This course offers an immersion in artistic basketry, at the intersection of tradition and contemporary creation. It aims to impart precise technical skills while opening up a space for visual and sensory exploration around plant weaving.
Participants will learn to design and create two wicker pieces, working with volumes, lines, light, and emptiness, in an approach combining artisanal precision and artistic freedom. More than a technical apprenticeship, Catherine Romand offers an immersion in a living craft, where wicker becomes line, volume, and vibration. A weaving art that combines slowness, attention, and freedom.

At the end of the training, the trainee will be able to:

• Understand in depth the working points and basketry techniques specific to container manufacturing
• Integrate precise gestures and hand positioning, essential for shaping and controlling volume in space
• Improve their speed and work rate through the automation of gestures, acquired through regular repetition of objects

This exceptional training invites participants to immerse themselves in the rich and vibrant world of artistic basketry, where ancestral tradition and contemporary creations combine. Led by Catherine Romand, a certified basket weaver since 1981 with over forty years of experience, it offers much more than simple technical instruction.

Catherine shares her valuable expertise, enriched by a daily practice that includes the cultivation and processing of wicker, in close collaboration with her husband, a Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Craftsman of France). Trainees learn all the key steps, from selecting and preparing the wicker to creating three-dimensional objects, paying particular attention to mastering shapes, interacting with light, and fluid lines.

Professional Program

Professional Program: Round and Oval Baskets

Day 1 Morning and Afternoon

• Setting up the workstation and tools
• Sorting and preparing the uprights
• Preparing the braiding strands
• Research on the execution
• Soaking

Day 2 Morning and Afternoon

• Making bases on a 3-dimensional crossbar

Day 3 Morning and Afternoon

• Making a basket with upright stitching, a 2-place torch, crocanne fencing, finishing the edge in a "4 behind 2" pattern, leaving finger holes, and a base with Border

Day 4 Morning and Afternoon

• Creation of a second container, identical to the first, meeting the same specifications but in a larger format, and with reinforced handles and rope

Day 5 Morning and Afternoon

• Creation of the legs of the two baskets to review the "4 behind 2" border
• Course debriefing and evaluation

Catherine Romand

In Villaines-les-Rochers, a mecca of French basketry, Catherine Romand weaves decades of expertise and creative freedom in her expert hands. A 1981 graduate of the National School of Osiericulture and Basketry, she is the first woman to graduate from the rattan furniture industry. For over 40 years, she has been crafting wicker with a rare rigor, blending artisanal tradition and artistic research.

Alongside her husband, Christophe Romand, a Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Craftsman of France) in basketry since 1994, she cultivates her own osier bed, championing a comprehensive approach, from field to form. Together, in their workshop, they reinterpret ancient techniques to create a contemporary language, while ensuring the ecological and aesthetic quality of their raw materials.

An artist as well as a craftswoman, Catherine Romand has always sought to expand the scope of basketry. In 2003, she received the SEMA Prize in Contemporary Art for her work at the intersection of sculpture and craftsmanship. In 2024, she was once again recognized for her project Tresser l'ombre (Treating the Shadow), a monumental work conceived in collaboration with designer Clémence Althabegoïty, which earned them the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Intelligence of the Hand, in the Dialogues category. The installation, designed as a living shade structure, combines mastery of curves and solar calculations, and perfectly illustrates her approach: a sensitive, spatial basketwork, in tune with the living.

Catherine Romand now shares her expertise through demanding and inspiring training courses. She shares her techniques and precision, but also her vision of a rapidly evolving craft, capable of appealing to designers, artists, architects, and plant enthusiasts alike.

• Classroom, multipurpose room, workshops with professional equipment
• Materials provided
• Individual and collaborative work
• Workshop work
• Active participation and experimentation of participants are encouraged

• Collective and personalized monitoring of work, regular updates
• Self-assessment of technical skills
• Collective feedback
• Half-day attendance sheet
• Certification of completion issued by Campus MaNa