SCOTTSVILLE — The offices, storeroom and workshop of GH Productions abound with varieties of handmade white oak basket handles and basket-making supplies, along with a reverence for the practitioners of a craft particular to southcentral Kentucky that helped sustain generations of rural families in the area.

Scott Gilbert, his wife, Beth Hester, and their business partner, Mike Sims, have dedicated more than 30 years to promoting and preserving a sometimes overlooked aspect of local folklife while building a business that spreads awareness of the craft of white oak basketry and its significance in the region.

GH Productions and the Basket Makers Catalog were built on a modest inheritance in the form of a basket with a woven white oak frame and honeysuckle vines that was passed down to Gilbert from his grandfather in east Tennessee.

Gilbert and Hester moved to Scottsville from Tennessee in 1979, and in the process of finding what their purpose in life would be, Gilbert met Ollie and Lestel Childress, two members of a Park City family with deep roots in basketry.

Through them, Gilbert absorbed the important functions those baskets served to families, both as items for their own households and as a commercial sideline geared toward tourists.

There were literally hundreds of families in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s making white oak baskets,” Gilbert said. “It was a way for many families to make money during the Great Depression by selling them from roadside souvenir stands.”

Southcentral Kentucky, and Hart County in particular, has cultivated basketry, dating back to the weaving techniques and patterns the earliest European settlers brought to the area, with baskets being made from the nearest convenient materials.

The Kentucky Museum is hosting an exhibit dedicated to the area’s white oak basket tradition beginning this September.

“Those materials most suitable for making baskets in this part of Kentucky are the thin, hand-rived splits of white oak tree as well as some other native vines and shoots, such as honeysuckle and willow,” according to the Mammoth Cave Basket Makers Guild website. “White oak splits were, and still are, the most commonly used material in the area, though some basket makers use vines and other native materials.”

Gilbert began making and marketing baskets in 1982 and started teaching workshops in Allen and surrounding counties two years later. 

Hester also learned from the Childresses and went into business with Gilbert in 1987, by which time his partnership with Sims had begun flourishing.

The business model of making basket handles, buying other basketweaving materials from wholesalers and selling them through mail orders was developed early on, though the hard copy catalogs have now largely given way to online orders.

The early days of the business featured high points – Gilbert and Sims made 17,000 handles that were used on Cover Girl Cosmetics display cases at numerous retailers, still the largest single order the group has handled.

“Every freezer in the county was full of those things,” Sims said of the efforts to keep moisture from warping the wood before the orders were shipped.

There was still a learning curve for the partners to negotiate, which was made clear to them when they shipped their first order.

“The first dozen handles we sent off were pretty rough,” Gilbert said. “The lady who got them sent them back, so we thought ‘if we’re going to do this, we better make them a little bit better.’ ”

Over the years, the three partners have built onto the original garage, where mounds of sawdust speak to an exacting handle-making process, adding offices, rooms to warehouse supplies and a classroom space.

A world map near the entrance shows where orders have been shipped, with push pins stuck in Argentina, New Zealand and several western European countries.

Gilbert achieved a measure of prestige when one of his white oak egg baskets was included in an exhibit at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2013.

The supply business has evolved in a number of ways in line with improved technology, from better software to track the customer database to a greater online presence.

Gilbert said one of GH Productions’ biggest short-term projects is to retool the website (www.basketmakerscatalog.com) so that it is more easily readable on mobile phones and tablets.

Hester keeps busy with taking orders and teaching basketry at workshops and attending conventions around the nation and beyond – a return trip to Ireland is in her future.

“A big part of what has been so wonderful that Scott and I have taken from this has been the people we’ve met over the course of 30-some years,” Hester said. “If you really get into it, there’s so much you can learn about this, more than you could learn in a lifetime.”

— Follow courts reporter Justin Story on Twitter @jstorydailynews or visit bgdailynews.com.