What are corn dollies and how did I get into this anyway?

I've got a corn dollies workshop coming up soon, and since you might be thinking "what are corn dollies?" and "how did you get into this anyway?" ;) I thought I'd share a bit more about this, and a bit about my journey discovering straw talismans.

I started making things out of straw about 15 years ago, namely "pavuky", the Ukrainian geometric straw mobiles (known more commonly as "himmeli"- the Finnish term for them). I was intrigued by this craft, new to me, and when I learned to make them, I just fell in love. (thanks Yaroslava Ivasykiv for teaching me!)

I started off making very basic ones, and didn't have much access to wheat or rye stalks, so I experimented with various wild grasses and eventually started growing some rye. Pavuky are prepared using rye, and hung in the house as a decoration and talisman for the winter holiday season. 

cutting my humble messy patch of rye

I didn't know of pavuky growing up; it was a village tradition that wasn't known too much in the cities back then. But my family always had a sheaf of wheat in the house which we brought out at Christmas time-- which is a very important Ukrainian custom of honouring the ancestors, and still survives to this day in urban life, even in diaspora (maybe even more so in diaspora ;). We didn't grow the grain-- we got it from a local farmer's field and simply saved the one sheaf we had from year to year.  Around the same time that I learned to make pavuky, I also learned about more elaborate ways to tie together the sheaf, which in Ukrainian is called a "didukh" (literally "grandfather spirit").

my first didukh in my new home in the Ottawa Valley

The didukh was made by wrapping smaller bunches of grains and bringing them all together, and then wrapping them in a big bundle that could stand, sometimes even giving it legs. I learned that in many places, it was customary to burn the didukh at the end of the holiday season, to release the spirits in the grain back to the spirit world. I made a pavuk each year and burned it at the end of our new year's party. I also made many pavuky with friends and hung them in our communal house. We kept passing on the craft to anyone who came by and had the patience to sit and make them!

For many years this was the extent of my relationship with straw craft. 

However, many different things kept conspiring to make me fall deeper in love with working with grains and straw. 

A key moment was at our first Ontario scything gathering "Meet Me in the Meadow"on Amherst Island, when someone showed me a simple plait made with rye. I had never done a straw plait before. They put the fresh rye in my hands and got me started and I made a tiny rustic luminous thing-- I was absolutely smitten!

(Thanks to Sarah Dolamore of Mount Wolfe Farm, and Blair Richards-Koeslag for coaching :)

my first rye plait

I started to look up straw plaiting techniques and learned to make simple "corn dollies", including farmers favours or love knots, from Scotland and across the British Isles. I loved making these small pieces with their satisfying stretchy plaiting and beautiful displays of the wheat ears. As I delved deeper into this craft I learned that the term corn dolly refers to the sheaf that was specially set aside from the harvest, representing the spirit of the grain ("corn" is the old English word for wheat/rye or any cereal grain). It was often tied into a figure, much like the "didukh" in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Over the years, and in different regions, the figures took on many different forms, often little elaborately plaited shapes, more akin to adornments. All the diverse types of straw plaited pieces that were made at harvest time to honour and celebrate the harvest came to be known as corn dollies, each with a regional place name of origin. But this tradition extends far beyond Great Britain, and even Europe. Straw plaited talismans and "corn dollies" have been made absolutely everywhere that grain has been grown, since cultivation began in ancient Mesopotamia.

While I was researching different corn dollies and harvest tokens I suddenly remembered a piece I had seen in the Museum of Natural History in New York City many years ago- it was a harvest house blessing talisman made in ancient Egypt, with the exact same function as a "corn dolly" or "didukh".

I learned this type of straw talisman is called a "straw cage" or "Arabic cage"

These are still being made in the North African/ Mediterranean region and around the world.

I also thought back to the Shinto knots I had seen in the Mingei Museum (of Folk Art) in San Diego...

The knots are decorations/talismans made of straw fibre (often rice or hemp) which are hung on the door at New Year's  (called "shimenawa") and represent a threshold between the everyday world and the sacred world...

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Straw has always had a connection to the sacred, and has been significant in human's relationship to the sacred act of cultivating cereal crops.

I love how much this craft is part of everyone's cultural lineage in different but similar forms, and how it can connect us all to the harvest, our ancestors, and the land. 

it all starts here ;)

I've enjoyed discovering and growing various heritage wheat and rye varieties and using them in my corn dollies, and am constantly taking inspiration from these ancestral traditions that live on in "the spirit of the grain". 

Making corn dollies can be an entry into the vast world of straw craft, and the type of harvest tokens and farmers favours from England that I make are an excellent way to learn some basic plaiting techniques. 

In the workshop I'll be leading at the Lanark Basketry Museum (in October 2026), we'll be making corn dollies in the style of "Egham Harvest Tokens" from England, and learning a variety of plaiting techniques that can be adapted to different projects.

Check out the workshop info here: https://www.lanarkhighlandsbasketrymuseum.ca/corn-dollies

(Huge thank you to Melissa from Honeybee Homestead for organising!)

variations of simple harvest tokens