The Basketry of Blaise Cayol: A Mathers Museum Connection to Southern France on the Occasion of the Indiana University Visit to Marseille

Indiana University has connections and partnerships all around the world. This week, special attention is being directed to Spain and France, where IU President Michael M. McRobbie is leading a delegation of university leaders and visiting some of our important institutional partners, as well as connecting with our students studying in some of the most longstanding and distinguished of our study abroad programs.

Basket Maker Blaise Cayol (right) and two American Scholars (left) at the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2015.

Today IU leaders met with senior administrators and faculty of Aix-Marseille Université in Marseille. Not far from there lives a very talented French basket maker with whom the Mathers Museum of World Cultures has begun corresponding. In the summer of 2015 I had the pleasure of meeting him at the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His name is Blaise Cayol and he lives in the town of Tavel in the Occitanie region of southern France. Blaise has mastered the making of willow basketry in a wide variety useful forms that are characteristic of his region and, like many of the most talented contemporary basket makers working in traditional materials, techniques, and forms, he has also developed his own unique designs and creative works. As the Mathers Museum of World Cultures prepared to present an exhibition of the work of Indiana-based willow basket maker Viki Graber in 2015, I had the opportunity to not only meet Blaise, but to obtain two of his baskets for our collection. They provided a great pairing with Viki’s European-rooted-but-American willow baskets. In a wonderful way, they also helped expand our museum’s collection of contemporary European objects. (A pressing need given the small and less-well documented nature of our European holdings.) Since meeting Blaise, he has been a generous correspondent answering my questions about French basketry in general and his basketry in particular. As President McRobbie and our Indiana University colleagues visit southern France, it is a nice moment to celebrate our museum’s connection with Blaise and with the very rich tradition of French art, craft, design, and culture that he carries forward into the contemporary world.

French willow baskets await the crowds at the 2015 International Folk Art Market.

You can learn more about Blaise’s work on his website here: http://www.celuiquitresse.com/p1.htm. You can also learn about his work in a short English-language video compiled by the International Folk Art Alliance (organizers of the International Folk Art Market). The four-minute video is titled Baskets are Universal Objects and it is on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/67416276. If you can make it to the folk art market this summer, I know that Blaise would love to sell you one of his baskets and tell you about the contexts from which the come.

A basket by Blaise Cayol, now in the collections of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures.

You can learn more about the Indiana University delegation to Spain and France via this press release: https://news.iu.edu/stories/2017/05/iu/releases/12-spain-france-delegation.html and the stories being shared on the trip blog: http://blogs.iu.edu/france-spain-2017/

A basket by Blaise Cayol, now in the collections of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures.

There are always big crowds at the International Folk Art Market where Blaise Cayol is a favorite artisan.