Association of Michigan Basketweavers

Trevle Wood

When Trevle Wood of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was a little girl, her mother would craft white oak baskets to trade for food and clothing. Trevle and her sister would help by completing the weaving. When Trevle was about 10 years old, her grandmother taught Trevle to make a whole basket by herself. Years later, in 1980, when her husband Alvin was recovering from an illness, he began harvesting white oak, weaving baskets, and then selling them at craft shows. Trevle reached back to her childhood and joined in harvesting, riving, and whittling to also make white oak baskets. In 1987, a member of the AMB convinced Trevle to come to Michigan to teach. Trevle taught 20 students and won an award at the conference and claims she found “another world.” She adds that when she returned to Tennessee, “I just came home and they all came to me.” Since then Trevle has taught at home, at major conferences, at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. In 1994, she traveled to Paris to demonstrate her work at an international exhibition and in 1996 she and Alvin went to Washington, D.C., as part of a Smithsonian showcase. Now Trevle’s white oak baskets are in great demand. Trevle’s work has been shown at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, and she has won innumerable awards. She says, however, “having someone wanting my baskets is the biggest honor.” Trevle strives for quality, seeking “a basket that is pleasing to the eye, [one that] I want to reach out and touch and rub my hand over it. That’s a basket!” Trevle’s baskets included in The Great Lakes Heritage of Basketry Project Collection have those qualities. Trevle is a fourth-generation weaver now living in Sylvia, N.C. Her daughter and grandsons, the fifth and sixth generations, have discovered what Trevle knows, “It’s wonderful to sit and weave and be at peace.”

Baskets Currently in Collection

White Oak Nest of Six Baskets

The artist prepared the materials for these baskets, choosing the right smooth, straight white oak, cutting it, and splitting it until the growth rings can be split with a pocket knife. The wood is prepared while it is still green and only the best is used to weave the basket. The hoops are whittled from the parts of the tree that the extra fine weavers can’t be made out of. Each basket is made in the same way: the hoops are tied to start the God’s Eyes one both sides, ribs are added as needed, and the weaving is fill in. The rims and handles are muffled in a twill pattern.