Traditional Arts Spotlight: Keeping it in the Family - Jeffrey and Emerson Gale White Ash Basketmaking Apprenticeship

Master Artist: Jeffrey Gale
Apprentice: Emerson Gale
Traditional Art: White Ash Basketmaking

The 2022-2023 ‘cohort’ of the Vermont Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program includes 12 collaborations between mentor artists and apprentices who are working together to keep traditional cultural expressions vital and relevant to the communities that practice them. With funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and a longstanding partnership with the Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Folklife initiated this program in 1992 to support the continued vitality of Vermont's living cultural heritage. In this ongoing series of Field Notes we’ll introduce you to some of this year’s program participants and the traditional art forms they practice.Vermont Folklife has been documenting the work of participants in the Apprenticeship Program since its inception. These interviews and audio-visual records are part of an ongoing collection in our Archive centered around traditional arts, music, and trades.

Jeffrey Gale’s basketmaking studio, Strafford, VT

For the past year, Jeffrey Gale and his son, Emerson have been participating in an apprenticeship though Vermont Folklife’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (VTAAP).

Contemporary white ash basketry practices draw on methods developed by indigenous basket makers as well as techniques introduced by European colonial settlers and later immigrants. Jeffrey first began weaving baskets in 1982 by apprenticing with an Adirondack pack basket maker named Dudley Fraser, first making a basket out of oak, before beginning to work with ash. He has been a full-time, self-employed professional basket maker for 40 years.

Emerson grew up watching his father work, and learned basketry techniques informally from both his parents. For Emerson, this apprenticeship represents a commitment to becoming a basket maker in his own right.

This spring Vermont Folklife’s Mary Wesley paid a visit to Jeffrey’s workshop in Strafford, VT to connect with the Gales and catch some of the basket making process in action.