Earl Gampp, Master of the Trade

Article taken from The Portsmouth Daily Times, January 11, 2004

By G. Sam Piatt

 

He's 85 now and the old hands have a bit of arthritis in them, but Earl Gampp shows no signs of slowing down from the basket weaving hobby business he began 20 years ago.

His baskets, made totally from scratch and following no set pattern or design exept what he sees in his mind, sell well at arts and crafts festivals throughout southern Ohio.

"The main thing is it keeps me busy. Can't take my hands being idle," said Gampp, who lives on a third-generation Gampp farm off Ohio 335 halfway between Sciotoville and Minford.

The baskets hanging on the beams in his kitchen and the ones for sale in front of the garage had their beginning with the selection of a white oak about eight inches in diameter.

"You never cut that tree from the west side of the hill. If you do, it won't strip well," Gampp said. "You go only to the north side of the hill to cut an oak suitable for use in making baskets."

He said he learned that lesson - and it has proven it to be true - from Red Pierce of Waverly, who taught him much about basket making.

The tree is cut into one or two sections, each five or six feet long. Then, in his garage workshop on the farm, he uses a hatchet and hammer to split the wood to the desired thickness.

He uses a draw knife and a shaving horse to work the strips to the thinness required for basket-making.

A piece of PCP pipe, sealed on one end, is filled with water and the strips dropped down into the pipe overknight to the thinness required for basket-making.

He can weave some baskets in two hours, while others, like those designed to sit on a stairway, take a while longer.

He also re-canes seats and backs of old chairs, a job that takes a couple of days. In his spare time he whittles wooden whistles.

Gampp said he first decided to become a basket weaver about 20 years ago when he and his wife,Wilma Lee, a retired school teacher now recovering at home from a stroke, were in St. Louis.

"There was a gentleman making baskets at a festival under The Arch," Gampp said."I watched him for a while and I said I believed I could make those things. When I got home, I did."

Gampp, who has twice suffered from a broken back doing his farm work, no longer goes into the woods to gather his own white oaks.

A friend of his who's in the timber business, Sam West, of Idaho, Ohio, in Pike County, occasionally supplies him with the tree trunks he needs. He's also used hickory and ash, but he said nothing beats white oak.

And from there Earl Gampp's busy hands take over, weaving the white oak strips into beautiful baskets adorning mantles and tables and beams throughout southern Ohio.

For information or prices on his baskets, he can be reached at home at (740)-776-6155