Veronica’s love of working with straw began by making corn dollies and decorative straw work designs. She attended evening classes, learning from Stella Badby, the niece of Alec Coker who was one of the leading lights of the straw world in the 1960s. It was an excellent beginning and from this point Veronica discovered the versatility of straw as a decorative and craft medium.

In this part of the website you can find more information about straw, corn dollies, decorative straw work, Swiss straw work, straw embroidery and eventually much more.

These straw work skills are slowing dying in the UK, but now they feature on Heritage Crafts, Red List of Endangered Crafts which is raising awareness and enabling today’s workers to bring back these skills on a commercial basis that it fit for the 21st century.

It’s important to understand is that in the past Harvest Trophies/Corn Dollies were made for fun at end of harvest, but straw plaiting for the hat industry, the Swiss straw industry, straw marquetry, and straw embroidery were commercial occupations that were part of larger worldwide industries.

Buying, storing and preparing straw

The generic name for cereal crops of wheat, rye, oats and barley straw is corn. This can cause misunderstanding in the USA where the term corn refers to maize. 

The type of cereal crop used for decorative work varies from country to country around the world. In the UK wheat is most commonly used. In Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, Belarus, Ukraine rye is more common. The choice depends upon the availability of crops grown.

The best type of straw to use has a long top section, from beneath the head to the first leaf node or joint, and a hollow stem with a thin wall. These qualities allow the straws to bend and twist when they are damp.

Harvest trophies or corn dollies

Made at the end of harvest these were simple objects often made in the field or barn by farm labourers who loved to tell a tale. Over the centuries many folk tales grew around their making and these continue today. The name corn dollies is relatively recent, appearing in the first half of the 1900s. Before that collective name they were know at Harvest Trophies or Harvest Tokens and individually by their local name such as mell, kirn, mare and nek or neck.

There is much debate about what a corn dolly actually is and today many designs made from straw are called a corn dolly. If you look at surviving examples made in the 1800s and early 1900s they are usually very simple and an abstract shape. They can be a simple bundle or sheaf of straw tied together and perhaps dressed, or they can incorporate different types of plaits. Interestingly some of the plaits used by corn dolly makers came from the hat industry.

Decorative straw work

Perhaps the first move forward came in the 1940s when farm workers began to create shapes representing objects such as crowns, anchors, seahorses, horseshoes even umbrellas, many of the pieces being made by farm labourers.

Two of the most famous examples were made by Fred Mizon from Essex who produced a lion and unicorn as the main feature of the Lion and Unicorn pavilion at the 1951 Festival of Britain. The figures stood seven feet high and took six months to work. The figures were covered with spiral plait.