Beauty From Bark

Most of us ignore bark. It covers tree trunks and branches, doing its work without a lot of flash. We might even be tempted to declare bark nothing for as little as we regard it. Despite its anonymity, bark provides an important service to trees — protecting them from insects, fungal infections, viruses, and even bacteria. All these infectious agents must contend with tree bark when performing their nefarious acts. Bark also keeps the living tree cells underneath from drying out, which is vital. From the tree’s perspective, bark is essential. They simply can’t do without it. 

People once couldn’t do without it either. Unfortunately, those human uses are getting lost in time. Native Americans, the first inhabitants of our state, had numerous uses for the bark of certain species. Europeans who settled here later adopted many of those same uses. Hickory trees are a great example of this. The hickory inner bark was once used to make woven baskets, lacing, buckets, woven chair seats, dye, and even bow strings. While many people have little idea what purposes bark could render, there are still flame keepers who know the skill of using bark for practical and artful purposes.

Work Before the Weave

Meet Sara Bradshaw. She is a flame keeper in southeast Missouri. In the month of May, you can find her with a hickory log, strung between two sawhorses, using a drawknife to remove the gray outer bark, which is composed of dead cells. Bradshaw works to reveal the orangish-ruddy colored inner bark layer. The living inner bark directly underneath is a reservoir of strength and durability. Bradshaw can work all morning on a single hickory log to clean it up for the next step — peeling off strips.

“It’s a dirty job,” she said. “Bark flies all over the place as you use the drawknife. You end up with bark all over and inside your shirt, pockets, and even your pants. If you don’t, then you are doing it wrong.”

Her work reveals a laced network of fibers that are anywhere from one-quarter to one-half an inch thick, depending on tree diameter and which end of the tree you are on.

“I choose trees that are about 6 to 12 inches in diameter near the base,” said Bradshaw. “I look for a straight and tall tree with few branches and knots. These trees give me longer strips, which really helps when I am weaving because I don’t have to splice weavers so often.”

Bradshaw can use anywhere from 120–180 linear feet of hickory fiber to weave one chair seat. She also says the inner bark is thicker at the base of the tree and will require more thinning than the sections near the top of the tree.

Her careful attention to removing the outer bark pays off with the next step. She retrieves a hooked linoleum knife and begins to score a long straight line down the length of the log. Occasionally, she runs the knife down that same line if she feels her first run wasn’t deep enough. Then she moves over about an inch and scores another line parallel to the one she just scribed.

“I want to score the line all the way down to the sapwood,” said Bradshaw. “If I don’t, I will have trouble separating the strip from the one next to it.”

With the first strip cut on both sides, she will use her knife tip to gently separate the inner bark from the sap wood on the log end. Once a corner is lifted, she can grip it and pull the whole strip up and peel it from the log. 

Timing and Slippage

“One of the magical things about this process is you can only do it at the right time in late spring and early summer,” said Bradshaw. “In May or early June, this works great. If you try to do the same task any other time, you will find the bark is stuck like it is glued down. The old timers used to call this peeling of the bark ‘slipping’ because it slipped off easily.”

The magic Bradshaw is speaking of has to do with the cambium layer setting down spring growth cells. That layer of cells is not nearly as strong as the summer growth, so the inner bark is easier to separate from the sapwood. Summer growth is far superior and impossible to peel off like it is in the spring. 

She tests a small hickory limb in early May by attempting to peel bark from it. This allows her to see if the bark is slipping. If it isn’t, she will wait a week. She does the same thing in mid-June. If the bark is no longer slipping, then she will have to wait until next May. 

After Bradshaw scores an inch-wide strip and peels it off, then she coils the strip and ties a short piece of twine around it to dry. She proceeds to score another strip, coiling each strip as she goes until the whole tree has the white sapwood revealed. 

“I have thinned strips immediately after removing them from the log, it can be a little gummy on your drawknife but it works,” she said. “If I am pressed for time, I will let the coils dry and simply rehydrate them when I have time for thinning.” 

She knows the coils are dry because they are impossible to flex and can be stored indefinitely. When she intends to work the dried coils, she will place them in a bucket of water to soak overnight. This softens the coil enough to be uncoiled and shaved to the proper thickness. Bradshaw thins each strip down to roughly one-eighth to one-fourth inch thickness. She says this is easier to do when strips are off the log because you can see the sides and judge your thickness for how much to remove. Her tool of choice is her great-grandfather’s drawknife. 

Following the thinning, she grabs the scissors and trims up the widths to her prospective uses. If she wants weavers for a chair seat, she trims to three-quarters of an inch wide. Any excess will be used as one-fourth inch lacing for basket or bucket rims. If she is weaving a basket, she can trim down to three-sixteenths to one-half of an inch width depending on what type of basket she is making. 

Final weavers and lace can be re-coiled in small loops for storage until ready to weave. 

