Life on any farm requires a ton of hard work. Although Martha Stewart makes it look easy, and even glamorous, her over-150-acre estate in Katonah, New York, dubbed Cantitoe Corners, where she has horses, donkeys, peacocks, and numerous gardens, needs maintenance just like any other. Earlier this week, she took to her blog, Martha Up Close & Personal, to share her latest project: replacing the roof on her “Basket House” and reorganizing the contents of the cute shed.
Yes, this woman has an outbuilding on her property just to hold her basket collection. “I love baskets of all kinds and am always looking for rare pieces to add to my collection,” the homemaking legend writes, revealing that she owns “hundreds” of the woven vessels. “A good number of these baskets were used during my catering days,” Stewart continues, reminding us that her lifestyle empire (she has reached billionaire status in the past, though her net worth is now estimated at around $400 million) began in her home kitchen in 1973, after she quit her job on Wall Street.
Stewart writes about baskets with a real reverence for the craft, which is incredibly charming. She explains techniques like plaiting and twining, and the difference between wicker and coiled baskets. She’s got baskets of every shape, size, and provenance, from rare antiques to modern ones, and she gives special shout-outs to her English trugs, her flower arranging baskets, and something called “a buttocks basket, so named for its shape.”
A 2019 article on her website has more information about her favourite basket makers, which include New England–based artisans Michael Kane of Nantucket, Benjamin Higgins of the now closed Basket Shop in Chesterfield, Massachusetts, and Stephen Zeh of Maine. Baskets made by any of these men are definitely collectibles, which explains why storing them under a “timeworn cedar roof” just would not do. The shed now boasts a snap lock standing seam metal roof, painted a shade that Stewart calls “Bedford Gray” to match the structure’s exterior walls as well as her massive renovated 1925 farmhouse on the property, which she purchased in 2000.
In an Instagram post about the project, Stewart hinted that she may be ready to make some room in her Basket House, and you can bet we’ll be watching for any opportunities to own a piece of Martha memorabilia. “Gave me time to clean inside and rearrange and even edit a bit,” she wrote. “Getting to be time for another tag sale?????” Please, yes.