Baskets Carry on Tradition of Sea : After 150 Years, Nantucket Island Keeps Craft Alive

A unique industry began more than 150 years ago when sailors started weaving baskets to pass the time while stationed aboard lightships anchored off treacherous shoals beyond this Atlantic Island 30 miles off Cape Cod.

Bright lights tended by sailors warned mariners to stay clear of the dangerous shoals to avoid shipwrecks.

After months at sea, lightships sailed to Nantucket Island to refuel and take on supplies. And the sailors would sell their baskets for extra income.

The sturdy baskets made of woven rattan with wooden bottoms soon became known as Nantucket Lightship Baskets. The rattan or cane was brought here from the Orient.

Lightships were replaced by buoys and other markers about the time of World War I, but Nantucket Lightship Baskets continue to be made to this day, eagerly sought basketry produced by islanders.

“There are about 20 families still doing it, no more than 50 individuals, making the baskets in their island homes. It amounts to about a $1-million annual industry for Nantucket,” explained Karl Ottison, 38, who handcrafts Nantucket Lightship Baskets with his wife, Susan Chase Ottison, 38, and a neighbor, Helene Bartlett, 43, in a workshop in the Ottison home.

Susan Ottison, who has been weaving the baskets for 20 years, calls them “status symbols of the island. Local women have baskets handed down through generations. Nantucket Lightship Baskets are prestigious island products purchased by prestigious people who come to the island.”

In their workshop is a photograph of Nancy Reagan walking with the President. The First Lady is carrying a Nantucket Lightship Basket purse made by the Ottisons.

The baskets are expensive. The Ottisons handcraft a wide variety of baskets from purses to picnic baskets, from hampers and egg baskets to the “Nest of Seven.”

Selling for $2,750 the Nest of Seven consists of seven baskets ranging from 2 inches to 14 inches in diameter. The tiny egg baskets, only big enough to hold an egg, sell for $95 each. Handbags go for $430 to $935 and picnic baskets are $2,150.

“Each basket maker or family of basket makers have their own style, shape and type of weaving. Each basket is signed on the bottom and noted that it is a product of Nantucket Island,” said Ottison. “We don’t ship them off the island. We want to see them stay on the island, sold only here as a unique and historic item from Nantucket.”

Susan and Karl Ottison were among 38 graduates of Nantucket High School class of 1968. They live in a comfortable home Ottison built on Nantucket bay from driftwood, beams and yards of old ships washed up on the beach. Their driveway is made of crushed island seashells. They are both descendants of early whalers.

About 5,000 people live year-round on the island, which is crescent-shaped, 13 miles long and three to six miles wide. They live a quiet, isolated life, often cut off from the outside world by fierce storms and high winds.

Nantucket Lightship Baskets are traditionally formed on wooden molds often more than a century old. Many baskets are topped with a hand-carved sea gull or whale made of ivory. The baskets are almost all sold out of the home shops by those who make them. Heaviest production is during winter when few outsiders visit the island.