Rustic Italian Wicker Weaving

GO2 ... https://www.etsy.com/listing/195181361/vintage-italian-wicker-basket

rusticitalia Rustic Italia L’Aquila, Italy 1101 Sales On Etsy since 2012

L'Aquila is a city and comune in Southern Italy, both the capital city of the Abruzzo region and of the Province of L'Aquila. As of 2013, it has a population of 70,967. 

rusticitalia Beautiful and original rustic, vintage and traditional furniture, architectural salvage and objects mainly from Italy: hand-crafted, artisan produced, honest, simple and a wonderful addition to your unique space's character. Rustic Italia can source and provide a collection of pieces for a restaurant or public building, or single items to complement your own home's style.  

Whenever it was in the 1990s that I visited that house on West Tamar Road with the sign reading, simply, "Willow Baskets" I had no idea about what I would find except,  hopefully, a present for my wife. I met Leandro Di Lullo [1] who was in something of a hurry to tell me that he wasn't making baskets anymore "because the Council had killed the trees (his trees) and I cannot." He had four left for sale, I liked them all, I bought the lot, job done, gift found.

We've enjoyed the baskets, and telling this story, albeit quite oblivious to the depth of their 'backstory' until recently and having told it again – this time there was no rolling of the eyes. This time I was kind of sent on a search to find out more even though I knew that this basket maker, who I now know to be  Leandro Di Lullo, was highly unlikely to still be alive in 2017. We now know he died some time ago and that he has two daughters living in Launceston. As they say watch this space.

So it seems that, albeit inadvertently, I bought into something when I bought those four baskets that I was only subliminally aware of. When I GOOGLED 'Italian wicker basket' and the Etsy shop Rustic Italia came up with a basket just like one that I had bought from Leandro Di Lullo I somehow knew that 'serendipity had turned up'. 

It turns out that Leandro had come to Tasmania from Abruzzo and that his life and culture was just that which is being celebrated by, and marketed to, a global market via Rustic Italia and the Internet. It also turns out that in the 1970s I'd had an exhibition at the Sadler's Court Gallery in Richmond and that gallery's owner, Alice Krongaard, would buy "every basket my father had available" (Rosanna Ieezi, Leandro Di Lullo's daughter, Pers. com 2017) So more pennies drop into place and it turns out that there's more and more stories yet to be unfolded. Not the least amongst them are the narratives, and personal convergences, to do with Leandro's loss of the willows he'd been caring for, and harvesting his  willow from, and the Landcare  movement's reimaging 'willow as an invasive woody weed'.

Ray Norman