“Cutting a tree, removing bark, scoring, and peeling the strips can take half a day to a whole day depending on where you do your work. Then thinning those strips can take another half to full day depending on the size of your tree,” said Bradshaw. 

A Pattern Emerges

“My love for this lost art began the first time I sat in a rocker woven with the inner bark of hickory in a herringbone pattern,” Bradshaw shared.   

She was helping at a living history event in Texas County.

“As I sat and rocked, I wove my very first basket with the inner bark of a hickory tree. Beside me, two coworkers worked with practiced hands — one stripping bark from a hickory tree, the other thinning it down to the right size for weaving. Watching the transformation unfold before my eyes — from raw bark to functional art — something stirred in me. What was once just a tree had become something deeply personal and beautiful. In that moment, I knew I wanted to carry this skill forward.”

And she has done just that. 

“I started with a basket with a wooden handle,” she said. “Then I tried another, this time incorporating a deer antler as the handle. When I showed my baskets to friends and family, they couldn’t believe they were made from tree bark. They turned them over, inspected the weave, and marveled, ‘There’s no way this is bark.’ Every time someone expressed disbelief, I would smile and happily explain how I harvest, prepare, and weave the inner hickory bark.”

By the following spring, the tradition had already become a family affair. Bradshaw’s daughter and mom spent time stripping bark from hickory trees, preparing it for future projects. With a growing stockpile of material, she planned to make more baskets, but she also had a new idea. She wanted to weave a seat for a rocking chair.

The baskets are great, but one project is the epitome of bark weaving — a chair seat. 

“As I shared this idea with family, I learned about a special heirloom—a rocking chair — passed down to the oldest granddaughter in each generation,” Bradshaw said. “That meant my daughter would one day inherit it, becoming the fourth generation to carry it forward. When we received the chair, the seat was badly worn and made from synthetic material. I knew right then — this would be my next project.”

What made the idea even more meaningful was the fact that the new seat would be woven from hickory bark harvested by three generations in her family.

“I chose the herringbone pattern, not only because I had used it before in stools and found it durable, but also because I loved its look,” Bradshaw said. “Still, it was no small task. It took me two full years to harvest, cure, and thin enough bark to complete the seat.”

Now that Bradshaw has experience with seat weaving, she has a better idea of how many trees’ worth of bark strips she will need and approximately how many linear feet. 

More from Hickory Bark

Besides chair seats and baskets, people have been known to make sheet buckets from hickory inner bark. After removing the outer bark, one short line is scored lengthwise and a perpendicular line around the diameter, so you remove a sheet like it was a paper towel peeling off the roll. The sheet is lightly scored for the base, folded, and then laced with hickory inner bark strips. 

“These buckets are tougher than you might think,” said Bradshaw, thumping one with her finger. 

Hickory inner bark was also used for bow strings for a unique form of bow fishing known as bowin’ and spikin’ in the Ozarks. Bows and their hickory strings were soaked for 45 minutes to ensure they were thoroughly wet through and through. If the bow seemed to be drying out, it was dunked to maintain the moisture. A dry bow string will not handle the stress of moving while shooting and will break. A soaked bow and string were used to launch a thick arrow made of pine, cedar, or cypress with small metal gigs for harvesting fish.   

Weaving it All Together

When Bradshaw cuts a hickory tree, she isn’t simply gathering materials to work her art. She is managing her forest. She is quick to tell you she wants to manage a healthy forest and when two trees are too close together, one of them has to go. If she is careful about her choices, she will take the lesser of the two trees.   

In other instances, Bradshaw will select a hickory for harvest two to three years from now and cut trees around it to ensure it gets plenty of light and water. When the tree is the appropriate size (6–12 inches), she can harvest it knowing it has been growing under the right conditions. While larger trees can offer more bark strips, they are tough to handle, and the inner bark is thicker, thus increasing the processing time. 

Bradshaw encourages people who want to manage their forest to consult a private land conservationist (see Page 3 for your local contact) who can help identify trees that can be harvested for the sake of improving their forest. If some of those are hickories of the right size, you may want to consider becoming a flame keeper as well. It is work, but when you are done you have a unique product that is guaranteed to attract attention. 

Hickory inner bark was a widely used fiber for weaving seats and baskets. Its strength and beauty made it ideal for projects that supported weight and possessed an attractive quality that speaks to craftsmanship. Today people can order weaving supplies from a company that processes palm fiber for weavers. But a few people, like Sara Bradshaw, are keeping the art of hickory bark weaving alive by practicing and teaching others the craft. 

Bark is more than something to ignore. Bradshaw has seen and demonstrated that under that gray flaky exterior is a resource to create something useful and beautiful. 

Sitting in her hickory seat rocker, Bradshaw said, “To say I’m proud of this rocking chair is an understatement. It now sits in my home, a symbol of heritage, craftsmanship, and connection. Every time I sit in it, I think about the people who rocked in it before me — and those who will rock in it long after. It’s more than just a seat. It’s a story.”