I have been making a wine cradle as shown in "The Complete Book of Baskets and Basketry" by Dorothy Wright and I can't understand the purpose of the ring on the front of the basket. I have uploaded a picture of the cradle at:
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Could anyone explain the purpose of the ring and how the bottle is inserted into the cradle and how the cradle is used. Is the cork removed before the bottle is inserted? Could the ring be for a napkin? I have sent this question to various basketry groups so apologise if you are reading it more than once. Harry
The ring will not go over the bottleneck, mounted in the position shown in your picture.
Either the ring should be mounted higher up so that you can insert the bottle neck through it, or the ring mounted where shown is for another purpose, like hanging the cork or some such.
The bottle is normally taken from the cellar and immediately laid in the basket, where it may sit for some time before having the cork removed (with bottle still reclining in basket).
Most people simply think ahead and stand a bottle up a few days ahead, but then you wouldn't have an interesting basket making project if everyone did that!
In fact, there is a frequent misunderstanding with this type of basket. The ring, in priciple, should hold the bottle, preventing it from slipping out of the basket when pouring while holding the basket with the handle. But then this is *not* the accurate way of holding such a basket for serving or decanting. One actually grabs bottle and basket benath the handle to give a good hold of the bottle/basket entity.
With my over 20 year old decating basket, the first thing I did was to remove the handle (it had no ring, but if, I would have removed it, too)
To Harry: What I would do is to simply ommit ring and handle. But if you want the basket as complete as possible, then take care to make the ring large enough for the bottle neck and either closer to the neck or on a kind of chain.
I am known to take a completely different position: Never standing up a bottle to be decanted, in order to disturb the sediment as little as possible; pulling the cork in the basket; taking the bottle out and decanting over a candle or pocket light.
You're right, Harry. Normally baskets stand upright and are not hung to the wall.
True.
Well, in that case the basket is used as a serving tool, with a folded napking between bottle and basket, where the end of the napkin goes into the ring, too.
Yes. But anyhow, normally I would use the basket as a tool for keeping the bottle in the right angle while pulling the cork before decanting only. For decanting itself, I'd pull the bottle out of the basket anyhow, since the basket prevents the look throught the bottle at shoulder to see when the deposit is coming. The wine, I'd serve it out of the decanter.
But if one wants to pour out of the basket, no problem - just make shure the bottle can't tilt!
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