that build on tradition.[3]: 51 BasketryGale maintains a workshop in Strafford, Vermont, where he harvests the wood for his craft from his own land. He typically harvests one or two ash trees, a year.[4] He picks trees that grow straight, owing to competition with others in the forest.[3]: 37 Among contemporary basketmakers, he is the only one who works with a tree that he has harvested, himself.[3]: 41 He makes his baskets from white ash, which he splits into "billets" (lengths of wood with a rectangular cross section), using a froe, a wedge, and a mallet. He then shapes the billets into "splints" (flat pieces of wood), trimmed to a desired thickness for weaving as a basket.[5] He makes the splints on a shaving horse, which allows him to hold the billet in place as he shapes it to the desired size with a drawknife. After being separated from each other by striking the end of the billet with a mallet, the splints may be as thin as the thickness of the growth ring of the source tree.[6] He steams the splints to make them pliable. Gale uses no power tools in the process.[7] Seven of his baskets are included in the Cole-Ware Collection of American Baskets at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery.[2] They were displayed with 98 other baskets as part of the museum's "Measure of the Earth" exhibition of 63 contemporary basketmakers, who have revived traditional basket making. All the featured baskets were from natural materials harvested in nature by their makers.[8] InfluencesGale apprenticed with an Adirondack pack basket maker, using oak, and started his business in 1982 as a basket maker.[5] Two books by Eric Sloane, Sketches of America Past and A Reverence for Wood, inspired him to take up the craft.[6] His contemporary white-ash basketry derives primarily from early New England techniques, but incorporates his own methods and designs.[9] Gallery
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