Craftsman Returns To Making Family Product: Fishing Creels

PORTLAND - The hand-cranked clock on the wall does not work unless it is tilted, and the electric clock above Bill Lawrence's workbench shows only 12 through 6. "Who cares?" is lettered in the spaces where 7 through 11 belong.

Time does not matter much to a leatherworker. Or to the vintage wicker and willow fishing creels taking a new life under his hand.

Lawrence, 65, is the heir of one of the richest traditional crafts in the angling world.

Between 1923 and 1953, The George Lawrence Co., his great-grandfather's leatherworks in downtown Portland, produced what were described at the time as the "coin of the realm" of fishing creels. Portland's famous handmade baskets were strapped to the shoulders of thousands of anglers earlier this century to store their catches, usually trout.

Oregon in the first half of the century became a mecca for fishing-creel manufacturers, with nearly a dozen companies sewing leather fittings onto split wicker and willow creels and sending them across the world.

"I can remember as a boy watching cartloads of baskets come into the factory," said Lawrence, who began as a leatherworker in the family business in the era after it quit making creels.

The baskets, imported to Portland, did not become true creels until they got their leather fittings - smooth, rounded edges, sewn reinforcement, attached bags (some for spare reels) and shoulder harnesses.

Then they left for store shelves across the nation in an era when trout were actually caught, kept and slipped one by one through a hole in the lid onto a bed of cool grass.

Wicker creels have been replaced by canvas and coolers. Most of their value is instead a delightful surprise when someone who knows about collecting stumbles across one for $20 to $100 at a garage sale.

Serious collectors are not eager for outsiders to know what a collectible creel is worth, but Lawrence recently heard about one made by his great-grandfather's company that sold in Florida for $900.

Lawrence, disabled by a spinal disease and forced to close his family's business in 1990, this spring began a personal return to the creel business.

He does not want to make collectible pieces of art - which they probably will become in another half century - but rather is motivated by philanthropy and his hobby interest in leatherworking.

He is carrying on a craftsman's tradition and searching for a way to make money for fish restoration projects at the same time.

In a shop built into his southwest Portland garage, Lawrence has crammed many of the old tools and dies used by the Lawrence Co. as far back as the late 1800s. He uses them to rebuild fishing creels - your basket or his.

He charges up to $500 for the several days' handwork and refinishing, and he turns over the profit to Oregon fish-restoration projects.

On each creel is stamped: George Lawrence's great-grandson.

Lawrence said he has raised $400 in the early weeks of his new enterprise and is contacting organizations that will put money directly into restoration, rather than paying administrative operating costs.

"I'd be embarrassed to ask this kind of money if I wasn't giving it away," he said. "I want to see it have some good effects on our fisheries."

Ultimately, Lawrence wants to donate his shop to a local museum as a working saddlemaker's exhibit.