TALKING POINTS
Howard Peller stands in front of a display of his in demand work. Today he weaves baskets by hand from ingredients grown on his farm near Roseville.
WEAVING WISDOM The legacy of Longaberger Baskets
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STORY BY BENNETT LECKRONE // PHOTOS BY KEVIN PAN
oward Peller remembers thousands of workers weaving baskets as one in a huge warehouse. That was in the heyday of the Longaberger Company, a billion-dollar basket maker based in Dresden. “To see 2,000 people weaving was pretty cool,” Peller, who was once the director of design for the company, recalls. “It was like a bee hive.” But those days of mass-producing baskets in the region are long gone: After a steady decline, Longaberger ceased operations in early 2018. Today, Peller weaves baskets by hand from ingredients he grows on his farm near Roseville. He doesn’t know of many other weavers left in the area. Peller’s careful and studious work is a far cry from the huge amount of collectible baskets that Longaberger once churned out. The massive company’s legacy can be seen across Muskingum and Licking Counties. Outside of Frazeysburg, the company’s manufacturing buildings sit empty; in Dresden, the “world’s largest basket,” a work created by Longaberger weavers, is beginning to rot. 14 | WINTER/SPRING 2020
WEAVING DREAMS Longaberger was founded in 1973 as a little weaving shop in Dresden. Its founder, trailblazer and visionary Dave Longaberger, led the company to massive success. In 2000, a year after his death, Dave Longaberger’s company peaked in value at $1 billion. At its height, the Longaberger Company provided jobs to nearly 8,000 in the region. Geoff Snyder still sells the company’s baskets. He started selling them as “The Basket Guy” during the recession of 2008 and found that there was still a huge demand for the baskets. “A large majority of my sales are online,” Snyder says. “There are collectors all over the country that I sell to.” However, the Longaberger Company as a business was mortally wounded by the economic downturned. Peller says the recession, combined with a change in home decor tastes, led to the company’s eventual bankruptcy and collapse. “I designed a lot of functional work for Longaberger,” Peller said. “People collected, and had different fabrics and matched [baskets] up in their homes.”
