Evelyn Dunbar (1906-60) worked on Gardener's Choice with Charles Mahoney. When we published it we wrote, "the main delight of the book is the drawings – black and white illustrations that have never been reproduced since their first publication in 1937". Like many illustrators, she drew all the time; the correspondence between the two was enlivened by Evelyn's delightful illustrations, as above. For more about her life and work, do look at Evelyn Dunbar: War and Country (2006) by Gill Clarke.

In addition to everything else they contain, Persephone Books books also form a gallery of work by many marvellous and well-known C20 illustrators, so this week we take a look at light-hearted work by five of them. With his witty, modern style, Arthur Watts (1883-1935) proved to be the perfect match for EM Delafield and her Provincial Lady. Many of his cartoons including this, 'The Course of True Love' (Nov 1921), appeared in Punch, which was renowned the the quality of its cartoons. 

After reading an anecdote in Random Commentary about a Mrs M. who embroiders crinoline ladies on raffia baskets, we end this week thinking about decorative baskets. Several contemporary makers are exploring the exciting sculptural possibilities of willow, and Alison Dickens creates magnificent baskets or 'vessels' which you might prefer to admire rather than use. (She also makes beautiful functional baskets.)

Felicity Irons is one of the few rush weavers left in Europe. She is based in Bedfordshire but also harvests her rush from rivers in Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire. Her rush floor matting is highly sought-after, and she also makes baskets and tableware. Her rush-weaving courses include wonderful summer hats, too. 

Manual Labour: An Interior with Three Figures Folding Laundry (1943, UCL Art Museum) by Wyn Casbolt (1914-1963) includes a hefty, solid basket. It is, perhaps, similar to the one in Malachi Whitaker's short story 'Spring Day at Slater’s End' in which young Marion Alice sees washing on a line in a garden, then 'a woman in white apron and a blue mob-cap...carrying a creaking basket filled with wet, folded white sheets and towels’. Nadine Anderson makes baskets which fit the bill.

This basket (1992) by Jenny Crisp is in the V&A; she still makes and sells a similar 'arm basket'. It brings to mind the many shopping baskets which appear throughout Persephone Books books, so much were they once a part of daily domestic life. In the chapter 'Shopping in Wandlebury' in The Two Mrs Abbotts 'the morning was bright and sunshiny and the two friends sallied forth to do the shopping, Barbara with a large basket on her arm’. It would have been unthinkable to leave the house without one.

Basket-making, one of the most ancient of all crafts, is enjoying a welcome revival; the skills, materials, forms, and history are being valued, rescued, and passed on. Oak spelks originate in South Cumbria and were used in mines, farms, and homes, but today make beautiful laundry, wool, fruit or garden baskets. Traditionally made by basketmen, as here in Backbarrow, Lorna Singleton is today one of just two makers of spelks (or 'swills') in the Lake District.