Tobacco Baskets (19)
Decorate your Home with Tobacco Baskets
Today, thanks to the high demand for tobacco baskets decorating for walls, their manufacturing process has become much more expedient, with a greater variability of materials and designs.
Depending on the seasons, and your own personal taste, there are many ways you can arrange a tobacco basket to decorate your house and bring that extra warmth and freshness that's unique to the farmhouse aesthetic.
- Wall Decor. The most popular use of the tobacco baskets since the 1980s is as accent pieces to hang on the wall. They give off a beautifully simple rustic air, and go well in most spaces.
- Photo Backgrounds. A great piece to make a small photograph or frame stand out, yet being plain enough not to take the attention away from the photo.
- Part Tray. Tobacco baskets are low and flat enough to serve and accommodate food trays or hold party favors for any kind of celebration.
- Seasonal Ornamentation. Placing flowers or weaving colorful ribbons through any tobacco basket, to decorate for spring or match the Christmas colors, is a perfect way to elevate your home throughout the year
Shop The Fox Decor for any type of tobacco basket styles and make use of their rustic beauty and versatility.
Origins of Tobacco Baskets
Tobacco baskets have been used as a very versatile tool for home decor, picking up in popularity recently as farmhouse aesthetics have come back into fashion. However these beautiful wall adornments didn’t start as such.
As their name suggests, they were made to hold and transport tobacco leaves during the 1800s. The very first tobacco baskets originated in Kentucky, but as the Tobacco market expanded, North Carolina became the capital of tobacco basket production housing up to six different manufacturers at one point. These large tobacco baskets had a few purposes: to replace barrels that could be used to deceive customers by hiding bad product, or even rocks, under a few layers of good quality leaves, and to keep the tobacco leaves cleaned from the dirty floors of the transportation hubs, auction houses and markets where they were displayed.
After a while, the artisanal way to curate and display the tobacco leaves on the tobacco baskets was too time consuming for the demand, so it went out of practice and was replaced by wrapping the leaves in large burlap sheets instead. This brought tobacco basket making to a complete halt, until the son of one of the companies decided to produce small batches of tobacco baskets from full sizes to miniature versions, which were resold in small local shops bringing about their popularity as home decor.
How Tobacco Baskets were Made
The original designs were round tobacco baskets or squares with rounded corners with flat bases, usually large in size, to fit a great amount of tobacco leaves. They were made out of oak wood split into long, rectangular wide strips that were scraped and filled into smooth slabs. To make them more pliable, the oak strips were submerged in boiling soda water until they were able to bend enough for the desired shape. The bottom of the baskets were made by machines weaving them together. The rim of the tobacco basket was made with double the strips to make a thick, firm layer that would hold without breaking. Another machine would be used to nail the base and the rim together, and for the final touch, the name of the tobacco company that purchased the tobacco baskets would be stenciled on the outer rim giving it a rustic yet classy finish.
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