Kagome Baskets

Plaited basketry runs the gamut from simple over/under weaves to elaborate patterns. Kagome, a type of Japanese basketry, is made by using a traditional weave which has been embraced by the scientific community. Three weaving elements form an openwork trihexagonal pattern of holes which roughly looks like a six-pointed star. Kagome - The History of a Pattern by Paul Stephenson describes the weave as  having "strands run in 3 directions mutually inclined at 120°," this open weave creates the effect of eyes ('me') in the basket ('kago'). Hence the name for this basketweaving style: 'kagome'" (https://www.polydron.co.uk/blog/kagome-the-history-of-a-pattern.html 23 April 2018).  Simply put, by Wikipedia, "In geometry, the trihexagonal tiling is one of 11 uniform tilings of the Euclidean plane by regular polygons. It consists of equilateral triangles and regular hexagons, arranged so that each hexagon is surrounded by triangles and vice versa." 

Kagome pattern.
source: Wikipedia

 The ancient roots of kagome basketry, usually woven of bamboo, extend throughout Eastern Asia. Japan's earliest baskets (although not kagome) date to around 7800 BC, made by the Jomon people and found at the Higashimyo Site. (https://taimodern.com/japanese-bamboo-art/hjba-the-first-baskets/) 

Portrait of Woman in Costume
with Burden Basket, undated, hand-
tinted photograph, artist unidentified. National
Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian 
(object number NMNH 4728300)

The kagome weave is illustrated in this photograph titled "Portrait of Woman in Costume with Burden basket," an undated, hand-tinted Japanese photograph from the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. 

This weave has been used by other cultures and for other uses, such as for cheese making by the Shakers in the eastern United States.  The openwork basket would have been lined with cheesecloth and used in separating curds. 

"Shaker-style" cheese baskets remain popular items today. Contemporary pieces can easily be found on internet searches and in museum collections. Pictured below, "Cheese Basket," by Alice Ogden, made in 2009 of black ash and white oak splints, is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.    

Cheese Basket by Alice Ogden, 2009,
American Art Museum, Smithsonian
(object number 2011.47.48)

 

The strength of the kagome weave has been recognized and extolled in a myriad of papers. I reference four below, and leave it up to you to explore the links between basketry, an ancient technology, and varied international applications of kagome interlaced lattice structures and metal today. 

"BASKETS" by Tibor Tarnai, Dept of Structural Mechanics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics: http://me.bme.hu/sites/default/files/page/Baskets.pdf

"Beyond the Basket Case: A Principled approach to the modelling of kagome weave patterns for the fabrication of interlaced lattice structures using straight strips." By Phil Ayres, Alison Grace Martin, Mateusz Zwierzycki at Advances in Architectural Geometry, Conference, Sweden, Sept 2018. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328043391_Beyond_the_basket_case_A_principled_approach_to_the_modelling_of_kagome_weave_patterns_for_the_fabrication_of_interlaced_lattice_structures_using_straight_strips

"The Electronic Structure of a 'Kagome' Material" by Min Gu Kang, Riccardo Comin, Joe Checkelsky, Linda Ye of MIT. https://als.lbl.gov/the-electronic-structure-of-a-kagome-material/ 

"Quantum Materials: Electron Spin measured for the first time" by Universita di Bologna. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-quantum-materials-electron.html