Weaving What is Needed
Kay Kass, pictured here, is weaving all of the sides to a cedar casket.
By Greg Wells
CCN-Editor
Kay Kass is the owner, operator, teacher, and head weaver at Blacksferry Handmade Baskets.
These aren’t just the baskets your parents or grandparents had around the house, though she does a great deal of work building domestic wares.
Also among her creations are caskets.
A native of the Judio community in the county Kass has returned, after over 30 years, to the area. She teaches basket weaving at the extension office from time to time, while getting together a studio back at the family home.
She comes from a family of weavers, at least 3-generations including her uncle was Willie McLerran of Moss TN, she said.
He was a white oak weaver from the old school, one man’s work from tree to finished product.
In addition to teaching and keeping the records for horse shows around the area, she is making and selling baskets for home use at shows and events in this part of the country.
This is a photograph of the completed cedar casket from The Wooden Caskett in Tompkinsville, as worked on by local artisan Kay Kass.
Then her cousin, Michael Watson in Tompkinsville, asked for her help with a project for a customer at his business, The Wooden Casket.
Now she has worked on several projects with him. He builds the frame, and she weaves in basketwork within areas of the sides and top.
“Then usually we line them with muslin,” she said. “On this particular one they wanted to use this quilt.”
The coffins are very much a made to order product, though they have offered the service to funeral homes she said.
Kass said awareness of green, or traditional, burial processes are spreading and there are people who don’t want to be in a steel box inside a concrete vault.
This local lady has returned to her extended family and her home and is working to make her own mark here.
