Martha Stewart Reveals Contents of 'Basket House'
Domestic doyenne cleans storage space and reminisces over various items.
Sept. 8, 2013— -- Celebrity and multimedia mogul Martha Stewart is known to own multiple residences. But until Thursday, many fans were unaware that the domestic doyenne also owned a "basket house."
For the uninitiated, a basket house is a place where one stores decades upon decades' worth of baskets one has collected.
"After getting married, I began collecting these useful forms of art in earnest," wrote Stewart on The Martha Blog, who detailed the contents of the basket house in an accompanying slideshow on Thursday.
Stewart, her housekeeper Sanu Sherpa and other staffmembers all pitched in to clean and organize the massive collection, which includes traditional English garden baskets, butt baskets and pieces by the late Benjamin Higgens of the Basket Shop in Chesterfield, Mass.
Not everyone may have a basket house, but Stewart is not alone in her hobby. Basket collecting continues to be a popular pastime in the U.S., with fans devoted to everything from modern Longabergers to antique Shaker models. A rare example of the latter fetched $63,000 at an auction in Chatham, N.Y., according to The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles.
