Miss Jimmie Kents Pair of Nantucket Baskets

Miss Jimmie Kent (1939-) of Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, was born in Texas and spent some time in Tennessee and Alabama in her younger years. She made her first basket when she was ten years old but started designing the baskets she makes when she moved to Sneads Ferry in 1985 and started teaching basket weaving there. Her husband Jim is also a basket maker.

When word got around about Miss Jimmie's skills, she was contacted by Poplar Grove Plantation in Scotts Hill/Wilmington, NC; the Plantation was once a sweet potato and peanut farm, now a historic museum complex. She teaches basket weaving in a gallery there; we've included a photo of Miss Jimmie holding that first basket she ever made while standing in front of a display of her baskets at the Plantation.

This pair of open Nantucket baskets has the elements of those developed on Nantucket during the nineteenth century: they were handwoven of cane on a mold and they have solid wood bases. The wooden swing handles were carved and are attached to each side with white knobs with brass tacks. The baskets are accompanied by a hangtag that was torn when someone removed it, but all the information is intact (We've pictured all sides of the tag and we'll include it with the baskets).

The smaller of the two baskets measures 5 inches tall and about 7 inches in diameter; when the handle is up, it's 10 inches tall and weighs 6 ounces. The larger one is 10 inches tall, 11 inches with the handle up, has an 8 1/4 inch diameter and weighs 8 ounces. Both are in superb condition, with no weave breakage or other damage and they can nest one inside the other. Each has the burned-in initials 'JK' on the bottom. They're priced for the pair and both display handsomely.

Some further information on Miss Jimmie:

Miss Jimmie's baskets were featured in the May, 2007 issue of The Crafts Report Magazine.

In the March 21, 2003 issue in a Washington Post newspaper column titled 'Looking Ahead': "Basketry by Jimmie Kent of Sneads Ferry, N.C., is among the work you can find at the Craftsmen's Classic Arts & Crafts Festival March 28-30 at the Dulles Expo Center."

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