PUTNEY — For almost as long as human beings have walked the Earth, they have been making baskets, as evidenced by some found in the pyramids of Egypt to artifacts dating back thousands of years old and preserved in the museums of China.
Here in southern Vermont, baskets have been made of strips of oak and ash for centuries, first by Indigenous peoples and then brought by those who colonized the region in the 1700s.
Greg Wilson is the seventh family member at the helm of what is now a global design and import company that manufactures and distributes baskets for U.S. retailers.
Wilson's father, Frank G. Wilson, purchased the business from his father, Cassius Wilson, who owned the Sidney Gage and Company of North Westminster, founded in 1842.
According to a history of the company which Greg Wilson authored, “In the beginning, a limited variety of baskets for everyday use were manufactured strictly for wholesale distribution.”
After a brief shutdown during World War II, Frank Wilson moved the business to Putney and “supplied baskets to major retailers of the era including Montgomery Ward, JC Penney, [and] Sears, as well as hundreds of independent retailers nationwide,” the history continued.
The entrepreneur “began hanging baskets on a clothesline outside the basketmaking workshop,” Greg Wilson wrote. “So many people stopped to ask about them, it became a disruption to the workforce, so Wilson opened their first retail store across the street in 1956.”
Eventually, as the company grew, Basketville had 12 retail outlets as far south as Florida, and along the East Coast in tourist hot spots like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Williamsburg, Virginia. The handmade basket business was booming.
“My father loved to travel and he was always looking for talented basket designers, as he had a great respect for all things hand woven,” Greg Wilson remembers. “He visited the Philippines, Poland, Hong Kong. He was all about trying to do what he thought was best for people and the organization, helping those who wanted to contribute.”
When President Richard Nixon opened trade relations with China in the early 1970s, Cassius Wilson was one of the first Americans to do business there. From an early age, Greg Wilson often traveled with his father all over southeast Asia looking at woven products.
An in-house designer makes his mark
An integral part of Basketville's history was Sek Tim Chan, who was born in 1921 in mainland China. When the Japanese invaded in 1937, prior to World War II, Chan and his wife, Muikee, left his home in Shantou, Guangdong, and fled to Hong Kong, a British colony at the time.
“When China was invaded by the Japanese, hunger and poverty followed. A lot of people were fleeing to Hong Kong as my parents did,” recalls his daughter, Becky Chan, during a recent visit to the area.
Sek Tim Chan's father died when he was very young, and he was raised by his aunt and uncle from an early age.
“I don't know what happened to his mother, but he felt abandoned all his life,” said his daughter, noting that her father “did feel close to his seven cousins, who were more like his siblings.” Some later moved to Hong Kong as well.
Her father “learned to work with rattan in China and apprenticed at a young age, as he had little formal education,” she said. “He would climb into the mountains to gather the vines and materials. Everything he made came from natural materials. He was a real artist, a great designer. He also painted.”
The Chans' first child, Cathy, came along after World War II in 1947, followed by another daughter, Rander, then a son, Peter, and finally Becky, the youngest.
“My father had his own rattan business in Hong Kong. We all helped him. He made his own cottage industry that sold wholesale. He had several people working for him. My mom would cook and provide the meals, and he was the boss. Sometimes he sold to brokers.”
Greg Wilson remembers when his father met Mr. Chan.
“My father would travel a lot in those days, especially to Hong Kong before he could get into China. He'd establish different relationships with companies. Mr. Chan was a sample maker, and my father saw him working. It was mesmerizing to watch him weave.
“My father got the idea to bring Mr. Chan over to the States to create for Basketville,” Wilson continued. “Chan made models and prototypes of new baskets that were passed along to the other weavers to mass produce.”
Becky Chan takes over the story.
“One of the brokers that my father sold to also sold to Basketville. Frank Wilson was asking around for a good designer, and the broker told him my father was the best. [Wilson] came to visit, and then he offered to bring my father to Vermont to work for Basketville as a designer.”
Greg Wilson remembers when Mr. Chan arrived in 1969.
“I was a kid when he came over, in grade school. He stayed in a little house that we owned in Putney,” he continues. “He didn't speak a word of English. He would sometimes weave in the store so that people could watch him create.”
“That's how he started designing all those animals that we hung from the ceiling,” Wilson recalls.
With the results living vividly in the memories of local people, Chan created everything from dragons to lobsters, from giraffes to fish, and everything in between. In many of his creations he placed large marbles for eyes that followed visitors around the store.
