13/06/2026
Images from our partner Handa 🌸 Hannah Haworth research archives, in honor of our upcoming basket weaving trip in Scotland.
“Women of the Scottish & Irish coasts. The textures of cloth and baskets, the iconic silhouettes, the hard work and the gentleness combined. The ladies in the striped skirts are of course the Fisherrow Fishwives of Musselburgh (Edinburgh). They were an incredible community of women that worked long, labor intensive hours preparing and selling fish in Edinburgh. I’m a little obsessed with their culture. Unusually for their time, they handled the money for the household, they also had football (soccer) teams where the married women would play the unmarried (apparently the married invariably won), they also loved to sing together and had their own choir. Their men did the fishing, but the boats were named after the fishwives. They also knit an iconic style of sweater known as a “gansey”, which were made throughout the fishing communities at the time, each village with its own style.”