During the medieval and Renaissance periods, baskets were everyday essentials—no plastic bags at the supermarket or even reusable totes. They were also used for all sorts of activities, from handled varieties for produce at the market to decorative vessels holding sewing materials to large versions that could be worn like rucksacks. For Cardiff-based artist Lewis Prosser, a self-described “absurdist basketmaker,” folklore, regional identity, and cultural heritage center a multidisciplinary practice.
Through sculptural baskets that can be worn as costumes or displayed like venerable sculptures, Prosser taps into storytelling, masking traditions, and public ceremony and celebration. Welsh communities still celebrate Mari Lwyd during the Christmas period, a festivity that may have emerged with the Celts. A small group of men bedecked in ribbons and rosettes parade around town, leading a figure wearing an eerie horse skull. Another ceremonial festival, The Hunting of the Earl of Rone, takes place annually in the village of Combe Martin, North Devon, and although updated over the centuries, is also thought to have originated in pre-Christian times.
In projects like Making Merrie, Prosser combines music and dance in an ode to English folk performances called mummers’ plays, which were often staged during holidays and typically feature combat between two opposing forces, such as good and evil or winter and spring.
Prosser created the wicker costumes using basketry techniques found in the region of Wales and southwestern England, invoking the craft as “an essential human skill we’re at risk of forgetting—a skill that, if lost, means losing part of what it is to be human,” he says in a statement. The costumes are now in the collection of the Folk Preservation Society in Teignmouth, Devon, which continues to activate them in performances from time to time.
Currently, Prosser is facilitating a collaborative project called The Baskets Between Carnival and Lent. Inspired by Pieter Breughel the Elder’s seminal painting “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent” (1559), Prosser takes the composition’s 24 woven objects as a starting point, including willow shutters on buildings, a birdcage, and a woven beehive, otherwise known as a skep. Prosser is joining 10 basketmakers from across Europe to recreate all two dozen in the painting, and the finished pieces are slated for a show at Oriel Myrddin Gallery in Carmarthen, Wales, in spring 2027.
Prosser is also working toward a new performance for Burgos Biennial 2026 in Burgos, Spain, which kicks off in late September. “For this project, I will be devising an elaborate new basket-based sport called ‘hornball’ (cuerno pelota): a combination of ritual harvest celebration, competitive ball games, and wearable sculptures,” Prosser tells Colossal. See more on his Instagram.
