May: I always worked with my hands, and I would make something and move on.

I called it craft hopping.

I'd hop, hop, hop, hop.

And then one day I found somebody was holding a basket and I said, "Oh, your basket's really beautiful."

She said, "Well, thank you, I made that."

And I was like, "You what?"

Narrator: It was the beginning of a journey leading Mary May deep into the history of South Jersey basket making.

May: This one again in the back is called a picking basket.

Narrator: One of her finds was at her township's Schoolhouse Museum, where there's a basket made long ago by a local Forked River man, Mikey Archer.

May: His work is very interesting, and what really grabbed my eye is inside, the way that he does the layout of the basket.

Okay, so it's sort of like a spoke, spokes of a wheel.

Okay.

And traditionally you always weave over one and under one and over one and under one.

But he wove around one way, and then one time he wove backwards.

So what I've done is I've tried to emulate what I believe he did.

So you start the weave and you go over one, under one, over one, under one till you get to here, and then you double back, and then you come back.

And then after you get to the third row, you will be...where is it?

Where is it?

Right here.

Okay?

You split.

And when you split it, that will allow you to keep going around and around and around your basket.

Narrator: Another basket Mary found at the museum told a different kind of story.

This is a charcoal basket.

Okay.

Was used here in the Pinelands.

Narrator: Charcoal making was a common industry throughout the Pine Barrens for almost 200 years.

May: And what you would do is you would take this basket, sort of -- You would kind of like use it against your leg.

You would rake in your coal, you would go like this.

And the reason it's so large because it's a two-person carry.

So you would take the other side, I would take this side.

We would walk it over to the wagon and just slide it and dump it in.

Narrator: Mary May's research inspires her work.

This prized possession is a vintage pound fishing basket covered in tar to make it more durable.

She's made blueberry baskets, backpacks, even a basket that was used to catch eels.

May: This is the eel fyke.

And so these are the tines in the bottom.

So what you would do is you would bait your material, you would throw your bait in.

And apparently bait is a secret.

I wouldn't share with you what I baited for my fish and vice versa.

And then you put the plug in.

So this is a white cedar, local cedar plug.

And you would take this and you would sink it into the water.

You would anchor it down, of course, because it would be light.

And then this would swell a little bit so it would really stay on tight.

The eels would swim in and they -- for some reason, no fish really turns around and goes back.

Okay.

So I'm going to let you do this.

McDonald: We are making a fishing creel, but I'm going to use it as a purse.

I started weaving with Mary between 25 and 30 years ago, and I was hooked.

And I've been weaving ever since.

Dolphin: She's always giving us a little background on, you know, where this basket came from, what it's used for.

And that is fascinating to me.

I like culture, I like history.

I have Piney roots.

So it's fun to, you know, be in touch with that history.

Narrator: Mary May is a historian of baskets, but she's also a highly skilled artisan.

May: You know, why do you want to use the basket today?

I think this reminds me of when we go into the food store and we grab our market basket to run up and down the aisles real quick to run in and out.

So this one I sell a lot of for the farmers markets.

So I've sort of taken the roughness of the farmer's work and refined it a little bit to sort of the way that I would like the basket to look.

They used it years back, but how can we use it today and still enjoy it?