Kishie basket making

What it is

A kishie is a pack basket that belongs to the Shetland Islands. Makers used what the land gave them: straw from Shetland black oats, soft rushes, dock stems, marram grass. Sizes ran from small baskets that hung on a wall to large ones that stood on the ground, and each size had its own work. The working basket was worn on the back, or fitted to a pony as a pack saddle, and a single rope across the chest held it. Shetland women were known for walking with a full kishie while knitting at the same time.

Words and names

The word kishie reached Shaetlan, the Shetland dialect, through Norn, the Norse speech once used in the Northern Isles, and it comes from an Old Norse word for basket, kassi. Shaetlan speakers say it KISH-ee. In Orkney and Caithness the same kind of basket is called a cassie, which shows how far the Norse basket travelled around the north. The craft keeps a vocabulary of its own: hjogs are the upright stakes, simmens the cord that ties them, gloy the cleaned oat straw, dockens the dried dock stems. A maker learns those words along with the work.

How it is made

Two parts give a kishie its strength. The hjogs are upright stakes, each one a bundle of material twisted tight. The simmens are two-ply cords that bind stake to stake. Straw, soaked dock stems, rushes and marram grass all serve as stakes, and a full-sized basket takes about thirty of them plus some forty metres of cord. Two shapes recur: one narrows to a round mouth, the other is flatter with an oval mouth, and across the islands the style stayed much the same. When the basket is worn, one rope, the kishie baand, crosses the chest; a rippeen baand ties down any load rising above the rim.

Baskets for every job

Different tasks called for different baskets, and many of them had names. A büddie was rounder and lower than a kishie and still large enough to wear on the back; made of dock, it drained water, so it carried fish, shellfish or seaweed. A sillik büddie went to the craigs, the shore spots where people fished. An anker büddie held potatoes, a tülie büddie had compartments for tools. Cuddies were small: one kept salt beside the fire, another stored limpets for bait, and the potato cuddie had an open weave so soil fell through. Larger sorts included the skeb for straw in a barn and the skoo, a flat basket for gutted herring. A toig was coiled, with a raised centre that stopped round things rolling.

Decline and revival

Kishie making has shrunk for a century. By the 1920s few young islanders knew how to make one, and at a Lerwick arts and crafts show in spring 1946 the basketwork class drew a single entry. Shetland aets fell out of favour too, because the crop yields less than other grains; around 2020 only about six people were growing them. The Heritage Crafts Association calls kishie making critically endangered. Revival has come through teachers such as Lowrie Copland of Skelberry, North Roe, who demonstrated the craft in the early 1980s, taught classes and appeared in a film released on DVD. Ninety people came to a 2022 straw craft event at the Shetland Museum and Archives, and by 2026 the count of aet growers had reached about twenty-six.

How Kishie basket making is kept

A kishie is made by hand, in a home or on a croft, with no workshop or machine. The maker twists bundles of oat straw, soaked dock, rushes or marram grass into upright stakes called hjogs, then binds them with two-ply simmens cord. A full basket takes about thirty stakes and some forty metres of cord. A rope strap is fitted if the basket is to travel: the kishie baand across the chest, a rippeen baand to hold down a load. Baskets for wet work, such as the büddie made from dock, are open enough to let water drain away. Nothing was ever made for sale; each household supplied itself.

When and where

There is no fixed day or season. Baskets were made when the materials were ready: oats cut and dried, rushes gathered, dock stems dried and then soaked before twisting. A working kishie lasted only a few years outdoors, while those kept for indoor or seasonal use survived far longer, so a household might replace one every few winters.

Shetland is the home of the kishie, and baskets were once made all over the islands for crofts, boats and byres. The same kind of basket is called a cassie in Orkney and Caithness. A burnt basket found at Old Scatness and dated to the Iron Age is the oldest trace known there. Kishies were in use before wheelbarrows became common in Shetland.

What Kishie basket making means

For Shetland households the kishie was working equipment, not an ornament. It stands for a life drawn from the land and the shore, and for the knowledge of which plants to cut, when to dry them and how to twist them into something strong. The picture of a woman walking with a load while knitting belongs to that memory. Its fragility carries meaning too: heritage bodies count kishie making among the crafts most at risk of disappearing.

Questions people ask about Kishie basket making

See also

Brigid's crossA cross of woven rushes or straw, made for Saint Brigid's Day on the first of FebruaryTopping outA builders' rite for the day the last beam goes up, marked with a tree, a flag and a toastChristmasA festival of Jesus's birth, kept on 25 December with gifts, lights and shared mealsValentine's DayA Christian feast day and cultural celebration of love kept on February 14 in many countries.

Good reading and sources

• Kishie on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-14.