Sussex Trug

A Sussex trug is a wooden basket, made from a handle and rim of coppiced sweet chestnut wood that is hand-cleft and then shaved using a drawknife, with a body formed of five or seven thin boards of white willow, also hand-shaved with a drawknife. It may have originated in Sussex, in southern England, because of the local abundance of chestnut coppice and willow found on the marshes there. The pins or nails used are usually copper, to avoid rust. Trug shapes and sizes became standardised over time, the best known being the common or garden trug, ranging in volume from one pint to a bushel, alongside a more diverse range of traditional forms including garden and oval trugs and the more specialised large log and walking stick trugs.