Clyde Jenkins lives off Jenkins Lane on land his great-great grandfather acquired in Page County in the eighteenth century.
In many ways, he lives similarly to the generations who cultivated this land before him. He is a student of history, especially his own family’s history. He is committed to teaching young people the centuries-old arts of self-reliance he practices.
“I love to create. I love to make beautiful pieces of artwork, whether it’s the white oak baskets, the stonework, the many, many things that I do. I cherish all of it,” Clyde said in a recent interview with Virginia Folklife.
Virginia Humanities commissioned Clyde to weave three baskets for the inaugural Commonwealth Humanities Awards. He is a longtime friend of Virginia Folklife, first meeting previous state folklorist Jon Lohman in the early 2000s and joining the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program in 2004 to mentor Sam Cave in basketmaking. His fine baskets are exquisite and part of museum collections, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Clyde’s baskets are the perfect vessels to honor people who help us weave individual stories into stronger communities. On April 10, Virginia Humanities presented three award baskets—a kidney fan, a triple-bottom, and a First Lady—to: Lynda Johnson Robb (Individual Excellence), Dominion Energy (Corporate or Foundation Excellence), Janine Bell, founder and director of the Elegba Folklore Society (Community Partner Excellence).
Nicolas Bell, curator of a Renwick exhibition on American baskets in 2013, writes: “Baskets date from our earliest efforts to contain the world.” [1]
Machines cannot weave baskets. Human hands must make a good basket. To do so you not only need to know the technique, but you need feel the wood to coax loose the thinnest ribbons from young tree trunks, to know when to dampen the splint, and to use the woodgrain to your advantage.
The indigenous people who lived on the land that became Virginia made baskets from grasses, pine needles, and fiber. Swedish settlers introduced baskets made from split wood in the Delaware Valley in the seventeenth century. Irish, Scottish, and English settlers carried the technique with them into southern Appalachia.
According to Clyde, the Jenkins family left Northampton in southcentral England in 1656 and settled near the Chesapeake Bay. Clyde’s great-great grandfather Richard was born in 1750 and fought in the Revolutionary War following George Washington’s regiment. The Jenkins family owned land in what is now the District of Columbia until 1792. Washington selected a hill on the former Jenkins property to build the United States Capitol. Richard Jenkins settled in the Shenandoah Mountains, where Clyde lives and works today.
When Clyde tells a family story, he gives full names, years, and details. He has favorites, like the story of his Uncle Harry accidentally treating his potato plants with sugar or the time his great great grandfather was caned during the war for stealing a turnip from a field as he marched.
“I loved to talk to my grandma when the old people got together, I loved it. The other kids could have cared less, but I loved the stories about people in the family,” explained Clyde.
Clyde became enchanted with splitting the white oak trees on family land from his Uncle Harry, who knew how to weave chair seats. Clyde learned how to fell and split wood as a young boy, and he taught himself how to make baskets, getting serious about the craft in high school. Clyde was a straight-A student who sometimes taught his teachers how to graft trees and other skills from his mountain home.
Clyde is deeply committed to training young people in the skills and arts of self-reliance he has mastered: stone wall building, historic architecture preservation, growing heirloom apples, weaving chair seats and baskets, keeping bees. He completed a second Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship in 2019, but truly he is always training a few apprentices.
Today Clyde loves to innovate how he weaves his baskets, combining his repertoire of techniques into new shapes in a centuries-old tradition. Following the awards presentation, Clyde shared how support from Virginia Folklife has encouraged him to innovate.
“We have to make an effort to keep the stories, to keep the histories, the things that happened, alive,” said Clyde. “I say ‘we’ because I feel Virginia Humanities really supports me in what I’m doing. I don’t just feel it, I know it.”
“I do know our relationship has greatly affected my life in a very positive way. It has given me a great desire to perfect my art, and that’s what I tried to show in my work. To me, here is an avenue to keep my histories, the things that I have learned, it’s my avenue to keep them alive.”
From the Virginia Folklife Program and all of us here at Virginia Humanities, thank you Clyde, for accepting our commission for these awards baskets and for being a lifelong steward of Virginia traditions.
[1] Bell, Nicholas R. “A Measure of the Earth: The Cole-Ware Collection of American Baskets.” Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2013.