“It seemed to me he was pretty lonely,” says Wilson. “I used to go over to the little house to visit him. He clearly enjoyed my being there. We just hung out together, even though we couldn't really communicate. He was always happy to see me.”
Wilson describes Chan as “an interesting character.”
“He loved to gamble and eventually found his way over to Hinsdale Raceway, where he enjoyed betting on the dogs,” he recalls.
Chan sent postcards and airmail letters home to Hong Kong, along with his salary. The adventurous spirit managed - without a driver's license or the ability to speak English - to take trips to New York City and to Boston, where he developed relationships with other Chinese immigrants.
“Can you imagine traveling by yourself in a country in which very few people can speak Cantonese?” his daughter asks incredulously. “He was a brave man.”
Chan wasn't the only brave member of the family. Two years later, in 1971, he had saved enough money to bring his wife, Muikee, to the United States, along with children Rander, Peter, and Becky.
Becky Chan had mixed feelings.
“We really didn't want to leave Hong Kong, we didn't really have an idea about where we were moving to, other than what my father had told us. We couldn't wait any longer because Rander was almost 21. As an adult, she wouldn't have been included as a member of our immediate family and therefore wouldn't be able to enter the United States. We came just two days before her 21st birthday.”
“Cathy was already too old to be able to immigrate, so she remained in Hong Kong,” she continues. “But Mr. Wilson was very kind, and he made sure that eventually our entire family could be together. We were the first wave that March; later, Cathy and my grandmother also immigrated. Some of my siblings also worked at Basketville.”
Frank Wilson and Sek Tim Chan picked them up at Bradley International Airport. The family hadn't seen one another in years.
There would be culture shock.
“Hong Kong has nowhere near the same climate as Vermont,” said Becky Chan, “and it was March. There was still snow on the ground. We couldn't believe it. As we drove up to Putney, we kept discussing the snow, and Mr. Wilson stopped so that we could get out of the car to touch it. I learned that snow is not only cold, but sometimes quite dirty,” she says, laughing. “I was 14 years old, and I remember it all very clearly.”
None of the family members spoke English. Peter was placed in school at Brattleboro Union High School, and Becky started at Putney Central School. Both of them graduated from BUHS and went on to college.
Becky eventually became an agent for the FBI, retiring after 22 years, and Peter has retired from Hitachi, a company known for its high-tech telecommunications.
Chan remembers traveling with her father and Frank Wilson to the Big Y supermarket in Springfield, Mass., where Basketville had a booth for a special event at a carnival. Wilson had asked Chan to weave a shark and have it displayed.
“My brother and I went down with them and watched my father work the crowds. He was very well received - though I'll be honest in saying that at the time, we were not that impressed, so Peter and I rode the carnival rides while my dad worked,” Chan says with a chuckle.
Chan was able to purchase a home for his family in Putney, and he later moved the family to Brattleboro. There, he created a terraced garden in his backyard, where he grew Chinese vegetables, something uncommon there at that time. He also enjoyed fishing in the Connecticut River and would bring fresh fish home for dinner.
When he retired from Basketville, Chan sold his house in Brattleboro and moved back to China, while the rest of his family remained in the United States.
On a visit to his daughter in Texas, it was discovered that he was quite ill. He died in Dallas four months later at the age of 76 in 1997.
Mr. Chan's creations
By the 1990s, the basket business was changing, with economic pressures moving the manufacturing process to China. The Putney factory was closed in 1996.
In 2006 and 2007, the remaining six Basketville stores and outlets closed, leaving only its flagship Putney store. That last retail space closed in December of 2018.
“When I heard the store was closing in 2018, I wondered what was going to happen to all the creations that my father made,” wondered Becky Chan, who now lives in Washington state.
On a recent visit to the area, Greg Wilson showed her that most of the animals remain in the building, exactly where her father left them.
Wilson invited Chan to take any of the creations, and she took some of the smaller ones as keepsakes.
“It was so nice to see Greg again and remember our childhood,” she says. “And I was thrilled to know that my father's creations are still hanging right where he left them. They are about 50 years old now, and because they are made of natural materials, they are a bit fragile.”
Wilson agrees.
“Our company has changed a lot since Mr. Chan worked here,” he says. “But businesses are like that - we've evolved from my father's time in the family business and reinvented ourselves yet again.”