Mary Jane Prater grew up on a farm in Cannon County, Tennessee, where necessity dictated the handcrafting of almost everything — quilts, furniture and baskets. With over 70 years experience in making white oak baskets, Prater is expert at finding and preparing just the right “pole” for her work. “Learn your timber, learn your white oak from a post oak and your maple from a white oak.” White oak basket trees are smaller than most other white oak trees, typically being no more than 30 years old. Prized for the wood’s beauty and durability, suitable white oak trees are hard to find today — the trees are slow-growing, typically in low-lying, swampy areas, and have been over-harvested.

“It [white oak trees suitable for making baskets] ain’t none around here any close. Now when my oldest grandson was in the pen somewhere over towards Nashville we went by a swamp over there and that was the prettiest timber I ever seed. They was just standing up like your fingers. The side of that road was full of them white oak. Course when I go down the road, I look for white oak… Yeah, you can spot them. You can tell them from any other tree just like you can a peach tree or an apple tree or something like that. And that whole - as far as I could see was just standing full of white oak, about the right size, like if you had planted them. There are plenty but they’re not around here.”