Tree Stars

The Tree Star©  was designed by Alice Ogden in 1995 while working with young students in the Artist in Residence program through New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. The kits were designed to introduce the basic weaving process that most basket bottoms begin with. It is a simple over one, under one weave.

 Student's weave a "basket mat" using a total of 10 pre-cut rough black ash splints. The square mat then has a woven boarder around its edges to keep the woven splints from shifting. A weaver is added diagonally across the square mat to create a decorative cross. The wooden "fringe" of the mat is then marked with a pencil and cut to resemble the shape of a star. This is where the name comes from - "it is a star made from a tree".

Different natural materials gathered from the woods, swamps, and fields of New Hampshire are included in the tree star kits for decoration. These materials include: “cattails" which are added as streamers to the bottom of the tree star, wooden sapling beads and shapely pieces of birch bark.