Anna aims to contrast the dappled hues of the different willow barks within her work. Through the year, particularly as she is creating baskets and forms using her home grown willow, the affection for the material carries on through the work. The baskets are things of beauty; sturdy and precise.
Nature and history pass through Anna’s hands as she weaves using willow she grows, cuts, sorts and prepares herself. Based in Edinburgh, Leibmann uses willow that was grown elsewhere in Scotland organically or conventionally in Somerset. Every year in the early spring you will find Anna in the willow patch with friends, harvesting the year’s crop, hand weeding and restocking for next year. The first crop was cut from the willow patch in 2005, the year her daughter was born. Anna grows eight types of willow in the patch, of different colours, hues and elasticity. Some of them are stout, making them ideal for a basket’s skeleton. Others are long and slender, and can be woven in and out of small spaces.