From the floor of the warehouse to the walls of your house
By Donna Campbell Smith
Tobacco baskets, once a common utilitarian product in the tobacco
markets, have become a hot commodity as wall art in homes across the
country. The first baskets were made in Kentucky, but North Carolina
became the primary producer of tobacco baskets by the late 1800s. There
were at least six manufacturers of tobacco baskets in Yadkin County at
one time, earning it the title of "Tobacco Basket Capital of the World."
Tobacco was first exported from the colonies in huge wooden barrels
called hogsheads. The barrels held about 1,000 pounds of the leaves. But
the barrels made inspecting difficult and therefore cheating easy. The
good leaves were packed on top, hiding inferior tobacco in the bottom of
the barrel. Some crooked producers even went so far as to hide rocks
and bricks under the tobacco. Eventually the hogshead method of
marketing gave way to loose leaf auctions and private sales. Baskets
were used to take tobacco to market even then, but apparently once it
reached the warehouse the tobacco was placed on the floor.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is credited with coming up with the
idea of using large flat baskets to keep their tobacco clean in the
auction houses. The warehouse floors were filthy with mud, dust and
manure brought in with the mule-driven wagons as tobacco was unloaded
and stacked on the floor.
The baskets were made of oak that was split into strips. The oak
strips were soaked in boiling soda water to make them bendable. The rim
of the basket was fashioned with a double thickness of the strips. The
bottoms were woven by machine, and another machine helped with putting
the bottoms and the rims together. The tobacco companies purchased the
baskets, and their names were stenciled on the rims.
There was an art to packing a tobacco basket so that it presented the
tobacco well, and so that it stayed on the basket. After tobacco was
picked and graded, several leaves were bound together in what were
called hands. The hands were tied onto a stick (about 35-45 hands per
stick) and the sticks of tobacco were hung in the barn to cure. After
curing, the tobacco was taken off the stick, packed in baskets and
transported to the market. The hands were usually arranged on the basket
in a circle, stems ends out for good presentation in the auction.
This method of hand tying the leaves was time-consuming, and
eventually the tobacco was brought to market untied, wrapped in large
burlap sheets. This pretty much spelled the end for the tobacco basket
market, and by 1969 the basket companies had closed. The J.A. Miller
Basket Company reopened in 1976 to make baskets for the burley tobacco
market, but by 1990 that market had also faded. Bud Miller, the son of
J. Anderson Miller, who started the company in 1945, still makes a small
number of tobacco baskets, some full size and a miniature version,
which are bought and resold in shops to decorators and homeowners to use
in homes as wall art.
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