Earlier this year, I headed over to North Yorkshire to meet and photograph 77 year old Mr Taylor who has been a basket maker all his life. His great-grandfather originally set up the business and it has been at this very site since 1867.
Mr Taylor told me that he started basket making when he was 8 years old and doesn’t know how to do anything else, nor would he want to. At the businesses peak in the 60s they employed 12 people to make baskets and supplied all the mills, factories and farms around Yorkshire with baskets used for textiles or veg. The whole village would come out to help chop down the willow but now he just collects what he’ll need for the following year.
In the 70s and 80s business started to dwindle with the closures of the mills and cheap basket imports coming in from China, so now it’s just Mr Taylor working but he still gets enough work to keep him going. He told me he’s recently been making caskets for funerals and some fencing which is coming back in popularity. When Mr Taylor fully retires (which he has no plans to any time soon) that will be the end of J.W.Taylor’s as a business as there is no one to take it over which he said he is at peace with as the business just isn’t what it use to be nor will it ever be.
