basket case (12. 383)

Though resigned to a therapeutic activity, the art of basket-weaving is something unlike other textile crafts that defies mechanisation and automation and is being championed clubs and consortia all over embracing these ancient ways with both materially traditional and novel substrates, rallying around the 🧺 emoji to express affiliation, included in 2018 rollout. There was some discussion a few years ago about adding a truck emoji as a concession to conservative Americans, a symbolic move that probably would have garnered more mileage and not seen as a bow to tribalism—see also here and here—the pickup created in 2020 in response being seen as too twee and the expectation was for some monster all-terrain SUV. Originating with the asylum system of the nineteenth century with institutionalised individuals mildly dehumanised with such activities that were regarded as childlike and busy-work, basket weaving was somewhat rehabilitated following World War I as occupational therapy for returning soldiers suffering from shell-shock (what we would now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder), the title epithet probably comes from not the activity but rather the wicker wheelchairs provided to recovering and disabled service members—like the etymology of gone to hell in a hand basket stems from being carted off on a litter. Find out more about those retaking the craft and carrying it forward from It’s Nice That at the link above.