Basket maker Jane Chavez spent part of her childhood in Argentina and she remembers a small horse-drawn cart coming into town. “It was loaded with baskets and it would arrive every Saturday evening. I always loved that horse,” she says. “I still have the first basketI ever bought from the cart, and ever since I’ve been connected to baskets.”
Chavez now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and makes magnificent horsehair baskets. They are made using a coiling technique, “very much like a potter throwing some clay on a wheel to make a pot,” Chavez says. “I control the shape as the basket goes up, increasing or decreasing the coil as needed.” The process begins with an ingenious piece of design, one the artist has had legally trademarked. Each pot starts with a sterling silver plate, which she can decorate with hand-stamped designs. The plate has holes punched into the edges that allow her to attach the bundles of horsehair. The plate, which can also be made with other precious metals, also allows a nice decorative element when looking down into her baskets.
She gets her horsehair from a trading post in Washington, which acquires the material from Mongolia, the largest producer of horsehair in the world. “They have lots of small horses there with long hair. It’s their renewable resource,” Chavez says. “I use mostly the hair from the tail. The mane tends to have shorter and thinner hair. For me, the tail hair is perfect.” Chavez uses colored sinew to bind the horsehair coils and will often weave or decorate objects into the design—from bird feathers and rooster hackle to beads and wood handles.
The basket maker works and sells from her home studio, and also shows work at Sage Creek Gallery in Santa Fe. She also does commissions, which are popular with horse owners who like the materials Chavez uses.
“I love horses,” she says, adding that she owns a little mustang herself. “And I love having that link to horses in the baskets.”—
For more information about Jane Chavez, visit her website at www.janechavez.com. She can also be reached at (505) 660-9963 and (505) 983-3248. Sage Creek Gallery’s website is www.sagecreekgallery.com.
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