More tea wicker...?
Independent on Sunday
1998
A picnic is is one of life's simple pleasures. And if Gadsby & Son flog you one of their hampers, it's likely to be one of the priciest too...
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PAYING ANY amount of money to transport sandwiches in the equivalent of a Delsey suitcase is madness. And parting with 1099 pounds for the Balmoral Balloons hamper by Gadsby & Son could be said to be more than a little eccentric. But then this is about style. And style has no use for price limits.
Hampers, like hatboxes and trunks, are unwieldy bits of material culture whose main aim seems to be to slow you down. Trailing the Gadsby around the countryside will certainly slow your step, being heavy enough to give you a slipped disc or two. This is assuming that you are attempting to carry it yourself, which would imply a certain naivete about the historical point of a hamper.
Lesser-known Marxist theory holds that picnic hampers were introduced to stop the proletariat from revolting, busy as they were staggering under half a ton of oppressive wicker whimsy. "Hampers were meant for the days when the chauffeur carried them from the car to the picnic spot," says Fiona MacPherson, editor of Harpers & Queen. 'There's no floating across a meadow with them."
I defy anyone to float anywhere with the Gadsby hamper. Its weight sportingly adheres to the historical divide between carrier and consumer, and it's reassuring to see that no one was a spoilsport and put a set of wheels on it.
But then that just wouldn't be British, and this hamper is patriotic in all respects, including its being handcrafted by a father and son company in the country. This creaking treasure chest holds a bone china tea set, plates and a full canteen of heavy cutlery with which to sprain a wrist while spearing a strawberry.
Lead crystal glasses complete the ensemble. Even the interior is opulent in red leather, complementing the red tartan rugs and the lids of the huge "outdoor appetite" plastic food containers.
"outdoor appetite" plastic containers.
It's part of a confident "style over content" strategy, like other national institutions such as good breeding and nostalgia.
In contrast, heaven knows what partisan picnickers of yesteryear would have made of the Woolworth's Fruitware hamper (14.99). This compact hamper may be cheaper and more convenient, but it's a wannabe, a democratic diffusion, a nod to tradition that sadly fails to convince. Plastic plates and mugs just do not belong in picnic culture.
Of course, if nature had wanted us to hold state banquets in the middle of a field then cows would wear dinner jackets, trumpet the Woolies picnickers defiantly, attacking chicken drumsticks with bendy plastic cutlery.
However, in an adjoining field, a Gadsby owner is adjusting the bow tie of a well-bred fresian and considering 1099 pounds money well spent. If only to keep the sense that full effort will always mean full victory in a very British kind of style war.
